A few words.

"The best way to inspect the streets of Rome, if you wish to study as well as to see them, is to break your pocket-compass and burn your maps and guidebooks... take Chance for a mentor and lose yourself."

--George Sala

"Arms, and the man I sing, who, forc'd by fate,
And haughty Juno's unrelenting hate,
Expell'd and exil'd, left the Trojan shore,
Long labors, both by sea and land, he bore,
And in the doubtful war, before he won
The Latian realm, and built the destin'd town."

--Virgil, The Aeneid

"Turn all the pages of history, but Fortune never produced a greater example of her own fickleness than the city of Rome, once the most beautiful and magnificent of all that ever was or will be... not a city in truth, but a certain part of heaven."

--Poggio Bracciolini

"In Rome, you long for the country; in the country--on inconstant!--you praise the distant city to the stars!"

--Horace