Edith Wharton on Rome

To our grandmothers, Roman Fever; to our mothers, sentimental dangers - how we used to be guarded! - to our daughters, no more dangers than the middle of Main Street. They don't know it - but how much they're missing!

- "Roman Fever"

The Books

My first companions on this adventure are not human but print. For help on the more up-to-date Roman info, I turn to ROME: CITY GUIDE by Duncan Garwood and Abigail Hope, Lonely Planet Guides 2010.

For a more circumspect look, I find ITALIAN JOURNEY by GOETHE, trans. W.H. Auden and Elizabeth Mayer, c. 1788.

From Goodreads.com:

In 1786, when he was already the acknowledged leader of the Sturm und Drang literary movement, Goethe set out on a journey to Italy to fulfil a personal and artistic quest and to find relief from his responsibilities and the agonies of unrequited love. As he travelled to Venice, Rome, Naples and Sicily he wrote many letters, which he later used as the basis for the Italian Journey. A journal full of fascinating observations on art and history, and the plants, landscape and the character of the local people he encountered, this is also a moving account of the psychological crisis from which Goethe emerged newly inspired to write the great works of his mature years.