The Elevator in Rome

I find our hotel quite easily, in plenty of time before I have to meet my father off the airport bus. It’s on a narrow street leading from the back of San Filippo Neri to Piazza Navona, busy with locals and tourists on foot and on scooters. Our pensione is marked with a little 3-star sign on the wall by the solid, studded wooden door. The main plaque lists names on bells of private apartments and law offices.

The door is open and I step into the shadowy hallway. Before me is the staircase, reaching up and around to the top of the building, to where our pensione must be on the 4th or 5th storey. Their website had promised there’d be an elevator — and that was the main reason I chose it for myself and my Dad (along with the decent price and promise of breakfast left outside our rooms).

And there it is, just right of the stairs, an old-fashioned elevator with a pull-over metal gate and open shaft rising above it. And there on the gate is a sign. My heart sinks. A sign on an elevator in Rome can mean only one thing: it’s not working — Fuori Servizio. I puff up the five flights of stony steps to the pensione reception. The girl on duty is calm and seems fairly confident the elevator will be fixed today. This is Italy, I’m not convinced and I press her on this before handing over my credit card and committing to this place.