NO PLACE Like ROME

Big flavours, colossal culture, monumental architecture and extravagant experiences…Rome is a blockbuster European city break.

-  ANNA HART

Last year, when my world became small, I craved bigness. In cinematic terms, I fantasised about a blockbuster of a European city break, with dazzling special effects, a big-budget set, a melodramatic script and an improbably glamorous cast. On what felt like the 7000th dreary, identikit day in a row, I promised myself that my first post-lockdown international trip would be Rome.

Rome, to my intense embarrassment as a travel writer, is the one big European city I have never visited, and I had two long years to ponder this bad decision. Sure, Rome is not cheap, with none of the legendary gastronomic bang-for-buck as Naples, for example. Rome is not cool; in fact, Rome was at its coolest 2000 years ago, so a weekend in Rome doesn’t have the hipster kudos of Helsinki or Tel Aviv. Rome is not particularly international, something the sizeable international community is blissfully united in whining about. The United Nations World Food Programme and other UN bodies are headquartered here, yet Rome has historically not been particularly interested in other cultures or cuisines. If you’re Rome, why would you be?