Piazza del Popolo

When I was eighteen years old I visited my brother in Madrid and travelled to several other european cities, completing the perfunctory right-of-passage European trip Americans feel obliged to do (for more on this topic see Steinbeck’s America and Americans, written mostly when he was old and crotchety). Anyway, we found ourselves in Rome on New Year’s Eve and the following entry is equally a description and an inquisitive request regarding the custom practiced at Piazza del Popolo every year.

Staying in a hostel, packed with young-ings like us from all parts of the world, we heard that the place to be is Piazza del Popolo (not the Piazza di Spagna, the Spanish Steps, which is apparently where all the tourists go….yes, we thought we were cool. On the other hand, we were all tourists and we went to Piazza del Popolo, so perhaps that is actually the prima touristic local). So a small army of about twenty young foreigners headed out; the metro was packed, and everyone flooded out of the tunnel in the same direction to join larger crowds already swamping the streets. As we approached you could see people in every possible space; on cars, statues, balconies, and rooftops. Upon making our way to the plaza proper we noticed the core was conspicuously vacant, except for a tiny group of revelers in the middle, who were clustered around the obelisk and fountains that are the plaza’s centerpiece. Imagine a donut-shaped open space; otherwise the neighborhood was filled with humanity for kilometers.

One of our group leaders, an handsome dutchman, suggested we all run out to the obelisk and count down to 2001 in style. We agreed, although while crossing a few of us sensed that we were doing something we weren’t supposed to do, or just shouldn’t do. Like clockwork, (actually, it is clockwork) we drunkenly yelled the numbers in seven or eight languages and cheered like maniacs to welcome the new year. Then came the shower of bottles. We hadn’t realized that the champagne vendors everywhere weren’t just proprietors of merry-making booze, but of the glass bottles that it was tradition to throw towards the center of the plaza… towards those foolish enough to be at the center obelisk. Everyone around us contracted against the obelisk as much as possible, as an avalanche of glass broke before us onto the stone ground. It did seem, however, that there was sanity in this madness, as few bottles came close enough to hit us (although some did land perilously around us) it seemed the distance to the edge of the people donut was well-calculated for this reason – too far for everyone except professional baseball players and cricketeers, or whatever the Italian equivalent is.

After the initial onslaught people began running back and forth from the donut’s edge to the middle, braving the few bottles still flying. We took the first opportunity to flee towards the relative safety of the party-going masses. We continued the festivities elsewhere like rock-stars (at least like intoxicated eighteen year olds, which is probably equally undignified). The event was almost nine years ago, so my memory is a little hazy. If someone could explain the tradition more coherently, and perhaps with some history attached, I would greatly appreciate it.

-Charles P. Pearson