The Best Illusion In Rome

Remember the haunted mansion at Disney’s theme parks? In the late 80’s, I thought it was one of the greatest things while sitting in their high-backed chairs rotating every which way to delightfully frighten me passed floating candles, roaming ghosts and talking paintings. My favorite part was the illusion where the chairs arranged themselves side by side, the back of that chair in front of you no longer visible. You notice a set of 3 or 5 mirrors fixed on the wall as you steadily approach them.  Once there, you look directly in the mirror to see yourself and sitting right next to you is your new friend with his evil grin, a ghastly translucent ghoul.

In Rome, illusions like that are harder to come by.  There’s a newly opened theme park called Magicland.  Indeed, it sounds magical but unfortunately I have not made it out there to review it. Haunted houses didn’t seem to be easily found during Halloween the way they are rather abundant in the United States, so that option is out too.  What are you left with?

The miracle of natural illusions.

Nothing is more fascinating than a natural illusion.  It’s stupefying. It’s thought-inducing. It’s hard to imagine that something so real is actually real!

And I have found it for you.  Best of all, it’s one of Rome’s Free Things To Do and it answers this age-old riddle!

What gets larger as you walk away from it, and gets smaller as you walk closer to it?

When in Rome, go to the Aventine Hill to find it.  Right in between Circo Massimo (Circus Maximus) and the Tiber River, this ancient hill is populated with churches, residences, business offices and embassies. It’s a gorgeous area just to walk through for picture reasons. There’s a fantastic location I might post about which allows you to see through three different countries at the same time without special ocular equipment. And then there is the Best Illusion in Rome.

Connected to the church of S. Sabina (Santa Sabina) is a plot of land transformed into the most romantic of parks.  Orange trees dot the majority of the green space, their lines quite clear where orange pickers couldn’t reach any higher. A large white-pebble walkway covers the majority of the area with benches placed strategically for people-watching. The skyscraping umbrella pines shade most of the area, an occasional ray of sunlight bursts through making the pebble blindingly white. 

And then you get to the platform where you look over the wall’s edge.  You are high above the Tiber River. This is a unique view of the city. Directly in your vision is St. Peter’s Basilica.  It is far away, very far.  The mass of buildings and trees in between you and the famous Vatican City location make it appear tiny.  And that’s expected considering how far you are from it.

Then you leave.  You walk down the steps, walking straight down that white pebble path to the wall separating the park and the street. Before you leave, you turn around to catch one last glimpse and there it is.

St. Peter’s Basilica is the only thing you can see now, and it seems as if it magically doubled in size.

How the brain perceives images is beyond my VASGOness but I know when something is special and when it’s not.  This, my friends, is something worth seeing for yourself. The camera alone does not do it justice.

Visit the park connected to the church called S. Sabina (Santa Sabina) on the Aventine Hill for the best natural illusion Rome has to offer!