Rome has a classy way of turning the Christmas lights on. The Pope comes to the Spanish Steps to perform the ceremony to the applause of a big crowd; it’s a kind of papal starting gun for the season.
The city is lovely at this time of year. It’s not so nakedly commercial as London; the decorations are less brash, the lights more tasteful. The small shops, which are still so evident in the city, have their pine and baubles and the open air markets have the wreaths and mistletoe alongside all the good things of the season, the Amalfi lemons, the Sicilian oranges, the nuts, the bunches of dried peppers.
