Stepping outside Termini station, the gateway to Rome for many visitors, my tour guide asked me what I saw.
“Graffiti?” I said. “Trash?”
“Exactly,” he said. “A Roman would not see this. The Roman is so beaten down by the filth in which he lives that he can no longer recognize or see the sad state of the city.”
Benvenuti a Roma! To be fair, Massimiliano Tonelli is not a regular tour guide. He is a founder of Roma Fa Schifo, or Rome Is Gross, the popular blog and social media feed that, since 2007, has sought to awaken complacent Romans to see Rome for what he thinks it is: an abnormal and broken relic in a continent of modernizing cities. I had asked him to show me around, because in my nearly two years as the Rome bureau chief for The New York Times, I was worried I was beginning to do — and see — as the Romans. Source
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