You don’t get to feel a city’s pulse until you’ve been trapped on a few of its highways. To understand what I mean, do this: wake up in the fog-dipped countryside, speed through the open space of sparsely populated fields, then past the first signs of industry – factories, pristine and painted in candy colors or splattered with graffiti, past car dealerships and low-income suburbs, until the highway is choking on traffic and you’re stopped at a toll booth, the humming city emerging at this final checkpoint. Now we’re ready to enter Rome.
