Located in Rome’s Piazza Venezia is the monument to Victor Emmanuel II, the first king of a united and independent Italy. The monument takes the shape of a marble palace with statues, the tomb of an unknown WWI soldier, and a museum on the unification of Italy. In a city filled with ancient landmarks, I found it memorable to see impressionist paintings of the Italian front of World War I, as well as political cartoons, trinkets from the Battle of Waterloo, uniforms, video footage, and propaganda. And if you take an elevator to the top of the monument, you get a 360-degree view of Rome that I found more dazzling and surreal than any glowing tourism advertisement. And if it starts to get hot up there after a while, the monument is complete with a cafe equipped with cold drinks and food.
From Roma with love, Kate
(Katherine Schick is a high school student from Watertown, Mass., who is spending a month with a host family in Rome while studying Italian and documenting her travels for the Headliners of Summer newsroom with her “Postcards from Italy” series.)
–July 26, 2023–
