Rome has been Italy's capital only since 1871, after Turin and then Florence had a turn. The city's official name now carries the job title: Roma Capitale, stenciled onto a crowd barrier. Behind it, S.P.Q.R. — Senatus Populusque Romanus, "the Senate and People
The Carabinieri were founded in 1814, older than Italy itself, and they still keep the plumed bicorne and full-dress uniform for parades. Park patrol is a different dress code: navy polo shirts, riding helmets, two bay horses. Two centuries of tradition, in casual mode. RR
Cursive neon, a shelf of fake ferns, and a sentence someone clearly believed in enough to wire into a wall. Least Roman thing I've photographed all week, and somehow the one that feels most honest. RR
A traffic mirror bends the whole street into a coin, right under a sign pointing to the police. What catches the eye, though, is the icon itself — a tiny black bicorne with a red-and-blue crest, the Carabinieri's ceremonial hat shrunk down to a wayfinding symbol. Somewhere,
Ordinary shutters, ordinary building, nothing going on — until you clock what's parked behind it. St. Peter's dome does this to everything in range: turns a plain apartment block into a postcard, no renovation required. Best backdrop in the city, and it works for free. RR
Sixteen marble discs are set into the pavement around the obelisk in St. Peter's Square, each naming a wind — Tramontana, Levante, Ostro, Ponente and the rest of the old eight-wind compass, laid in 1817 by a Vatican astronomer. SUD is just plain Italian for south; OSTRO is
This is the travertine of the Vatican walls — same stone type the colonnade and half of ancient Rome were built from. The hand belongs to a child testing whether it feels as rough as it looks. It does. RR
A red handprint, two overflowing glasses, a phone number, all in marker. Enoteca Cul de Sac didn't hire an agency for this — somebody just had a Sharpie and a sense of humor, and it's doing more work than most billboards in this city. RR
Piazza Navona is shaped like a Roman running track because it is one — Domitian built the stadium here in the 1st century, and the oval never changed. Eighteen centuries later that shape is propping up a Max Mara ad the size of a church, and a gull's claimed
This is a 3D-printed study model — a stack of topographic lines standing in for a Roman portrait head. It's part of Palazzo Marignoli's restoration archive for Marcus Aurelius's bronze equestrian monument, the one still on its plinth at the Capitoline two thousand years
In Russian, контрамарка means a free ticket — something a friend gets you into. In Italian, contromarca means something else completely: the stub they hand you at intermission so you can step outside and get back in. Same word, borrowed by two languages, doing two unrelated jobs. I've used
Pink carpet rolled out across a park path, ivy and bougainvillea for a backdrop instead of a runway wall, a jazz trio playing next to the models. Derrick Jones Studio works in upcycled fashion — clothes rebuilt from what already existed — staged here in gravel and old stone rather than a