KEY POINTS:
A wooden crucifix and a small religious picture on the otherwise bare wall are all that separate our narrow nuns' cots. We'd like to push the beds apart to widen the gap, but a notice on the wall forbids rearranging the furniture. Also, please keep the rooms tidy and put clothes in the wardrobe, it instructs.
'Yes miss, I mean Sister,' says Lyn. My friend and I never went to boarding school, but we feel like we're in one now.
We'd arrived in the beautiful Piazza Farnese hot, frazzled and slightly ripped off by the cowboy taxi driver who picked us up outside Termini railway station. (Our own fault for getting into one of the unlicensed cabs, instead of queuing for the authorised ones.)
But behind the double-height, double-thickness solid timber doors of Casa di Santa Brigida exists a depth of calmness and security I doubt exists outside a nunnery or the womb. It's dark and quiet, with old masters paintings, antique furniture, heavy velvet drapes, and the occasional St Bridgettine sister gliding about her business.
Up narrow stairs from the third floor is a brilliant contrast to the interior gloom. An expansive roof garden has tables and chairs, tubs of geraniums and citrus trees, and fragrant star jasmine on trellises. A perfect spot, we discover, to view the rooftops of Rome's historic centre, or eat a lunchtime picnic from the daily food market in nearby Piazza Campo di Fiore. On the roof we meet two smiling nuns hanging out the daily laundry. Sister Edna is from India, and Sister Citadel from the Philippines.
'No matter where you go in the world, you find the same people doing the menial work,' reflects my friend.
But maybe there's a roster system. There are 30 nuns here from Italy, Scandinavia and Poland as well as India and the Philippines, so Sister Marja-Liisa, the smiling perfect-English-speaking receptionist nun from Finland tells me. When she converted from the Lutheran faith and became a Catholic nun, Marja-Liisa was permitted to keep her birth name because it complied with the rules of nun-naming. The rules, in my vague understanding of them, have something to do with the saints, and whether anyone else is using a particular name.
A confession is due here. We're at the nunnery not for religious reasons - though they welcome pilgrims - but for its perfect location. On a corner site in Piazza Farnese, the convent's neighbour is one of Rome's finest renaissance palaces, the Palazza Farnese, which nowadays houses the French embassy. Below our window are two impressive fountains, made in the 17th century from giant granite tubs brought from the Baths of Caracalla, a Roman Empire public bathing complex built around 212AD.
We can walk to the Pantheon, the Piazza Navona, the Spanish Steps, the Forum and the Coliseum (where a noisy trade union demonstration has squeezed out the tour groups, with protesters unfurling banners from the top balconies).
'Communists,' explains a passerby with a Roman shrug.
Come evening, we follow my second rule for this visit to Rome: spend as much time as possible sitting in a cafe planning where next to eat. (The first rule was: stay in the Centro Storico so you can walk everywhere.)
Although he won't know it, our guide tonight is my favourite New Zealand food writer and recipe concocter, Ray McVinnie. In an old Cuisine magazine, Ray recommended Al Marmi, a pizzeria in the Trastevere district across the Tiber from our convent. We stroll there via backstreets of artisans workshops, admiring antiques, picture frames, jewellery and art. Al Marmi is not quite roaring when we arrive, around 7.40pm, but from the dot of eight it seems half of Rome is in a chattering queue outside the door.
Al Marmi, wrote Ray, is 'one of the most beloved of Trastevere pizzeria, affectionately nicknamed 'the morgue' because all the tables are topped with marble slabs'.
The morgue is a hubbub of noise and a madman is pummelling pizza dough while his fire-crazed henchman shovels pizzas in and out of a furnace.
The diners, when they can get a seat, are nearly all eating aracini, those delicious Italian rice balls which we too fancied - but in our panic to place an order before the waiter galloped off, neither of us could remember the name. No matter, we very much enjoyed the olives all'ascolana (olives stuffed with pork and deep fried) and the funghi trifolati (sauteed mushrooms), NZ$7 each, and the pizza margarita, NZ$10.50. We loved Al Marmi. Thanks, Ray.
Most Italian convents impose a strict curfew, so paying guests have to be safely home before 10.30pm. Casa di Santa Brigida has no curfew and instead issues you with a key. But, unlike the rest of Rome who talk and sing in the piazza below us until 4am, we are tucked up in our prim paliasses well before midnight. Tomorrow, more walking, more cafes, shops and restaurants are on the agenda.
Breakfast at the nunnery is a feast by Roman three-star standards. We have bread rolls, butter, jam, yoghurt, one perfectly boiled egg, and tea or coffee. On the second morning, the egg is replaced by ham and cheese. We could eat lunch and dinner with the nuns too, for NZ$35 each per meal, but our propensity to giggle like schoolgirls during solemn encounters with religiosity forces us out to the exciting streets of Rome.
We paid NZ$330 per night for our two-people room with ensuite bathroom, which is pretty much the market rate for a three-star hotel, and much more than convents outside the historic centre of the city charge.
But we felt the cost was well worthwhile for the ideal location, the quality of the room, the roof garden, and the security.
Rome is a notoriously difficult place to find a decent hotel in the historic centre at a reasonable price so when, God willing, we are next in Rome, we'll be back in the nunnery.
* Pam Neville flew to Europe with the Star Alliance network, on Thai Airways, SAS Scandinavian Airlines, and Air New Zealand.
- Detours, HoS
