The Eternal City, seen by one who reveres it

City of the Soul

A Walk in Rome

William Murray

Crown Journeys: 144 pp., $16

*

Here is a good book that grows on you slowly.

Don't let the title or byline fool you. Despite those highflying words on the cover, Murray is an insider who has witnessed Rome at length and in depth, not some star-struck newcomer. His last name and choice of the English language notwithstanding, he comes from a family of Romans displaced by war and luck, and he spoke Italian before he spoke English.

Murray begins the book, in fact, with a description of the Piazza del Popolo, where he spent a year of mornings sipping cappuccino and reading the papers as a 23-year-old who aspired to be an opera singer.

That was 1949. When singing didn't pan out, Murray turned to journalism and eventually began splitting time between Italy and the U.S. (He lives in Del Mar these days.) He wrote the New Yorker's "Letter From Italy" for more than 30 years, along with numerous books.

This one is slender, and in the early going it had me worried: a fair amount of leisurely traipsing from one timeworn monument to another. But gradually Murray's intimate connection to the place begins to reveal itself, as does his own improbable history, from his grandmother's career in Italian journalism to his Roman aunts' various escapades to the role of the Forum in his own romantic history.

Along with these revelations come deft sketches of the Colosseum, the Spanish Steps, the Piazza Navona, the Campo dei Fiori and many other sites, some in the first tier of tourist attractions, some just off-center or invisible to the uninitiated.

His love of Rome is clear enough, especially when he recalls small things, like his address in 1962.

"When we invited guests to visit us, I used to delight in giving them instruction on how to get to our apartment," he writes. " 'From Piazza Venezia,' I would tell them, 'take the Via dei Fori Imperiali toward the Colosseum, turn right at the Arch of Titus and proceed, keeping the Circus Maximus to your right and the Baths of Caracalla to your left, until you reach the Piazza Albania. If you get to the Pyramid of Cestius and the Aurelian Wall, you've gone too far. Turn back and you'll find our apartment house on your right, facing the Aventine.' The great fact of life in Rome is residence among the ruins."