A dip into the Eternal City

Iain Pears does for Rome what Donna Leon does for Venice. Here is a small extract that just perfectly captures that quintessential "eternity" of Rome...(Click on the cover for more information)

"It is one of the great delights of Rome that not even a long-term, assiduous resident is safe from surprise. Any street in the city, no matter where and no matter how seedy or shabby it looks at first glance, is capable of containing some little gem tucked away in an obscure corner, passed by nearly all the time and waiting to astonish. Sometimes it is a toy-box-sized Renaissance chapel, around which a twentieth-century developer has squeezed a vast, lumbering block of flats, or which has been accidentally turned into a traffic roundabout. Or the remains of a Roman palace nestling between a truck stop  and a railway line. Or it is a Renaissance pile, converted into flats and hammered incessantly by fumes and noise of traffic, but which still has its delicate, colonnaded courtyard, with moss on the cobbles and a sculpted fountain of nymphs and goddesses tinkling away to welcome home the weary commuters in the evening."

Want to delve in a bit more into Rome? Our collection of books set in Rome can be found here