The city announces itself at the gate

Before passport control, before the taxi rank, before any of it — a marble woman in a glass case, mid-drape, unbothered by the luggage carts. Fiumicino keeps its antiquities in the terminal itself, velvet stanchions and all, the way other airports keep duty-free. Rome doesn't wait for you to arrive properly. It starts before you've left the building. RR

Lunch, pre-sorted

Everything at the counter waits in its own glass cylinder — tomatoes, peas, green beans, mozzarella, each cut to the same size as its neighbors, each with its own pair of tongs. Nothing improvised, nothing overlapping. A museum café turns out to run on the same logic as the galleries upstairs:

A bar that signs its name in cursive

Harry's Bar hangs its identity from a wrought iron bracket — gold script on midnight blue.

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Lunch, pre-sorted

A bar that signs its name in cursive