By Isabella Cascio
Silver Solas Award-winner in the Destination Story category
Bar San Calisto is a place that seems to exist outside of time. It exists at midnight as it does dawn; in 2022 as it did in 1960. In a way, it feels as eternal as the city that it stands in. Upon first glance, it is a place without a name — a sign ‘Bar’ is affixed to an otherwise unremarkable apartment façade. The lack of adornment makes it somewhere much easier to stumble across than to search for. Because of this, I like to think that I didn’t discover this place but that it discovered me.
The bar is just too large to call it a hole in the wall. There are no seats inside, just a coffee-stained countertop and a wood-paneled cashier stand. It is always toasty, even on the coldest morning. The earliest I’ve visited was 5 a.m., and I was still greeted by the warm lights and whirr of the espresso machine.
Outside, seating extends into the piazza; a rectangle of beaten cobblestones are fenced in by a scraggly collection of shrubs. The tables are weathered wood, rough and often sticky, bearing the Peroni insignia in the center. They are quite small, but most are surrounded by as many pine-green plastic chairs as possible — it is not uncommon to see six or seven people reaching over each other to collect their cappuccinos. One night about a month ago, someone put up a mural on the wall adjacent to the bar depicting a cartoon version of the patio complete with the Peroni tables, plastic chairs, and diverse cast of characters that frequent this place. It is clear Calisto is well-loved.
My first morning in Rome, the smell of coffee and the sound of a hundred voices dragged me around the corner from my apartment to this bar. I got a cappuccino far past the acceptable hour for one and called a cornetto a ‘croissant.’
That evening, I went out for gelato and found that customers had swapped their coffees for Peronis but that the bar was as lively as it had been in the early hours. I think I knew then this place would become an anchor.
Over the next few weeks, Bar Calisto became a place that felt familiar. I watched and listened and taught myself the proper way to order un cappuccino e cornetto at the counter. I learned the faces of the regulars and wondered if any of them were learning mine.
I love being in Rome. I love experiencing this place in the present and imagining it in the past. But this city makes it easy to feel unmoored from time, which is sometimes wonderful and sometimes disheartening.
In my hometown, I am significant. Aldie, Virginia, was born the same year I was. I have been living in my house as long as it has existed. I watched as the roads around me turned from dirt to gravel to pavement, and I can tell you which stoplights went up first and why. I think this is why I am unused to feeling so temporary, and living in Rome makes it so easy to feel temporary.
In Rome, sometimes it feels like my life loses all significance in comparison with the overlapping histories surrounding me. The cognitive dissonance of antiquity and modernity certainly takes some getting used to. Buildings that took ten times my lifetime to build are now the ruins of centuries past. The streets Caesar walked are littered with cigarette butts and surgical masks. People take selfies with the Pantheon. Spray paint lines the banks of the river where Romulus and Remus were abandoned.
When the overwhelming past of this city begins to overtake me, I know I can always return to Calisto and remind myself my time here is not just some short blip on a timeline. It is significant because it is significant to me.
This bar is newborn by Roman standards, but in this moment it feels fixed. I think that’s what I love about it. At Calisto, I sit every morning for a minute or an hour. I read my book or I write essays like this one or I drink my coffee standing and hurry to classes I am already late for. It’s become routine — in a place where I am in constant chaos, it is where I get to stand still.
Every morning, I skip or trudge or step into the wood-beamed bar hardly large enough for five to stand, and I am greeted by the man at the counter, whose name I do not know but whose face reminds me of my grandfather.
“Ciao bella,” he says, and smiles.
He started saying this after I came in every morning for a month. He is saying it to be kind. He doesn’t know that every morning he is greeting me by name, and I don’t know enough Italian to tell him. The point is that he knows me. That I am Known, by this place that has known travelers for three times my lifetime. That there is a chance, long after my four months here are spent, this place will remember me.
It is a reminder that it doesn’t matter how briefly I exist in this eternal city; what matters is I am here at all. I’ve made my mark in the most important way — not by chiseling my name into some wall but by leaving an impact on those around me.
From my friends to other travelers to the man behind the counter who does not know he knows my name; I have met so many people on my travels that have changed me. I have gotten the chance to know and be known by so many, and that makes all the difference.
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Isabella Cascio is a young collegiate writer who aspires to continue her work after graduation. Her greatest ambition is to one day write and publish a successful book. Currently, she enjoys writing personal essays and reflections on travel, friendship, and life in her 20s.