ANYONE who has taken a modern blue municipal bus to Tivoli outside Rome to visit Hadrian's Villa will appreciate the irony of this film (below) showing the inaugural run on February 26, 1932, of the "autobus gigante" ... a luxury triple-decker motor coach catering to well-heeled tourists in furs and three-piece suits.
Despite the incessant bleeping of the horn, there is virtually no traffic on the road to Tivoli aside from bicycles and donkey carts. No strip malls. No subsidized housing projects. No open sewage plants and garbage dumps to assail your nostrils through open bus windows.
For our next Sacred Pilgrimage to Hadrian's Villa, the Hollywood Temple of Antinous should charter one of these:
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