
I started at the Colosseum. From here you have to pay to get on top of the Palatine. There’s a ticket office just by the Arch of Constantine. I bought a ticket and walked up from here. The ticket is good for the Palatine Hill, including admission to the Museum, the Forum and the Colosseum, on any of which one could comfortably spend a whole day and another time I will. But I had other plans and just glanced at the Palatine Stadium and the House of Augustus, and crossed over to the Farnese Gardens and savoured the amazing view from here across the Forum. Round about this point it rained, suddenly, heavily and extremely briefly. I walked northeast across the Forum to the foot of the Capitoline Hill but there is no exit at this end and I had to double back a bit and exit onto the Via dei Fori imperiali and walk round to where a steep, wiggly road leads to the top of the Capitoline which is a rather grand square designed by a certain Michelangelo. I spent way too short a time in the Capitoline Museum but I thought I should at least say Hi to the wolf and her suckling babes. Only later did I realise that it was in this very same building, the Palazzo dei Conservatori, where, on 25th March, a famous treaty was signed by France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Bellgium and Luxembourg inaugurating a new institution called the European Economic Community. The fact seems a little poignant now, given what was happening back in the UK this same day, 23rd June, 2016.

