Picture this: You’re in Rome with three friends from Germany, Poland, and Spain, and you’re crossing the bridge above the Tiber River into Trastevere, Rome’s party district. It’s 9 p.m. and you’re starving for dinner. You’re a bit disappointed because you visited a nearby city earlier that day that Harry Styles visited two hours after you left. You see that Rome’s bridge is lined with people, all looking down and holding out their phones, recording. You and your friends squeeze your way through the crowd and look down to see a procession of boats, with a man and a statue of the Madonna in the center one.

“Who’s that man?” you ask the British guys next to you.

“That’s the Pope.”

Yep. I showed up in Trastevere for pizza and a coke, missed Harry Styles, but ended up getting the Pope.

Since the 16th century, the Festa de’ Noantri has taken place in Trastevere every summer. On July 22, a statue of the Madonna was moved from one Trastevere church to another, where it remained for nine days before a procession down the Tiber River with the Pope.

So if you come to Rome at the end of July, you will have to put up with the heat, although you may see Pope Francis, which should hopefully make it worth it!

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.)

–Aug. 8, 2023–