Ian Thomson

City of miracles

A mysterious head injury left the young Ian Thomson unconscious in his flat in the Via Salaria. But decades later, his affection for Rome remains undiminished

issue 25 June 2011

In the autumn of 1984, after an unexplained fall, I found myself in a hospital in Rome acutely head-injured and disorientated. I had been found sprawled on the floor of my flat on Via Salaria; the police suspected an intruder, yet nothing apparently was stolen. Bloody handprints covered the walls where I had tried to steady myself. I was 23 and newly arrived in Rome to work as a journalist and teach. Later, I regained consciousness outside a latrine on the sixth floor of San Giovanni hospital. A group of nuns with elaborate bird-like coifs swished past, each bearing a carafe of white wine. So I was in paradise — or perhaps a Fellini movie. (The carafes turned out to contain urine samples.) The nuns acted as paramedics, owing to a shortage of trained nurses. After surgery, they suggested that I sleep on the hospital roof during the day as the ward was so stuffy.

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