I learned about this book via the Amazon list "Things to read and watch before you go to Rome" compiled by the Cranky Professor himself (who is leading another semester in Rome in 2008).

It’s a good one – a substantial, "coffee-table" style book with rich pictorial content and erudite, interesting text. The premise: to follow the path of a pilgrim to Rome in 1300, the year of the first Jubilee. To see and describe what she would experience, with one event as the focus: the annual procession of the Acheropita on the eve of the Feast of the Assumption, from its home in the Sancta Sanctorum on the Lateran campus to Sta. Marria Maggiore – the Son meets the Mother, on a path that takes the pilgrim, not straight up the hill (there is a direct path between the two basilicas), but a bit west, through the Forum and then back up. The pilgrim, on her journey, also takes in St. Paul-Outside-the-Walls and St. Peter’s.

It’s a wonderful book – an ingenious and informative approach, because what you get is a sense of how Rome builds on itself, on how the builders and rebuilders conceived and used the past,subtle shifts and changes in spiritual and artistic sensibilities, and the continuity and richness of the ancient faith. You see and almost feel how dynamic Catholic spiritual life is – once again, it is not a purely top-down or bottom-up affair. It is a continual call and response, if you will: the presence of Peter and Paul calling to the pilgrims, who come with their prayers, the response to the pilgrims by the papacy and those in Rome, by building gorgeous and noble churches, not to speak of hospitals and other facilities, and on and on.

It is a useful thing, to consider this business of "organic" development in Catholicism – how it happens (which is often messy, because such is the human way), what is retained and abandoned, and the respect for the past – which in the Catholic sensibility is really not the past at all, but intriguingly still present – is at the root of of this dynamic.

Plus, it provides many opportunities for me to knock myself upside the head and say…now why didn’t I notice that?  Today I am particularly miffed at not having gone inside Sts. Cosmas and Damian .

Update:

Well, not exactly, since it has nothing to do with this post except Rome. I just ran across this and was so intrigued and charmed. One of my favorite blogs to read is At Home in Rome by an American ex-pat who went to Rome for a visit…and stayed. (She now manages two vacation rentals in Trastevere). She’s getting married in a few weeks and has this marvelous post on the tradition of giving out confetti at weddings (and other celebrations)  – no, not the paper kind, but candy-covered almonds, candies that must be, if you are going to do it really correctly, from a certain place, and must be, if you are going to do it exactly right, packaged in a certain manner and number…gorgeous photographs of what people do with candy-covered almonds in the home of candy-covered almonds, Sulmona.

(Probably not news to those of you with Italian heritage, but…news to me!)

One more Rome-related post, from the Criterion blog, which tells you how to get a John Paul II relic from the Vatican…