Rome, a city of compare.

I keep forgetting that Rome is a city comparable to London or Paris.

In my mind’s eye it is a city of prominence and historical importance: founded by Romulus and Remus of mythological fame, it is the deathplace of Julius Caesar, the home of the ever-influential Catholic church, the place of the infamous Borgia corruption. As all of these have negative connotations in my mind I suppose I associate it with a cesspit of iniquity, a stain on the centre of the Italian Boot.

But it’s not. It’s a city that has been the centre of civilisation dating back two and a half thousand years. This alone is reason enough for its size and cultural prestige, so even the simple task of looking at the map trying to work out what to see was exhausting. Venturing out to stand on the banks of the Tiber I was reminded that is it a big city: It’s not the skyscrapers or the extent of the underground or the population that makes a city big, the image that confirms a city's size in my eyes is the fact that something so natural and fluid as the river pulsing through the city has become so severely subjugated to man’s demands that it has become confined within high brick walls.

It is this image that puts it on par with London or Paris, and it’s all the more striking when compared to back home. Our Swan River, though altered in its path by the visual desires of WASPs is still able to meander across the plain unconfined by anything as it makes its way down to Fremantle and out to sea