ROME: DISCOVERING
MOSES

The mosquitos had held a convention in our bedroom, and unfortunately for my son, Jon, they'd developed a clear preference for his teenage American blood. Perhaps they'd developed a taste for overpriced airline food and travel anxiety, both of which we'd been marinating in for the better part of fourteen hours. We arrived late in the night for our first stay. Everything felt slightly unreal: the jet lag, the night heat, the buzz of foreign air. The apartment, a charming period piece near the Colosseum, had been furnished with everything a visitor might need except, it appeared, the one thing we desperately craved: air conditioning. This is why we had mosquitoes for guests: the only relief from the heat was to leave the windows open, and they took that as an invitation.

Lying there in the pre-dawn darkness, I found myself remembering the summers in Las Vegas of my youth, where I had discovered that a spray bottle filled with cold water could provide at least temporary relief from the desert furnace. Here I was, thirty years later and six thousand miles away, contemplating the exact same primitive cooling strategy while lying in a Renaissance-era bedroom.

"Adam, did you bring your spritzer?"

Some problems, it seems, are eternal. After quick showers, we stepped out into the morning, still cloaked in the fog of exhaustion. We had no plan, which in Rome turns out to be the best plan of all. We walked forward, carried by the hum of footsteps and voices echoing off the narrow cobblestone streets. We passed Romans sitting on the cobblestones on cafe chairs sipping espresso under a colored umbrella. No hurry. No rush. The dolce vita in vivo. As we kept walking, we had to pause and move to the side of the narrow road. There were no sidewalks. The cars crept past. I was working on my Italian gestures for the ones that passed too quickly.

Then the honey-colored building appeared around a corner like something from a Renaissance painting. Three arches gazed down at us with patient presence. The address, 19 Via Eudossiana, not far from our early starting point. We made our way up to the entrance as we climbed limestone steps worn smooth by countless pilgrims and wanderers, entering an arched courtyard that felt like stepping backward through time.

The air inside was humid. There was a hush to the space, felt, not demanded. We whispered. Then towards the back right of the building, there was golden light coming down onto a marble scene. We inched closer, step-by-step, taking it all in. And then we saw something worth the entire trip.

It was Moses. Michelangelo's Moses.

We had stumbled into the Basilica of San Pietro in Vincoli, originally built in the 5th century, between 432 AD and 440 AD, to house the chains that had bound Saint Peter. It was consecrated in 439 AD by Pope Sixtus III and over one thousand years later in 1515, Michelangelo had carved out this life-like being of Moses. His strength was present in his stature, and he was holding the commandments he had just been given. This masterwork was intended for Pope Julius II's grand tomb, originally planned for the new St. Peter's Basilica. But the project was never completed as envisioned. Julius died in 1513, Michelangelo was pulled away to other papal commissions, and funding priorities shifted. What was meant to be a massive multi-story monument became this single powerful figure, eventually placed here through the patronage of Julius's family.

Again and again in Rome, I encountered this contradiction: the spiritual and civic leaders, obsessed with surpassing their predecessors, inadvertently gave us the highest art the world has ever known. Here was a pope so concerned with his reputation that he commissioned Michelangelo to create what was essentially the world's most expensive headstone.

The result of this spectacular desire for lasting renown was Moses, a work of art that has moved millions of people to contemplate divine power, human creativity, and the mysterious relationship between the two. As I walk through Rome, I encounter this phenomenon repeatedly: buildings, sculptures, frescoes, entire churches that began as exercises in competitive grandeur and evolved into expressions of our highest artistic aspirations. Not just for Romans, but for all of us.

I stood there feeling like someone who had spent years reading about food only to discover they'd never actually tasted anything. All those academic discussions about Renaissance technique suddenly seemed as useful as theoretical swimming lessons when faced with the actual presence of Michelangelo's vision made manifest in marble. The muscles in Moses's arms seemed to flex with contained power; his eyes followed our movement with the sort of intensity that suggests he might, at any moment, rise from his seated position and deliver another set of commandments to a world. My lifelong love of Renaissance art was now staring back into my own eyes examining me.

Surrounding the inner basilica walls, there were burial placards here and there written in Latin. These were on the wall to commemorate notable Romans. I snapped a lot of pictures, but I had to wait until I got home to translate them. There were many on the walls, but not everywhere. This one placard written for a young girl, Asellia, in the 400s AD caught my attention for its interesting symbols:

BENEMERENTI IN PACE HIC REQVIESCENTI:

ASELLIAE FILIAE DULCISSIMAE PARENTES FECERVNT OVAT

VIXIT ANNOS NOVEM MENSES VNDECIM DIES SEPTEM

"To the well-deserving one who rests in peace here: Her parents made this for Asellia, their sweetest daughter. She lived nine years, eleven months, and seven days."

At the bottom was the Chi-Rho (☧), a Christogram combining the Greek letters Χ (Chi) and Ρ (Rho)—the first two letters of Christos (ΧΡΙΣΤΟΣ). We would see this symbol over and over throughout Rome.

Standing in that basilica, surrounded by fifteen centuries of Christian art and devotion, something clicked into place that no amount of academic study had quite managed to convey to me until then. This wasn't history preserved behind glass or reduced to textbook chapters. This was the living, breathing continuation of a conversation that began when Rome was still learning how to be Christian, when faith was underground and dangerous and more important than life itself. And the line hadn't ended yet, but was still alive and living and now living through me.

This single basilica visit surpassed all the art books, lectures, and textbooks I'd ever studied. This was Christian Rome, not as history, but as living presence. Standing in that basilica, I began to understand that Rome doesn't preserve history, it inhabits it. A felt experience that deeply embedded the reality of Ancient Christian Rome into my own heart. Walking those ancient streets with Jon and Adam, I understood that we weren't just tourists viewing artifacts. We were the latest participants in a conversation about faith and art and meaning that had been going on daily for thousands of years in this very exact spot.