Never look an Ingresso Gratuito in the mouth

I chose to visit the Palatine Hill rather than the Forum first for one reason: Livia, or rather Livia as she appears, unforgettably, in I, Claudius. I've read Tacitus; I know the real Livia was a good wife, and she and Augustus lived simply on the Palatine long after they could have gone the ancient Roman equivalent of nouveau riche. But she'll always be mixed up in my mind with Sian Phillips explaining sadly how she poisoned Augustus by smearing poison on the figs while they were still on the tree.










I wanted to send pictures of Livia's house to friends in New York while they were still at work Friday, so I ignored the temptations of the Forum and climbed the hill, where I found stone paths, grassy fields, and a lot of brick ruins that all looked alike.

And an occasional directional sign, indicating that the Casa di Livia might, just might, be somewhere over in that direction. Or, perhaps, not. This is where a lesser people, less determined to treat tourists as badly as possible, might have succumbed to the temptation to provide actual maps with the tickets, or at least a large You Are Here sign.

Not the Romans. If you want to see the Casa di Augusto, they are going to make finding it an achievement you can be proud of.  Because although I retraced my steps several times and tried to follow every sign I saw, I kept ending up at the thermal baths, which were large, arched, and spectacularly uninteresting.

They were also overrun with students who, with the twin advantages of being teenagers and being French, gave off such palpable waves of disdain that they were guaranteed no one wanted to get within fifty feet of them.