Those five days I've just spent in Rome were among five of the most enchanting days I've ever had. Rome rendered me mute. Speechless. Everyday was discovering a new joy, something utterly unexpected. I am in love with the eternal city. Inamorata. Why? Who knows. Who cares. It's a sensory thing, inchoate, fugitive; it could be a vapour, or a perfume, something too strong, yet paradoxically too fragile, to break down into actual parts. It's so stealthy, like a magical kiss in some fairy tale, utterly transformative.

I felt for the whole time that I was there that I was in the original City, the foundation City, the place where it all began. It's the only city I've been to which makes two thousand year old London or Paris feel young. Mesopotamia is acknowledged as holding the the seeds of the oldest recognised urban settlements; but Rome surely trumps that. Where else can you see millenia old frescoes in the catacombs or the basement of the Basilica di San Clemente and then see almost the same faces you've just seen walking past you on the street or stood at the bar drinking coffee

I'll leave the final word to Goethe, who in his Italian Journey, wrote: "Now at last I have arrived in the First city of the world"