DEAR GUESTS...

The Capitol

 ... this is your blog, designed and made for you.
It's tool that we, at San Lorenzo Guest House, Villa Borghese Guest House, St. John Villa have chosen to provide information to make your stay in Rome more pleasant and exciting, helping you to know this wonderful city, unique in the world, the Eternal City.
Everywhere in the world there are beautiful and interesting things. There are definitely people that like the Eiffel Tower or the Empire State Building more than the Coliseum. There is nothing strange about this.
But what matters in the case of Rome, and the empire that it has created, is that the city has become an idea and not only a place, or a concept that we, at least in Europe and in the western world, use to evaluate the world around us.
It is no coincidence if, thinking of a natural disaster, our mind goes immediately to the eruption of Vesuvius in AD 79 and the consequent destruction of Pompeii and Herculaneum. Yet, even in very recent times, there have been far more serious disasters, such as the Indian Ocean tsunami of 2004.
 It is also not a coincidence that the word Caesar, as a person's name, has become the imperial title, Kaiser in German and in Russian Czar.

Equally it is no coincidence that even the Russians, people that did not have any contact with ancient Rome but had only known through its Byzantine heritage, wanted to name Third Rome their capital Moscow and adopted as the state coat of arms the double headed eagle, already the emblem of the Eastern Roman Empire.

Domes of the first, second and third Rome

That was after Ivan III, Grand Duke of Moscow, married Sophie Paleologue, niece of Constantine XI, the last ruler of the Eastern Roman Empire, and began to claim for himself the historical, religious and imperial heritage of Rome. Moreover, the same Mehmed II the Conqueror, the Ottoman Sultan who conquered Constantinople, the Second Rome, claimed for himself the title of Qaiser-i Rum (Caesar of the Romans). Yet the Turks had reached the Mediterranean basin several centuries after the fall of the Western Roman Empire but, despite this, they called Sultanate of Rum their first empire in Anatolia, to indicate that it was made up of territories that once were Roman. The conflict that has always characterized the relations between Russia and Turkey should be, therefore, not at all surprising.
With our articles we will try to let you know some small piece of this enormous legacy as well as let you see Rome from a different point of view.
And beyond that, we will try to accompany you in search of places to eat well and make your purchases, as well as providing the necessary information to make your stay at San Lorenzo Guest House, Villa Borghese Guest House or St John Villa equally pleasing.
We would also like, dear guests, that you cooperate with us by leaving your comments on the articles or in the guestbook. If you have interesting, curious, funny stories to tell regarding your stay in Rome, or other travel experiences, you can send them to us and we will publish them for you.

We wish you a good stay in Rome
San Lorenzo Guest House
Villa Borghese Guest House
St. John Villa