Campidoglio

The first time I went to Rome I was 6 years old, it was also my first flight ever. We went to Florence because my mother, who has a children’s clothing store at that time, had to visit the “Pitti Bimbo” exhibition and we stopped few hours in Rome. I keep some faded fragment of that trip, yellowed like the photos in my parents' house. At the age of 10 I went back to Rome whit a school trip and then I received a great disappointment: I waited days to finally see Campidoglio square to admire the statue of Marcus Aurelius. I do not know why, maybe some documentary or history book, but I knew that in that square there was the largest equestrian statue in Rome. But that year, 1984, the statue was removed for restoration. Whenever I am passing by the Vittoriano, I can’t avoid to think back to that empty plinth.