Pip: Rome in late spring, where even a nondescript building hides a courtyard full of sarcophagi, and the gelato is technically a health food.

Mara: blogger Lauretta Dimmick, who writes the blog Get Back Lauretta, has been moving through Rome at full tilt — palaces, piazzas, baroque staircases, fresh tuna, and a new pope making headlines. Let’s start with the streets and landmarks that frame the whole visit.

Rome Landmarks And Streets

Pip: Rome rewards the wanderer — the post “Rome! Endless variety” is essentially a love letter to the city’s capacity to surprise, block by block.

Mara: The line that stays with me: “Almost every day I see something that makes me say: I have never seen that before!”

Pip: That’s the whole premise, isn’t it — Rome as a place that keeps outpacing expectation, no matter how many times you’ve been.

Mara: Concretely, that means jasmine trained up the side of a villa, acanthus plants blooming just outside the Roman Forum — plants whose leaves appear on every Corinthian capital in the ancient city. The fit is almost too perfect.

Pip: And then a stop at Neve di Latte for natural gelato, though Francesco remained unconvinced it was worth the calories.

Mara: The Piazza di Spagna post rounds out the street-level picture with a video tour of one of Rome’s most iconic squares. From the piazza, we move indoors — deep indoors.

Palazzo Barberini And Baroque Splendor

Pip: Palazzo Barberini is the kind of place where even the staircase gets a superlative — and the post on part two makes the case directly.

Mara: The title itself is the argument: “The most lovely marble stairway ever? I think YES!” And embedded in those Doric columns are the Barberini bees, the family’s symbol, carved right into the stone.

Pip: The bee motif runs through everything — ceiling frescoes, ironwork, the whole building is essentially branded.

Mara: Part one slows down for the paintings, and the writing is genuinely attentive. On Fra Filippo Lippi’s Annunciation, it notes the transparent scarf wrapping Mary’s wrist: “to use it as a compositional element” leading the eye between Gabriel’s lily and the top of the canvas.

Pip: Noticing the servants on the hidden staircase rather than the kneeling donors — that’s a particular way of looking at art.

Mara: Part three closes the visit with Corradini’s famous statue and one last reminder: the bees appear “throughout the building — and indeed the city.” From baroque splendor to something more immediate — what’s on the table.

Food Coffee And Daily Pleasures

Pip: Two very different pleasures anchor this stretch — one philosophical, one extremely fresh.

Mara: The coffee post is almost aphoristic: “Coffee is the balm of the soul” — attributed to Giuseppe Verdi, found on the back of an espresso machine in Montecatini. That’s the whole post, and it lands.

Pip: Short, correct, no notes.

Mara: The tuna post is the opposite — vivid and specific. A fishmonger in Rome who “begged” them to buy an outstanding tuna, two enormous steaks, red shrimp, squid for calamari. The calamari, reportedly, was “quasi sweet” and unlike anything before. The only regret: no photos of the finished dishes. From the table, to something more public.

Papal Respect And Public Witness

Mara: Pope Leo XIV appears in the title of a post here — “Pope Leo XIV again shows what respect looks like” — framing a moment of public witness worth marking.

Pip: The word “again” is doing real work in that title. It implies a pattern, a posture, not just a single gesture.

Mara: And that consistency — the idea that respect is demonstrated repeatedly, not announced once — is what the post points toward.

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Pip: Streets, staircases, espresso philosophy, and a pope setting a standard — Rome contains multitudes.

Mara: More of it next time, apparently. The sign-off is always “alla prossima” — until next time.