Rome is a simply marvellous place to
shop, although the English or American visitor may initially find
some drawbacks to romeshopping. One is the siesta, (everything
closes for the entire afternoon) The other is a certain slackness
where the Trade Descriptions Act is concerned. (I don’t think
they have one).
Euro-Hippies ply their wares on the
Spanish Steps
There is no ‘consumer-power’
in Italy and they’ve never heard of ‘Which’ magazine.
Also, the more specialist shops have a habit of keeping everything
behind the counter, so you can’t browse or choose or examine
what you want to buy before needing to ask for help. This is difficult
for us cold and reserved Brits, as it forces us into a dialogue
with the sales person, and if our Italian is not good, we may
well leave the shop without buying anything at all,or if we do,
we will forever wonder if there was not something much nicer,
(which we would rather have bought) hidden somewhere behind the
counter. However, there are other advantages to shopping in Rome,
not least, the prices;
In
England, the purchase-price of most luxury items such as hi-fi
and optical equipment, and even cars and motorcycles are subject
to enormous amounts of tax. In Italy this is not the case - some
purchase taxes and thus prices are generally lower. Furthermore,
Italians are big spenders on luxury items. They spend wildly,
lavishly, (perhaps a little beyond their means!), and like the
Japanese, they are particularly fond of hi-tech electronic gadgetry
(mobile phones, walkmans, compact cameras, car stereos etc). Thus,
there is an exceptionally healthy retail market for these items,
particularly in the bigger cities north of and including Rome
(such as Milan and Turin). This means that a camera (for example)
costing you £700 in London might only cost you £600
in Rome. Moral? - Buy it in Rome… BUT, there is a rather
large problem. On re-entering Britain, customs will charge you
heavy duty on anything less than a year old bought in Italy, which
is likely to negate any saving you made. As we do not recommend
smuggling as a way round this, we can only say ‘tough luck’
to all short-term visitors to Rome! But if you are planning to
stay in Italy for a year or more, and with current exchange rates
as good as they are for Brits, change as much sterling as possible
before you come, and buy your camera, hi-fi, Harley Davidson or
whatever when you arrive in Italy. Then your ‘vita’
in Rome will indeed be ‘dolce’.
The sheer choice of beautiful things available for purchase in
central Rome more than makes up for any inconvenience you may
initially experience in adjusting to Roman sales techniques though.
Italians are design addicts - They love innovative design, and
they always like to have the latest thing. This means there’s
some jolly nice stuff in Rome for the buying, not least fashion...
La Moda (Fashion)
Although Italian menswear tends to be a
bit non-U, Rome is nevertheless great for women’s high and
radical fashion, bettered only by Paris or Milan.
You can't afford it!
But
you can...
If you’re seriously shopping
for couture items there are wonderful shops all over central Rome,
but if you’re just window-shopping for dreams or ideas, the
place to be is the Via Condotti, where most of the major fashion
houses are represented: Valentino, Max Mara, etc, etc.
Little black dress from Moschino - evidently
not quite the bad boy he once was.
If you’re in the habit of buying haute couture, you’ll know this already of course, but if not, it feels good to just stroll down this street anyway and dream…
Souvenirs
Not a photomontage, but a low-level shot of a typical Roman souvenir
stall at the Trevi Fountain, with the fountain itself in the upper
background. For some reason we were lambasted by the stall-holder
for taking this shot.
We’re not really into souvenirs
at Romebuddy, souvenir collecting being the somewhat plebeian
pursuit that it is, though having said that, you will find that
tourist souvenirs in Rome tend to be nicer than those in other
big world cities. They are mostly very well made miniature replicas
of all the famous statues and landmarks of Rome and Italy in general.
Michaelangelo’s David and Moses are favourites, along with
a very romantic hybrid version of David snogging a nude Roman
beauty (just visible in the appallingly scanned picture above)
which is rather tacky, but quite sweet all the same. There are
souvenir stores located at all the major tourist hot-spots of
course (Trevi Fountain, Coliseum etc) and they all sell pretty
much the same stuff, so it’s worth haggling to knock the
price down a bit - If one stall-holder won’t budge on his
price, another one may. There are also many gift-shops selling
nice prints, posters and postcards featuring some excellent photographic
renditions of Rome.
If you travel a lot and are in the habit of buying souvenirs,
we’re fairly confident that the ones you buy in Rome will
still be sitting on your mantelpiece or hanging on your walls
long after those collected in other countries have been stashed
away and forgotten in a dusty drawer somewhere.
bookshops
Italians are into books in a big way,
and Rome is choc-a-bloc with terrific bookshops. Most have foreign
language sections so you can usually find English versions of
the more popular titles. But Italians excel in art books and those
large glossy coffee-table tomes full of photos. There’s a
healthy graphic novel and anime interest in Rome, as well as mile
upon mile of more intellectual and philosophical stuff if you
can read italian.
Many street-markets also have book sections, and there’s
a large book-market near Termini station. If you only want English
books, visit
The Economy Book and Video Centre, at Via Torino 136, tel 474
6877.
They sell only English books and also hire out English movies
on video. They also sell used books so you can save a quid or
two, which is particularly good, new books in English being normally
quite expensive, having been specially imported.
You can also buy The English Yellow Pages there.
markets
Street-markets in Rome are numerous, and like markets anywhere
they’re good for bargains. The most notable in Rome is Porta
Portese in Trastevere. Sunday is the big day for this, and while
there is a lot of fairly average tourist bric-a-brac there, if
you get there early enough, this long straggling market also has
some pretty amazing things on sale, too numerous to mention here.
|
|
||
| THE FASHION |
|
|
| THE SCOOTERS |
|
|
| TRASTEVERE |
|
|
| THE SOUVENIRS |
|
|
| THE ARCHITECTURE |
DOLCE VITA |
|
| THE MARKETS |
|
|
|
|
