How is it possible that on Sunday -- really the one day that I have no commitments, no time pressures, that there is no school to get the kids to, no appointments to keep or make my eyes spring open, almost as if they had been set to go off the night before, at 7:00 A.M.? What force has taken over my body, my consciousness, my past life in Rome, that would compel me to resist the temptation to fall back asleep, or just lie there, or do anything for that matter other than what I know I am within a few moments about to do, which is get up and drag my middle-aged body into the bathroom to brush my teeth and throw cold water on my face so that I can do what every Sunday morning seems to find me doing--jogging through the heart of the city, when all is quiet, peaceful, empty, when I can pass the monuments and narrow streets without jostling crowds, buzzing motorini, the distraction of so many people requiring so much getting around them. My Sunday morning run is something I do alone, something that requires no interaction, no acknowledgment of anyone else, no arranging. It's just me and my passion for the city, which manages to look the same and different at the same time. It's therapy, prayer, inquiry, meditation, and forgetfulness all rolled into one. It's Rome as one rarely sees it.

The Sunday morning run is especially bello in late spring and early summer, when the light is full and the air so mild it kisses your body without imposing on it as the summer heat does. You feel as if your skin and the air around you were one and the same, no separation between inner and outer, you and time in perfect harmony, as it will be hours before the city will wake from the usual late-night Saturday revelry, when traffic engorges the small streets and arteries and flocks of Romans enjoy the weekend. I, too, am enjoying mine, but I know that a Sunday would not be complete without a run through history.

The first leg is uphill. I climb the Via di Santa Prisca not quite as far as the church. Going left will take me through the Aventino, but I go night, past the United States embassy to the Vatican and the intoxicating fragrance of the municipal rose garden, in full view of the Palatine, just now taking in the first few rays of its daily intake of sun. The traffic on Via del Circo Massimo, along the fabled Circus Maximus, usually so intense that one literally has to step out into the street, even on the pedestrian strip, to stop the speeding cars and motorini in order to get across, is nonexistent. There is not a vehicle in sight; I could crawl across the wide thoroughfare and reach the other side safely.

To this point, after fifteen minutes of running, I have encountered two, maybe three people, but I am about to descend on the other side of the Campidoglio and enter the hub of Piazza Venezia, where vendors are setting up their souvenir stands and tour buses are disgorging clusters of Japanese, Germans, and English from other parts of the world onto the streets of Rome. I dodge them easily. By now I am in full stride and I elicit hardly a glance from the visitors as I have not been listed in their guide books of things not to miss in Rome. I circle in front of the Wedding Cake, the Monument to Victor Emmanuel 11, and cross on the other side of the square, running toward the Via Battisti, where I make a sharp right. I have successfully navigated the most hectic part of the first half of the journey, and suddenly I find myself watching as the bar employees are sweeping the sidewalk, setting up tables, and getting ready for another day in which they will make several thousand cappuccini and caffè. Some patches of the wide sidewalk are wet, but the sun is busily making short work of the moistened concrete. I turn left into Piazza SS Apostoli and head for the narrow alleys that lead farther north, peeking through sun-cracked stone walls and secluded inner courtyards, where fragments of daily life are sporadically beginning to reveal themselves.