At the end of 2022, I refused to renew my yearly pass to work as a guide in the Vatican Museums and Sistine Chapel.  “Why?” you ask.  Well, visiting the Vatican Museums and Sistine had become unpleasant.  Really unpleasant.  [...]

First, the city called Santa Maria Capua Vetere (Saint Maria Old Capua) has an ancient Roman amphitheater that competes with Emperor Vespasian Flavius’s Colosseum in Rome.  And we’ll talk more about that soon.  Second, the [...]

A user-friendly, fun, and educative guidebook on the Roman Forum has been born! If you want to dig into The Roman Forum: From Outpost to Empire in Ten Easy Centuries, you can now find it on Amazon.  [...]

Part 1: I was Young, Married, and Foolish I’ve always enjoyed walking and, in my late-twenties, I learned to love jogging.  Somewhere along the way I purchased a book called A Piedi nel Lazio (On foot [...]

Mid-September rolled around and I still hadn’t gone on vacation.  Correction: I still hadn’t traveled anywhere.  I had maintained a spectacular track record until this year: Jordan in January, 2013; archeological sites in Spain for a month in [...]

What does your favorite Rome guide do now that she is virtually unemployed?  The short answer is I’ve been tidying up a book on the Roman Forum that I would like to have published as soon as possible [...]

An Introduction to My Insane Musings... I am fascinated by people and the way they think—individually and collectively. So I’m not just a junior league anthropologist, I’m also a wannabe psychoanalyst. The impact of the Coronavirus [...]

I came to Rome for my last semester of college.  It was the end of January, 1995.  I was young(ish) and unprepared for the experience.  (More unprepared than young!)  My expectations of the Eternal City were based on [...]

Giving a unique gift is a thrill.  So contribute to part of a newly-wedded relative’s honeymoon.  Invest in your kids’ first solo trip to Europe.  Or help close friends celebrate an anniversary in a memorable and educative way.  Donate [...]