It’s early on a Tuesday morning in mid-March, and Isabella Calidonna is ready to run. She’s got a hydration pack wrapped around her back and a smile on her face while standing next to the Baroque Four Rivers Fountain in the heart of Rome, Italy. This centerpiece of the famed Navona Piazza, she tells me, is among more than 2,000 fountains in the city designed by the masterful Italian sculptor and architect Gian Lorenzo Bernini more than 400 years ago.
Calidonna is the founder of ArcheoRunning, a Rome-based running tour company, and she’s leading me on an easy 5-kilometer run that will zigzag through the city’s maze-like alleys. They’re paved with black basalt, referred to as sampietrini in Italian.
