Rome, in a word, is hot. As hot as Paul Mescal roaring in a fringed leather skirt against the backdrop of all the weighty splendour of the Colosseum in Ridley Scott’s next blockbuster, . Smoking hot like the curls of white vapour that signal a new pontiff, so evocatively depicted in , the new papal thriller with Ralph Fiennes that is about to grace our screens.
Red hot like the Roman designer Alessandro Michele’s debut summer collection of fantastical whimsies for the most Roman of houses, Valentino. Yes, and substance reign supreme in the Eternal City – as they always have. Look at Paolo Sorrentino’s seminal film , a love letter to Rome.
And oh, the here, the joy of walking down Via Giulia – that straight and elegant road built in 1508 by Pope Julius II as a thoroughfare to the Vatican and still retaining its Renaissance grandeur – dreaming about which palazzo you would love to live in. Or admiring every Caravaggio master-piece (there are some 26 in ), the marbled magnificence of Antonio Canova’s in the Galleria Borghese, or any antiquity and painted wonder in the Vatican Museum – and really just time spent in the Renaissance splendour of Saint Peter’s. Then there is the Basilica of San Clemente, one of the most beautiful churches and collections of mosaics, which is just layer upon layer of history stretching back 2,000 years.
Go further and further underground, and by the time you reach the crypt, your head is whirling with ethereal images of the eighth-c.
/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/25815135/L_Oreal_Cell_BioPrint__In_store.jpg)
