Original subtitles

Hi, I'm Andrew Graham-Dixon

and I'm an art historian.

These ancient roads are slightly bumpy.

And I'm Giorgio Locatelli and I'm a cook.

We've been all over Italy,

revealing her gastronomic and artistic treasures,

but now we've come to the beating heart of the country, Rome.

It's a 2,000 year old metropolis where past and present collide.

It's as unique for an art lover...

In the same moment he's also Christ on the cross.

..as it is for a food lover.

Today I'm going to cook you a dish that is really steep in history.

We will test traditional recipes beloved by the Romans.

I'm not leaving this here. He's not going to let me have any.

And we'll plunge our forks into the cultures that have shaped the city.

The Trevi Fountain, famous as Italian ice cream.

We'll explore Rome's greatest works of art and architecture.

Uno. Due. Tre.

Full of light... Incredible.

..but also, sometimes, darkness.

It's the voice of conscience.

I think it's a truthful voice.

I cannot imagine anything to do in life better than this.

And with you in the back, as well.

It's always been my belief that to understand Rome,

you must first understand the Roman people.

They've always been the driving force behind the city.

From ancient times, the Romans have acclaimed each new Emperor...

..roared their approval or disapproval of each new Pope

and they show no sign of stopping that.

They're always larger than life,

divided, opinionated,

passionate, unpredictable.

Rome might be Italy's centre of government...

..but no-one could be harder to govern than the Romans.

Our journey begins in the historic centre of Rome,

the politically charged Capitoline Hill.

The smallest and most important of

the seven hills of ancient Rome,

it was originally the site of one of the city's most sacred temples

and later became the seat of the Senate.

Look at this. Amazing.

Excuse me.

Caput Mundi. Here we are.

But it's empty. We have the whole square to ourselves.

That is unbelievable.

That's like having an opera performance just for you.

But it is like a piece of theatre.

Yeah. This is THE place.

Yeah, yeah, you're right.

So many things happened here.

Friends, Romans, lend me your ears.

After the death of Caesar,

Petrarch, he comes here to receive his laurel crown

and then Napoleon declares his short-lived rule over Italy.

Not very important. Don't talk about him.

But still, they always come here.

This is the place. Even in the Second World War,

General Clark really didn't feel like

he'd achieved anything until he arrived here.

Well, we talk about, often, Michelangelo the sculptor...

Yeah. ..Michelangelo the painter, who created the Sistine Chapel...

Yeah. ..but sometimes we forget, this is Michelangelo the architect,

and he creates this beautiful star pavement,

almost like this is the sun.

And at the centre of it all,

this great statue of Marcus Aurelius,

one of the most famous statues in the world.

This statue's stood here, really, for 2,000 years.

The very first equestrian statue.

And in Roman times this signified the status of the ruler,

that the Emperor, he is astride the horse,

just as he is, metaphorically,

he's in charge of his people.

There he is, the great philosopher emperor,

founder of modern mindfulness,

author of works on happiness.

Extraordinary man.

The only reason it survived was that Pope Paul III,

for whom Michelangelo redesigned this square during the Renaissance,

he actually believed that to be a representation of the very first

Christian emperor, Constantine.

I see. And that's why he allowed it to remain,

because all the Roman pagan monuments...

All melted. If they were made of bronze, they go.

So this thing only survives because of a mistake.

Fantastic. Thank God for that.

One of the most famous statues in the world. It's beautiful.

Look at the horse.

There's two Romes, always.

There's the Rome of the great and the powerful,

and there's the Rome of the people, the Rome of the mob.

And this place is where the two meet each other.

Andrew, come, I want to ask you something.

You know what that mean?

Senatus Populusque Romanus.

It's a central idea of Ancient Rome.

Those who rule, only rule with the collaboration of the people.

With the collaboration... of the people...

of Rome. That means a representation

of the mob, as we call it.

The modern world is built on this value, on this idea,

that the people are part of the government.

And, you know, this is so everywhere in Rome.

Look, the aqueduct, water, everybody, SPQR.

It really is everywhere. That's it.

It's pretty unique to see the power

of the people declared in every corner of their own city.

Thanks to that,

the Roman always maintain a strong sense of ownership over Rome,

throughout the Republic and Imperial eras.

But the Empire ended in 476 AD.

Over the following centuries it was replaced by rulers

more interested in exerting power over the people.

Fantastico.

By the eighth century Rome was the capital of the Papal States,

ruled by cardinals and popes.

These ambitious men of God loved nothing more

than to proclaim their own vast power with grandiose monuments.

But even they knew that they also had to please the people.

For me, the best,

most extravagant example of this Papal showmanship in all of Rome...

..is the Trevi Fountain.

Commissioned by Pope Clement XII, in the 18th century.

As famous as Italian ice cream, it looks like it's made of ice cream.

The Trevi Fountain.

It's so beautiful.

In the Roman times it's bread and circuses.

In the Papal times it's fountains.

That's how you really impress your people.

This is the culmination of a kind of centuries-long fountain competition.

Every Pope wants to put a great fountain.

It gets bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger

and then, finally, this fountain goes up.

And everybody just goes, "You know what..."

"Maybe we should stop it." "Maybe we should stop now."

It's the entire side of a palace.

In the middle, the God of the seas, Neptune.

On the left, you've got Abundance.

She's emphasising that, "Oh, it's not just Papal extravagance.

"Without this water..."

Nothing grow. Nothing grows.

And that's continued in this lovely detail of the plants...

Yes. ..that's sort of growing up around the fountain.

Love that one, look, growing on the rocks.

Looks like a lettuce or something. Yeah.

I think my favourite detail are

these horses because they've got fish's tails,

horse's bodies, and they've also got wings.

Wings. Everything is there.

And it's all invented in one go here.

That is so brilliant.

Even as it started to go up,

people knew this was something pretty special,

and that's why the inscriptions are so confusing

because everyone wanted to have their name on it.

So it was commissioned by Pope Clement XII,

but in 1735, before the fountain is finished, he knows he's dying,

so he quickly makes sure that his name was inscribed.

Then, below, in the gold, we see Benedict XIV...

..in his...

Well, basically, in his time, it was actually finished

and declared open.

And then if you look below, another Pope, Clement XIII,

I think he did some additions to the aqueduct work

or something. And he said, "No, I want my name on it, too."

Yeah, it's not three coins in the fountain,

it's three Popes in a fountain.

But in the end, the Italian who really put his name on it,

although he didn't put his name on it...

Federico Fellini. Yes.

Marcello, where are you?

My goodness.

Fellini, more than anyone else,

with the scene in La Dolce Vita

where Anita Ekberg wades into the fountain,

and her friend, Marcello, Marcello Mastroianni.

They made the fountain, that was

already the fountain of the people of Rome,

became the fountain of the people of the world.

Of the world, that's right.

Absolutely.

Oscar winner Federico Fellini was

one of the most famous Italian film directors.

Although from Rimini, Fellini found his real home in Rome.

He responded above all to the people of the city.

Their passion, their love of spectacle

and he put them at the heart of much of his work.

In his 1960s masterpiece La Dolce Vita,

a satire on Roman high society,

he transformed the city's classical sites into vibrant film sets.

Hollywood and its starlets flooded in,

making Rome the centre of the world once again.

In the '50s here you had...

..Gary Cooper, everybody, and there would be people there just watching.

Just standing there on the street just watching.

Look and see what's happening, who's having a coffee,

who's drinking something.

And Fellini was right at the base of this.

He was kind of the spark and just illuminated the whole thing.

Although Fellini could have worked

with any of the big star of the time,

he never turned his back on the Romans.

And in any ordinary man and woman on the street he may find the potential

extra to give him the raw quality he was always looking for in his film.

Buongiorno, Silvano. Buongiorno. Buongiorno.

Silvano Spoletini was 21 years old

and working as an encyclopaedia binder

when Fellini picked him to be an extra in his film Roma.

From that moment he went on to have a 60-year career,

working on films such as Ocean's 12 and Gangs of New York.

They called him The Lighthouse because he was the leading light

and everybody follow him.

The capacity of the Roman to, kind of, reinvent themselves

or to push little bit.

What are you doing this morning? I haven't got no job.

I'm walking down Piazza del Popolo. Maybe Fellini's going to pick me up.

Maybe he's going to put me in a film. There's always a chance.

I like that about the Romans, no?

I think it's... That's why it's eternal, the city,

because of the people. We say that so many times

It's now time to cook Andrew a classic Roman dish.

Despite the opulent culinary tradition of the rich,

the food that survive is the cuisine of the people.

Buongiorno.

Simple dishes that have stood the test of time

and everything that I need can be found

in one of the city's hidden gems.

Situated on Monteverde hill in south-west Rome,

San Giovanni di Dio is one of Rome's most vibrant markets.

I love this great amount of greenery.

Greenery everywhere. You see how much?

It's like... This is bietina.

It's like all this different type of spinach.

Very much at the base of what they cook.

I mean, you don't see anything that is not seasonal here, do you?

No. It's all grown around the corner.

That doesn't say, flown in from Israel.

That's, like, driven in by Enzo this morning.

Andrew.

That's what we want to buy. Oh, the Romanesco!

Buongiorno.

Due Romanesco.

One of the main ingredients of my dish

are these beautiful Romanesco broccoli.

Perfecto.

Due carota.

Quattordici quarantacinque.

Grazie.

Next, it's time to buy the main ingredient.

So, what are we going to buy? We're going to buy a razza.

It's called arzilla in Rome

and it's called skate in England.

All the fish have so many different names.

In all, it has about, like,

12 different names in Italy.

Right, right. HE SPEAKS ITALIAN

So, you better get your skates on.

THEY SPEAK ITALIAN

He already knows what I'm going to cook.

Which is..?

Pasta broccoli con arzilla.

THEY SPEAK ITALIAN

62 years he's been in the market.

Tu sempre questa..? Cento questa.

It's 100 years that they've had this stall on this market.

Wow.

He says, "Do you want some parsley?"

because when they serve the fish,

they give you present, a little bit of parsley.

What do you want more than that?

Grazie. Grazie, buona giornata.

So we have everything we need now.

Now we have everything we need.

So we can go and eat.

Let's go and cook first.

I forgot that bit.

I forgot that bit...

Una, una...

What are you doing?!

Andrew, today I'm going to cook you a dish that

is really steeped in history.

I'm going to cook a delicious centuries-old

fish soup with vegetables.

Let's start with the fish first.

The skin of the skate is very spiky

so it's important to scrape it

properly under the tap.

OK, look, Andrew, I mean,

you can see the wings which are the eatable part.

I'm going to go pretty straightforward in, like that.

We're going to go round it.

As you cut you can feel the blade

hitting the bones, so just follow it the length of the fish.

Eugh...

You also have to remove the guts, head and tail,

until you're left with just two beautiful wings.

OK, so now...

Now they really do look like angel wings, don't they?

Now, this is the most important bit, OK.

The trickiest job is to remove the skin from the wings of the skate.

Of course, that's from the electricity department.

Very good. You'd be a really good executioner or torturer, I think.

You've got all the skills.

If you carry on like that, chatting,

I'll definitely execute you before the end.

So here they are.

Usually when you go to the market this is what you get.

But you're going to use everything from that,

you're not just going to use the wing,

you're going to use all the bones and everything, to make a stock?

That's what I want to make, a beautiful stock, with that. OK.

So...I got my pan.

I make the fish stock with carrot, celery,

onions and a couple of bay leaves.

That's what they used to put on Julius Caesar's head, isn't it?

That's right.

Bit of peppercorns.

And finally, a couple of juniper cloves.

Interesting. A couple of them,

just to give them a little bit to sustain the flavour.

Interesting. OK.

Next, I put the fish bones in with the vegetables,

as well as the two wings.

So we put them in, both of them.

Oh, you put the wings in too.

That's right. Cold water.

The last thing that goes in there is a little splash of wine.

OK. The idea is this...

I'm going to put that on a very tiny fire.

Yeah. And I want it to go fast.

You must remember one thing, that fish bones

release all their flavours in about 20 minutes.

So then, if you want to make it strong you have to reduce it.

It's all about, like, very

intelligently stealing the flavour out of these things, yeah.

You quite often talk about persuading.

Persuading the food to cooperate with you.

You have to make it fall in love

with you and you fall in love with it and

then you make a beautiful thing now together.

As the stock is heating up, it's

important to skim off any floating froth,

to make sure that it's clear when cooked.

After 15 minutes, we can take the skate wings out and let them rest.

Oh!

I lost a little bit.

So, I'm going to let that cook.

And hold on...

I'm going to show you now what I'm doing.

OK.

We're going to prepare the broccoli. Oh, I love these. Yeah?

Such a beautiful thing.

Now, I'm going to cut them into really

lovely sort of floret

as they call it in English, no?

And some of these will become a little bit more overcooked

and melt away in the sauce.

Some of this will be really nice and

give you a little crunch, you know.

Next, I start preparing the base for the soup.

Bit of olive oil...

Onions, celery, carrots, garlic, the Romanesco broccoli,

and the anchovies. Oo-ooh!

And I put it there.

OK. I'm going to let

those melt away...

..with it, eh. Mmm, good smell.

Vino, in it.

SIZZLING

You hear that..? HE IMITATES SIZZLING

That's what I want.

A few pieces of tomato.

And to give it an absolutely amazing colour, tomato paste.

This is my stock.

We're going to put some of the stock on that.

I'm going to let it cook for at least...

..ten minutes.

Time to finish the dish by adding a short type of pasta

that's perfect for soups.

Don't forget to stir it.

You don't want the pasta to stick at the bottom.

Oh, so that's the finishing touch.

Oo-oo-ooh!

What a lovely idea for a dish.

OK, you can prepare the table now.

Because we're nearly there, eh.

Come, Andrew. Woh-oh...

Oh, the smell is fantastic.

Giorgio, that is fantastic.

This is Rome.

Intenso, it's intense.

Also, the broccolo adds this really nice flavour

and it adds a little bit of

bitterness to that. Yep.

If you came to Rome and you were a pilgrim, not so much money,

you might end up eating this.

Definitely. That was the staple.

Really? Absolutely.

If you go back in time...

That's it.

The ideal dish for a tired pilgrim.

Perfected, no wonder, here in Rome.

Following the counterreformation,

the Catholic Church did its utmost

to restore Rome's spiritual authority...

..raising the great dome of St Peter's...

..and building a multitude of other churches as beacons to the faithful.

Thousands of ragged pilgrims in search of redemption

flooded the city, making Rome a city of stark contrasts.

Rich architecture...

..alongside desperately poor people, living on the streets...

..and nobody captured that better than the painter Caravaggio.

I want to show Giorgio two of my favourite paintings...

..breathtaking works that would give the travellers hope and consolation.

So, Giorgio, this is the burial chapel of Tiberio Cerasi.

He was the principal banker to the Pope, had a lot of money,

but he knew he was dying,

and so he commissioned the paintings in this chapel,

two of them are by Caravaggio.

This one...

..shows St Peter.

And immediately you are face-to-face

with Caravaggio's great revolution,

like Fellini so many years later, to cast the people from the street,

from the streets of Rome, and to put them in his paintings.

And he's doing that here, with this terrible scene,

the crucifixion of St Peter.

It's almost as if he might have used as his model that poor man,

that beggar that we saw on the steps

of the other church around the corner.

And in his own time these paintings were really shocking.

Oh, it's shocking now

with the imagery that we are used to

but it's still quite powerful, this one, you know.

And that dirty feet it just says so much.

Because Italian painting at that moment, before Caravaggio,

was very artificial, very mannered,

very contrived,

very little smell of reality in it,

and suddenly with Caravaggio you've got Peter's sunburnt face,

his scrawny torso,

his agonised expression,

and Caravaggio's painting it almost

as a grisly scene of hydraulic engineering.

Man driven.

You're going to lift him up, put him on the cross.

But I think also Caravaggio's giving hope.

Because this church is the first church

that you'd come to when you enter Rome

because that, outside, was once the gate to Rome.

Now there's a road outside, but in the past it was fields.

You had dirty feet, you identify yourself with them.

Exactly. Yeah.

Cerasi, whose mortuary chapel this is, he was clever.

Not only did he commission Caravaggio to decorate the chapel,

but he also got the leading other painter of Rome at the time,

Annibale Carracci,

to paint the main altarpiece.

Below you've got the Apostles

and it shows the moment when the Madonna's soul

is assumed into heaven.

Up she rises into the skies.

This is really the dawn of the baroque style.

And what the baroque style exists to do is to make us,

the worshippers coming to church, feel a little bit smaller,

a little bit on our knees,

a little bit "Oh!", in awe.

This is a painting that says, "Yes,

"you can come here to worship but remember your place."

And what's interesting is that the Carracci painting,

that was installed before Caravaggio painted his second picture.

And what did he do?

It's this enormous horse.

And he puts the horse's arse in the face...

..of the Virgin of Carracci.

As if to say,

"This is what I think...

"..of your elevated Christianity."

I like this Caravaggio guy.

He's quite cool. He really is.

He's cool, man.

This is St Paul or Saul as he was,

at the moment of his conversion.

That's the subject of the painting.

This is the moment on the road to Damascus

when he becomes a Christian.

Boom, you can hear it.

I never fell off the horse.

I fell off a few motorbikes.

I never fell off the horse.

But I can, you know, kind of like,

you can see he's been struck and he's almost underneath the horse.

Caravaggio means the horse and the groom...

..who looks a bit like Joseph,

I think to evoke the idea of the Nativity.

So you do a kind of double take

cos you look down from them and you expect to see

the baby Jesus by the manger.

But, no, you see Paul.

But then, after you've done the double take,

I think that's when the meaning unfolds.

Because, yes, at this moment of his conversion,

Paul is like the little baby Jesus in the manger.

He's lying helpless on the ground.

And then Caravaggio, with a stroke of genius, I think,

has Paul stretch out his arms,

so in the same moment he's also Christ on the cross.

So light floods him.

He is spiritually enlightened.

It's one of the most amazing pictures in the world.

I think this is one of the best painting I ever seen in my life.

He's a communicator...

..to the people like me.

And that is something that I would

now come to the church to have a look at that.

So, you vote for Caravaggio?

Due a zero.

For centuries after his death,

Caravaggio was sneered at as a crude and vulgar artist.

He was rediscovered partly by

Italian film-makers, including Fellini,

who loved his cinematic use of light

as well as the way he used real people.

And since the mid-20th century,

Caravaggio's reputation has been on the rise.

He's now one of the world's best-loved painters.

Oh! Oh!

Va bene...

This is the old Roman Way.

Oh, man! Julius Caesar used to come down this road, man.

Got to be excited about it.

Rome is the political centre of Italy.

Nowhere else will you find so many politician and bureaucrats...

..or so many limousines stuck in traffic.

Ordinary Romans are used to rubbing shoulders with those in power

and they are prepared to put up a fight.

GIORGIO SCREAMS

Let's go and have a coffee.

Romans love nothing more than discussing politics

from their first espresso of the day.

To be the mayor of this town,

I think is the hardest job.

Whatever you do, you'll always have someone who says the contrary.

How many bureaucrats are there in Rome?

Well, that's the thing.

Quanti burocrati a Roma?

Troppi. Troppi!

Too many, too many.

But, at the end of the day,

Rome would be always Rome because of the people of Rome.

Yeah. You can put as many laws as they want,

but they will do whatever they want,

because they've been doing that for the eternal time.

That's why they've been here for such a long time,

because that's what they do.

They do what they want.

I read in the paper that the

highest-paid head of traffic wardens in the world

is the head of the traffic wardens of Rome.

He gets paid more than the President of the United States!

Yeah, exactly, he gets paid, like, half a million pounds.

And, still, everybody parks where they like.

Everybody do what they want.

I want to take Giorgio to see a monument

that hails the moment when Rome first became

the centre of modern Italian politics.

At the end of the 19th century Italy

was still divided into many states,

under different rulers.

But in 1861 the Savoy family, under their king, Vittorio Emanuele,

had placed their stamp on the unification of the country.

And ten years later declared Rome its capital.

For the Roman people, it also meant

the end of over a thousand years of papal rule.

So to celebrate this moment,

and the crowning of Italy's first king...

..the Vittoriano was erected,

right in the centre of Rome,

next to the Imperial Forum.

What a great beauty.

Which one? I like these bits.

I'm not so sure about...

That big one, over there.

When you see it in the context of real Roman ruins,

I think you get a sense of how...

..just crazily enormous,

how glaringly white,

how astonishingly pompous,

is the monument to Vittorio Emanuele.

I mean, this is Vittorio Emanuele coming to Rome,

saying, "Italy, one Italy, under me".

And he's basically

trying to replace Marco Aurelio, Marcus Aurelius, who's in the back,

obscured almost, from the view of the Romans,

by this great white elephant.

With him on his horse, he's saying, "I'm the new emperor."

Yeah. It's the size of a mountain.

I mean, I think it's 70 metres high, more than 100 metres across.

It was inaugurated, I think, in 1912

and finished 13 years later,

the greatest job creation scheme in the history of Italian sculpture.

The Roman never liked...

You know what they call this?

They call it the typewriter. The typewriter? Yes.

It looks like a typewriter.

You know, one of the old ones, that you just...

Swings along. I think that's the whole problem, though,

is that the language that's being typed out on the typewriter is not

really Roman, not Italian.

This is the classicism of Germany.

I mean, it could almost be made of ice.

It's glaring, it's white, it's enormous, it's like the Valhalla.

This is Wagner, not Verdi.

Yeah. The whiteness really puts it at odds with everything else.

Because, I don't know, like, look at those tree,

looks in harmony with the church and things.

You kind of like, the shapes, they're all working, these columns,

and suddenly it's like an eyesore, isn't it?

Think about the Capitoline Hill is just behind that.

So in order to build this, what did they build it on top?

Surely there must be something.

Yeah. No, no, they did, they knocked down some temples,

they covered up a piece of ancient Roman history

to create the modern monument.

I mean, this is absolutely in the centre of the city.

And I think that's again part of the problem the people here

have had accepting it -

they know that this has abolished part of their own history.

And so there he is on his horse,

the new Marcus Aurelius,

Vittorio Emanuele II,

and he's saying,

"Friends, Romans, countrymen,

"lend me your ears", but I think

they never really did lend them their ears.

I really don't like the typewriter.

But the Savoy family rule wasn't all bad news for Rome.

In fact, one of my favourite districts was created under them.

A place made for the people.

And I really want to show it to Andrew.

At the beginning of the 20th century,

from being a sleepy village,

Rome rapidly became a frenetic European capital.

The Savoy family started building

social housing for workers such as the Garbatella.

Once at the very edges of the city,

and now right in the centre,

only ten minutes by scooter from the Coliseum.

Here we are, in Garbatella, man.

Where are we going, up the steps?

Yeah, let's go up there.

Come and have a look at this.

Garbatella, garbato, means to be kind, you know.

So this is a place where you're welcome.

And look, we are in the centre of town.

This is not the Rome that I know.

I mean, this is so peaceful.

Where are the guys on motor scooters, zipping past you?

Absolutely. But look, the architecture is incredible.

Look at this place. But this is the 1920s.

When I see a house like that, I mean, my association is to think,

"Suddenly I am actually in the countryside in Italy."

Yeah, little patch where you can grow his little basil

and his little potato or tomato.

But what I love about it is that it is so Italian.

It's a little bit chaotic, a little bit unkempt,

but in a very beautiful way.

Like, look where they've got the two pipes presumably were there one time

but they haven't bothered to paint it back.

There's the plaster round the window.

This is charm. It's charming, it's lovely.

It's really like a little paradise.

From the people I've seen living here,

quite a lot of them are getting on a bit now.

It's as if they are part of the original community.

People in their 60s, people in their 70s...

You want to live with the people

that you love and you want to die with the people that you love.

Surrounded by it, the sense of community,

makes you feel like a human.

Buongiorno. Buongiorno.

Qual'e il nomo del tuo cane? Pepe.

Pepe! Buongiorno, Pepe. Cacio e pepe.

Perfect.

Salve. Buongiorno.

In designing the Garbatella,

Rome's urban planners were greatly influenced by the English trend

known as the garden city movement of the early 20th century.

So in a way,

this is a Roman version of

Hampstead Garden Suburb in London.

But the character of this village on the edge of the city

will change in the 1920s...

..when the fascists came to power.

Fascism and its drive for modernisation

took an iron grip of Italy,

and most of all, Rome.

Thousands more workers from the countryside flooded into the city.

And to house them, a new generation of architects

came up with grander designs and bigger buildings for Garbatella.

You see, Andrew, just round the corner it changes completely.

Wow. And they're just so grand.

They are. They're like palaces.

This style is called baroquetto.

Baroquetto.

That's right. Which means little Baroque.

Yeah, baby Baroque. Baby Baroque.

It's fantastic cos it is! That's like a Baroque palace.

Except you see these heads normally on an aristocratic palace.

That's right. But here, the heads

are on the side of a council flat block,

and they're the heads of people from the 1920s, or maybe the 1930s.

Look at her little bob hairstyle.

Unbelievable, isn't it? It's fantastic.

Look, there's something like a gargoyle on the front of the house.

It's not just building.

I can imagine things happening behind those closed windows,

all those little houses with all these little kitchens

and a lot of this lovely food that comes from the countryside,

from the connections.

And they have... The market is very alive.

This is the spirits of Rome,

is within these people.

Yeah. You know, everything comes and goes in this city,

everything gets buried,

it's just the people who stays on top.

It's unusual, pretty amazing, really,

to see a fully working community,

almost like a village, right in the middle of the 21st-century city.

Garbatella, bella, Andrew.

If I had to live somewhere in Rome,

I would love to live in Garbatella.

I think it fits my style.

Yeah, I can see you, just in your vest, like, cooking outside, maybe.

Now we're going back onto the cobbles.

Uh-uh-uh-uh-uh...

You can feel the ancient power of the people all over Rome,

even in some unlikely places...

..such as the palaces of the richest noble families.

Because they knew just how hard it was to rule in this fickle town,

they built their palazzi-like fortresses to keep the mob at bay.

And none was more fortress-like than the stunning Palazzo Farnese.

Palazzo Farnese. What a palace, eh?

It's got 40 windows just on the front. Amazing.

The Farnese family was one of the great forces in Rome

from the 15th to the 18th century.

Many military commanders and cardinals,

two popes and the Queen of Spain

can be found in their family tree.

And thanks to their huge riches,

the family constructed the most magnificent

high Renaissance dwelling in all of Rome,

designed by Antonio da Sangallo the Younger,

and a chap called Michelangelo.

I'm taking Giorgio to see one particular room

with a truly amazing series of frescoes by Annibale Carracci...

..the same artist Caravaggio had mocked with the rear end of a horse.

Here, Carracci was on top form.

Look at this, the sun has come to greet us.

Now, don't look up, that's the only rule.

OK. You can look at the garden.

Wow. And we're right in the middle of the row.

In the middle of the row.

OK, now we're going to do it.

OK? OK.

Uno, due...

Three.

Wow!

Look at that! Look at that.

Started 1597, finished 1608.

11 years in the making.

And the theme of the whole thing...

# ..the power of love

# A force from above. #

Really! That is the subject!

You've got Diana falling in love,

despite her vows of chastity,

falling in love with the shepherd Endymion, sleeping muscle man.

You've got the abduction of Galatea,

you've got Jupiter and Juno.

We've got Bacchus and Ariadne.

And here he is, in his golden carriage drawn by tigers...

..with rams, symbols of sex and lust.

It's almost too much, isn't it?

It really, like, is incredible.

The figure of the lady is so beautiful, rounded and beautiful.

They're not the model of the modern supermodel, let's put it that way.

That's for sure. They're not skin and bones.

But they're much more beautiful.

It's quite a thing.

And it was all commissioned by a cardinal.

Odoardo Farnese.

Why would a cardinal have something like that in his house?

Well, actually, in the Renaissance, they weren't prudish.

There was a tradition of noble families commissioning,

usually on the occasion of a marriage,

quite sexy, secular images.

Almost like encouragements to procreation.

This is a message from the cardinal to all of his children.

Right. "This is how you do it, just get on with it."

Isn't it? It sounds a little bit like that, doesn't it?

Yes, I don't know what that is in Latin, but...

I think what the room as a whole is saying is, "That for us as a dynasty

"to uphold our power, we must breed."

And something really neat, look at this.

This is thanks to the French, actually,

who've had this as their embassy for so long,

they cleaned this room,

and look what they found.

Carracci had actually left some of his sketches.

So when he was making the ceiling,

he was actually doing these little sketches.

There's actually quite a sad postscript

to the story of this amazing masterpiece.

They cardinal, for whatever reason...

..was a really mean guy,

so when Carracci finished and finally asked for his payment...

..the cardinal got his accountant to do all the sums,

and he said, "Well, "you've been living in the Palace for 11 years,

"so we're going to charge you for the board and lodging.

"So, we're going to pay you £100,000 for doing the picture,

"but we're going to deduct £99,500

"because you've been staying in the Palace." No way.

Really. They paid him 500 scudi for 11 years' work.

Carracci was so upset, he just falls into this terrible depression,

and then that's the end of him.

He dies, basically, of a broken heart...

..for not being paid. Maybe you should have been his agent, Giorgio.

I could have definitely been his chef.

The paintings would have been even better!

Eventually, you could say, justice was served.

The family extinguished in 1731

when the last duke, Antonio Farnese,

died without direct heirs.

The Palace has been the French embassy for the last 81 years,

keeping Carracci's masterpiece a bit of a secret.

But now the doors are open once a week,

and he is gradually being rediscovered.

We really have to have some lunch now, so after the power of love,

I want to remind Andrew of the power of pasta.

This is one of the classics.

You're going to learn how to make a carbonara.

A real carbonara, Andrew.

We are heading to Roscioli,

a small restaurant that's been in the same family

for four generations.

Nabil, the cook, is waiting for us.

This is Nabil. Salve, Nabil.

Nabil cooks the best carbonara in the world,

I'm telling you.

So, what makes the Roman carbonara different

from the one that we might eat in a restaurant in London?

That.

GIORGIO AND NABIL DISCUSS INGREDIENTS IN ITALIAN

You don't use any belly,

you use the cheek,

the end of the cheek and the neck.

And when you give a recipe with bacon, you make a big mistake,

because the consistency of this

when it's cooked is a completely different one

than the bacon would be.

So, rule number one, never cook a carbonara with bacon.

I think a lot of people would be quite surprised by that.

Rule number one. No bacon, no pancetta.

The spaghetti are the main ingredient, obviously.

They've been dried, you know, like that.

So they are just going to cross.

But touch the spaghetti.

They're rough. Can you feel the roughness of that?

Oh, yeah, yeah.

Trafilatura al bronzo.

That means the sauce, which is kind of, like the eggs,

is cooked and kind of a bit creamy, it will stick to it.

A really hot pan.

No oil, nothing.

Just the guanciale in it.

You see, it is screaming already. Yeah.

OK, very crispy on the outside and really tender inside,

and when you bite into that, you have an explosion,

an explosion of flavour in your mouth.

Alora.

Turning the spaghetti, very important, don't let them lie down.

Yes. He is going to prepare the eggs now.

OK, the base.

One egg yolk, and then a little bit of egg white,

because it becomes more foamy if he does that.

Beautiful eggs as well.

Parmesan and Pecorino mixed together.

Two nice pinch, pepper.

They love pepper in Rome.

Very important. Toasted Sarawak pepper.

That is so important.

That is the base.

OK? So no garlic, no bacon?

No! Are you crazy?

Don't start to do the American way.

Do not think about putting too many things in it.

It is very essential, it is very clean, it is very neat.

He judges the pasta just with the eye?

Just by looking at it.

He just looks at the pasta,

he doesn't need a timer or anything like that.

Look what he's doing now.

OK.

A little bit of the guanciale in.

A little bit of the fat.

Yeah.

A little bit of that.

Water and the fat that is going to make it creamy.

Rule three. No cream!

No cream. And as the spaghetti goes in, a little bit wet, you see?

He left them a little bit wet.

Yeah.

This is vital, you see?

The cooking water, which already got salt.

Do you notice we have not seasoned anything?

Look, look what he's doing.

So he knows now by touching the edge,

he knows now the eggs is creamy and is cooked.

Beautiful. A bit of cheese around and a little bit of pepper on top.

Wow. Wow. That looks...

Carbonara di Roscioli. Grazie.

Wow, that looks...

I am not leaving this here.

He is not going to let me have any.

You must try to convey to everybody the flavour here,

that really hint of pepper,

the cheese and the creaminess of the eggs,

almost like a fluid mayonnaise or a Bearnaise or a Hollandaise...

That's what you are trying to do.

And then this absolute explosion of

almost like a farmyard taste,

that explosion of the guanciale.

Unbelievable.

Buonissimo.

Grazie. Grazie.

This was a masterclass on carbonara.

It was just!

Thank you.

You know, Giorgio,

if you give me one more plate of pasta,

we are going to have to buy a bigger motorbike.

We are going to finish our journey in modern Rome,

the Rome of the 20th century.

The most famous Italian dictator in living memory

was Benito Mussolini...

..a man whose granite jaw and megaphone rhetoric

was only matched by his severe architecture.

You can still see his buildings all over Rome,

buildings that shouted at the Italian people,

telling them to work harder,

to be on time,

to leave the past behind and go to war.

But in this great city of the people, Mussolini had his opponents,

even if their voices weren't always heard.

For proof of that, I am taking Giorgio to

the Gallery of Modern Art where

they have some of my favourite works of art from the dark, fascist years.

Here, we can still see another side of Rome,

the one that never submitted to fascism and Mussolini.

Look at this figure -

Attilio Torresini's sculpture called Riposo, At Rest,

but she looks almost as if she might be eavesdropping on us.

She looks so...

..beautiful and so unsexualised, but beautiful.

And something slightly sad about her, I think.

I think there's an air of melancholy.

You think it is melancholic?

Maybe I am reading that in.

I mean, I know that the sculpture was made in 1939.

So I just have this feeling that

maybe there's the intimations of war, there is some sense of...

That is a beautiful Italian girl.

..trouble ahead.

Well, if we're talking melancholy,

vieni con me cos one of

the masterpieces of Italian melancholy is in the next room.

This is what has been arranged for us,

a private screening of the masterpiece of Massimo Campigli

and it's just a wonderful...

So we can sit down? We can sit down.

The film has started already.

It is called The Fishermen's Wives.

It is an oil painting,

but it is a bit like a fresco.

The forms are very simple,

they are very solemn, they are very monumental.

There is something of the solemnity of a religious painting.

These women are waiting.

You see, there they are on the left,

they are just holding each other.

The picture was painted in 1935,

so, again, fascism was at its height.

What could be less fascist than this?

Beautiful picture. So the sorrow of the person who loses their husband,

it is almost like saying, "Don't allow your kids to go to war.

"They never come back."

I think this is why this is a painting

that once you start looking at it, it does catch in your throat.

And I think, I mean, are those the colours of Italy in the middle?

Are those the colours of...? Well, there is a bit of green,

there is some red, there is some white.

He enlisted, in the First World War in 1916,

but then during the war and immediately after the war,

he was so horrified by all of that

he said, "I am now forever going to be a pacifist."

But I think it is important to look at these artists

because, as so often in history,

the people who make the most noise,

and the future is with Marinetti as their spokesman banging his drum,

and Mussolini with his megaphone,

everybody knows about them,

but nobody knows about these artists.

It is a much quieter voice,

but it is the voice of conscience.

I think it is a truthful voice.

You know, it makes me think,

what could have been if there was more people like him?

It would have never happened, that Second World War,

they would have never did what they did to each other.

It was just terrible.

And these guys were absolutely right.

Maybe in the end,

that is what artists are for.

To make... To see what we don't see.

Si.

We are at the end of our journey

through a city that is defined by its people.

So where better to finish than with a work of public art?

Proclaiming the eternal might of Rome

on the wall of a modern building.

Look what they have put on the side of the apartment block,

this huge, fantastic, I think, mural of a wolf, the symbol of Rome.

It is unbelievable.

It is so real, isn't it?

You can almost hear it snarling.

I love the hairs and I love it when the evening sun catches it,

the wolf is there and this ordinary building suddenly becomes, wow!

What things did you like the best of the things that we saw on this trip?

The Caravaggio?

Well, those ones were unforgettable, man.

And that St Paul...

..and the story of the asses,

everybody showed their ass to each other, that was fantastic.

Another popular thing that I really liked about was the Garbatella.

Oh! That was so beautiful.

I remember also, the crunch of the guanciale in the carbonara,

the perfect carbonara.

If you were going to feed that wolf anything,

you would give him a really big piece of that guanciale.

This is the wolf of the people,

aggressive and opinionated

and Roman to the core.

I like that kind of Rome,

I like Rome that stays alive through the people.

And, you know, the Pope comes and change,

and the President comes and change, the King comes and change,

but the people of Rome, are still the people of Rome.

They are the one who rules.

They really are. You remember that one?

SPQR.

Senatus Populusque Romanus.

I think it is dinner time.

And you know, in Rome, dinner is always quite good, isn't it?

Not bad. Not bad.

Next time, we uncover more of the hidden Rome.

If you look in the middle, staring out at us,

a painting of the first century AD,

and there are not many of those.

So this is a kidney sandwich.

We try centuries-old traditions.

Oh, mamma mia. We tasted Roman-ity.

And we pay a visit to one of Rome's greatest art collections.

Not a bad room to have a party in.

Hi, I'm Andrew Graham-Dixon and I'm an art historian.

These ancient roads are slightly bumpy.

Calma, calma.

And I'm Giorgio Locatelli, and I'm a cook.

We've been all over Italy revealing gastronomic and artistic treasures.

But now we've come to its beating heart - Rome.

It's a 2,000-year-old metropolis where past and present collide.

It's as unique for an art lover...

Staring out at us.

A painting of the first century AD, and there are not many of those.

As it is for a food lover...

Cuisine that has its backbone on necessity,

that's the cuisine that survives!

We will taste traditional recipes beloved by the Romans.

Oh, mamma mia!

How good is that?

And we'll plunge our forks into the cultures that have shaped the city.

The whole world is cowering in awe of this symbol of papal power.

HORN TOOTS

We'll explore Rome's greatest works of art and architecture.

Not a bad room to have a party in.

Full of light...

..but also, sometimes, darkness.

Unbelievable.

I actually can hear him screaming.

HORN TOOTS

Sorry, scusa!

HORN BLARES Calma, calma.

GIORGIO CHUCKLES

Rome is like a giant time machine,

where treasures from over 2,000 years of history have been preserved

in the many layers of the city.

Ah, look! Look at this!

Look at this, what I got for you, Andrew.

Wow! Never fail to be amazed by that. Never fails.

Every great work of art in Rome, every great recipe,

has deep roots in the past.

That's why, to appreciate the richness of this city,

you have to dig beneath its surface,

to play the part of the archaeologist.

All these Roman walls are enormous on the left, aren't they?

Unbelievable, no?

And there isn't a better place to start our journey through

the many layers of Rome's history than here.

Just a couple of hundred yards from the Colosseum.

OK, Andrew.

So, here we are.

I love this place. The Church of San Clemente.

Here in Rome, we really are surrounded by history,

2,000 years of it.

It's become a cliche to say that,

but what I really love about the city is the different textures

of history that you get here.

And that's why I think this is a great first stop, San Clemente.

It's a Christian church erected in the Middle Ages on

the ruins of Roman pagan antiquity.

It's like a vertical time machine.

You can travel down, down, down, down, down,

and right at the bottom there's this fantastic unexpected human story,

but I'm not going to tell you what it is.

Let's go and have a look, then. Andiamo.

Wow.

This is just one of the most beautiful churches in Rome.

Look at this beautiful apse mosaic of Christ on the cross

representing the tree of life.

Beneath, you have Mary and John.

Look at the delicacy of his loincloth,

that gold structure in mosaic.

The leaf looks like they are artichoke leaves. They maybe are.

That could be a Roman touch.

Incredibly beautiful. So that, I may say, is probably

50 or 60 years' work.

This is a very important church,

because interred here were the remains of Pope Clement.

Yeah. I think he's the third Pope after Peter. Yes.

So it's filled with Christian significance.

But it's also, once you get your eye in and you look around,

it's a spectacular demonstration of the way in which buildings in Rome

have evolved over centuries of history.

So, it's such a mishmash. You've got these ancient Roman columns.

They don't match each other,

they obviously just used what they could find to make that basilica.

Of course, they're all different! They're all different.

And then all of this rectangle of stone,

this amazing marble choir gallery,

was actually made in 536.

Wow... Sixth century.

Like, 600 years before the church.

Exactly.

Over there you've got something that takes us back to the early

15th century, some early Renaissance frescos by Masolino.

Over there you've got a beautiful Renaissance tomb memorial

to one of the Popes. OK.

And then, above, you've got this extraordinary Baroque ceiling,

you know, from the 17th-18th century.

So, you've got all these different levels of history

just in this one building. Yes, yeah.

But I'm going to have to take you actually downstairs

because we can explore what lies beneath here. Beneath.

We are going down into the distant past!

All of the Rome we see today is built on top of the other

much older Romes.

Wow, it's incredible!

In 1857, the prior of San Clemente, Friar Joseph Mullooly,

uncovered the remains of a Christian church beneath the existing one,

dating back all the way to the fourth century.

Very little survives of the original church, just a few frescos.

Frescos depicting New Testament scenes and the life of San Clemente.

But there's yet another lower layer that takes you back to a Rome

400 years older even than that.

We're going down into ancient Rome itself.

You have to imagine it's the time of Nero.

Nero's fiddled, Rome's burned.

They've rebuilt vast areas of the city, including all these houses.

There's a rabbit warren of streets down here.

Archaeologists believe all this dates from roughly 70 AD,

just after Nero's death.

And in the basement of this house, look what we have.

Look what we have. Wow!

A subterranean chamber.

This is the cult of Mithras.

For a while, Mithraic cult was so strong and so powerful that it was

a rival to Christianity.

It had some of the same features as Christianity.

It had ceremonies involving wine and blood,

it had a central myth in which good triumphs over evil.

A man kills a bull.

Look at that agonised neck of the bull.

Come with me. This is a part that they've...

This is never open to the public, this part,

but they've let us go in.

They think that this was a schoolroom that was also part

of the Mithraic cult.

And if you bring your torch over here, if you look in the middle...

..they think that that might be the schoolteacher staring out at us.

A painting of the first century AD, and there are not many of those.

This is, like, what, 2,100 years old?

If he were still alive, yeah,

he'd be celebrating his 2,000th birthday pretty soon.

How amazing is that? GIORGIO CHUCKLES

TRANSLATION:

See, I always know when you like something

cos you start speaking in Italian.

I love it when a work of art puts you face to face with someone

from another world.

And they only just found it. Wow!

I am completely...

Thank you, Andrew, this is such an incredible discovery, this place.

Isn't it?

I'm really glad you liked it.

OK, Andrew, I'm going to take you all along the Lungotevere!

See, now we're doing the Ponte Inglese.

They call it the Ponte Inglese because...

It's the only street in Rome where you drive on the left.

That's right.

I want to show Andrew a different type of archaeology.

The archaeology of food.

We are riding to the neighbourhood of Testaccio -

only 12 minutes away by scooter from San Clemente.

It's an area synonymous with food.

In ancient times, the district was home to the imperial port,

where the bulk of the Roman food supply was brought into the city.

It's a bit rough around the edges.

Where are you going to park?

In 1888, Testaccio was where the city authorities decided to build

Europe's largest municipal abattoir,

which would go on to shape Rome's culinary style.

So, where are we?

It's a slaughterhouse.

It's an enormous slaughterhouse.

It's a beautiful slaughterhouse. You can see there's all these pens.

The animals would be brought in from the countryside, then, you know,

when it was the time they will be slaughtered

and then taken in to feed the population.

Between 1870 and 1901,

Rome's population doubled from a quarter of a million

to half a million.

With so many new mouths to feed, they needed meat.

And more of it than ever.

But this is, this is amazing! Look at this.

But this is like a city of death.

It's even still got the signs. Yeah.

They didn't only kill cows, they killed everything.

You know, the chickens, everything.

Any kind of animal was slaughtered round here.

But look at the architecture of it, it's like a temple.

I love this marriage of styles.

A classical pediment on a 19th century industrial slaughterhouse

made of bricks and iron.

I just can't believe it, we're in the middle of Rome and this hasn't

been turned into apartment blocks or... So, what happens is...

..yuppie living. The animal would be killed, the animal would be hanged,

and then they could move around.

Incredible.

In that space, I have to imagine, how many people?

It would be, like, 60-80 people all dirty of blood.

Here was kind of like a pulsating sort of part of the town,

because, you know, you know,

you can only have a really lively town if you feed them and you have

them healthy and they can work, and so-and-so.

So this was part of kind of, even if it was about death, it's about life.

It's amazing, this place. The energy in that room.

I mean, Charles Dickens would've

written a whole novel about this place.

It's like Rome delivers this piece of history.

It's not like the history of politics or a history of, like,

with a name attached to it or a movement.

No, it's just part of actual real history.

So, Giorgio, how did this

extraordinary place change the food of Rome? OK.

So you got to think about the new and extremely rich people

and powerful people that ran this beautiful house,

and they have, like, hundreds of people who serve and work in it.

So they would send the cooks down to the market.

The cooks would come down and buy a quarter of the animal.

So they walk away with the front quarter or the back quarter.

What was left in the place was all the other bits.

What they call the quinto quarto. What we call the offal in English.

Like the liver, the kidneys, the heart, and the feet and...

Yeah, the lips...

Really, the most, you know, horrible bits, you know, of the animal.

And some of the people didn't get paid.

You didn't get paid money, you got paid with those bits of animal.

So these guys are coming home with a bucket full of liver. Yeah.

Or a bucket full of tripe.

And they give it to the wife,

and the wife will just cook it and sell it.

And so that's how they will make their money.

Ah. So, this leads to a new kind of street food.

This great idea of the street market with the people who then consume

the food, it was like hundreds of years ago it was done in Rome.

The slaughterhouse closed down in 1975.

But across the road at Testaccio Market its legacy lives on.

From the age of 14,

Signor Sergio Esposito worked at the abattoir.

And for the last 40 years he's been cooking offal

using traditional recipes passed down by his grandmother.

Buongiorno, Sergio.

Buongiorno. Come va? Bene.

Mi amico Andrew.

ANDREW SPEAKS ITALIAN

I'm Andrew, ciao.

Look what he's doing.

Look, he's cutting your favourite thing.

La coratella. Oh, so this is the heart and the lungs. The heart...

The lungs, look at that, look at that.

Look at that beauty of the lamb.

You see why they call it the fifth quarter,

when you look at it, but when you taste it... Yeah!

TRANSLATION:

So, when he was little, he used to work where they killed the animals.

TRANSLATION:

That's exactly what you were saying.

So, his grandfather was working in the slaughterhouse.

And got paid a little bit of money and a little bit of meat.

And quite a lot of liver. And liver!

So, you must taste one thing.

You must taste one thing. Can I taste three things?

Now then, don't be greedy.

So, this is a kidney sandwich.

What else is in the recipe? Onions.

TRANSLATION:

And wine. White wine.

Wine.

Oh, mamma mia!

How good is that?

GIORGIO SPEAKS ITALIAN

Can I have the...?

He's obviously got great admiration for you.

The flavour is incredible and it's so direct.

There is three ingredients.

There's white wine, there's onions and there is kidney.

And you can taste all three of that.

And when you walk away, tomorrow you will remember what you eat.

So this is what it's all about.

I mean, the sweetness,

the unbelievable flavour that comes through.

Do you have tripe?

It might not be to everyone's taste,

but the stomach lining of a cow cooked with onions and tomato sauce

is a real delicacy.

Look at that.

That's a little bit of pecorino Romano on top. Look at that.

That's a sandwich.

The saltiness jumps out at you.

And it's got a little bit of mentucce in that.

A touch of mint.

You see, lots of people, if you even say the word tripe,

they go, "Ew! How can you eat that?"

But the truth is, it's such a beautiful, delicate dish.

It's so rich, isn't it? You can taste the richness of that.

You know, it's almost sticking, your lips are sticking together.

Fantastic. La Romanita.

We tasted "Romanity," that's what he calls it.

It's a Romeness, Romeness sandwiches.

Sergio, grazie. Grazie.

Grazie. Grazie. Arrivederci.

Ciao, ciao. Ciao!

HORN TOOTS

Romanity comes in many forms.

And if there is one community that's left its mark on

Roman culinary tradition, it's the Jewish community.

Their origins in the city can be traced back to 200 BC,

when envoys arrived from the Holy Land hoping to establish

trading links with ancient Rome.

Buongiorno. Buongiorno.

More than 2,000 years later, the Jewish presence lives on.

This is called pizza ebraica.

Grazie. Grazie.

Are you not going to pay for it?

It's very special.

300 years? Si.

That's... They've been baking in this corner for 300 years.

Complement... Well, it tastes like it.

Si.

Really good. Medieval sweet bread.

Grazie.

Grazie. Arrivederci.

But life for the Jewish people of Rome hasn't always been sweet.

In 1555, Pope Paul IV ordered the construction of the Jewish ghetto.

Its walls confined them to a squalid area along the River Tiber.

Severe laws restricted them to just a few occupations.

This is a very characteristic street of the ghetto. Mm.

Because it's narrow, reflecting the medieval origins of this area,

but it's also really tall.

So, it's very shadowed, it's very dark, it's a bit dank and damp.

The reason the buildings are so tall here is because

the ghetto couldn't expand outwards, so they had to build up.

Which made the sanitation in an area that was already not great,

even worse. Yeah. That's the place they were given.

Like not a very good piece of land.

They had all these humiliating sort of ceremonies and rituals.

So if you were the Chief Rabbi in the ghetto,

every year you had to renegotiate the Jews' tenancy of the ghetto.

And when the Caporioni, the head of the city councillors of Rome agreed,

it was marked by ceremony on the Capitoline Hill in that

beautiful square that Michelangelo designed.

The rabbi would say, "Oh, thank you for giving me and the Jews

"another year in the ghetto."

And the ceremony ended when the rabbi turned round and was

bent down as part of this public theatre.

And the Caporioni kicked him in the... Man, no!

No, really, that was the...

Well, that's unbelievable.

Access to food was extremely limited,

as the Jewish people were restricted in their employment opportunities.

One of the few occupations permitted was selling food on the street,

which meant they could bring home the leftovers.

Despite their limited access to ingredients,

they still created mouthwatering dishes,

which have stood the test of time

and I'm going to cook a couple for Andrew.

Coffee delivery service!

Oh! Thank you, Andrew. Good man.

Mm. Even the takeaway coffee tastes good in Rome, doesn't it?

It's not bad. OK, look, I'm going to cook you some stuff.

It's called gozzamoddi.

And they are like these... Kind of like meatballs.

Made with chicken? Made with chicken. Bravo.

You've carefully kept the chicken skin.

Any type of fat would have been expensive.

Use the skin. These guys lived on the scraps of everybody else.

So, it was a cuisine created by the necessity, and as usual,

a cuisine that creates

and has its backbone, on necessity -

that's the cuisine that survives.

Give me a job. Something not too difficult.

OK, I'm going to give you a couple of carrots to peel.

We've got the celery.

First, I'm going to prepare a sauce

using carrots, celery, onions and tomato,

and my secret ingredient.

So, I have the skin.

These will give this really beautiful

chicken flavour to the sauce.

A nice little... Like if it was a spoonful.

The smell is very good. Smells like we're cooking, doesn't it?

One of the typical things of the Jewish community -

they didn't write the recipe down.

The recipes were something that were passed

mostly from mother to daughter.

This is hundreds of years of refining and refining.

The experience, the necessity,

and the availability of ingredients,

so these are the three things then placed together

to make this recipe incredible.

You've got to taste the sauce and tell me if we need more salt.

Come on. Blow, blow, blow, blow, blow.

Salt? A tiny bit more.

A tiny bit of salt, and we let it cook.

And, you know, could you taste already the chicken in that?

Yeah. From the fat? Of course. Definitely. Yeah, really nice.

Unbelievable. I love that.

Now it needs to simmer, and what we're going to do,

I'm going to make the meatball mixture.

I'm going to add salt, pepper,

a tiny little bit of cinnamon.

Then, I got a little bit of the kosher bread,

which I have already sort of put in water.

So, this is going to give me a really, really nice consistency.

The egg is to bind it? That's right. It's going to sort of become

a beautiful glomerated mass of flavour. OK.

And is the idea that the meatball in the sauce -

that is the dish, there's nothing else?

No, that's it. There's no rice or potatoes?

No, they would eat so frugally.

No, there is nothing coming with that.

Six of them. OK, I'm going to place them in.

And now we're going to have to go and get the artichoke

because you can't come to Rome, in the Jewish quarter,

and not having artichoke.

But, hang on, they're not in season.

If you know people, you can get artichoke.

So, we're going to cut the stems off.

Roman artichokes are exceptionally tender.

Everything, from the leaves to the stem and heart,

is edible and delicious.

It's got that silvery green, doesn't it?

That's quite a noise. Beautiful, isn't it? The cauldron is bubbling.

This way of deep-frying artichokes is known as carciofi alla giudia,

Jewish-style artichoke,

and it's now one of the most famous of all Roman recipes.

Cos the ghetto's so small, everybody else would know

that the mama in this house is cooking the artichokes

cos the smell is travelling down the street.

The idea is to open it up.

No mistaking that you're eating a flower.

So, they're actually cooked?

You're just finishing the texture? Yeah.

You're going to sort of flash-fry them?

Look at that. It makes me think of Van Gogh's sunflowers!

THEY LAUGH You've just painted a picture!

Une artiste! I cannot be more happy than that.

I think it's perfect.

Well, this is so lovely. Mm.

I like the contrast in the two textures.

So, the heart is all soft, almost like an avocado.

Mm. And the petals are...

Nice and crispy. Yeah, they're like crisps.

Taking my hat off

to the Jewish tradition of cooking artichoke like that.

I think it's stunning.

Mm-mm-mm!

Oh, such a smell! Mm!

Really chicken, but also with this rich tomato, as well.

Let's taste it.

See? Mm!

Amazing, yeah? That is amazing! GIORGIO CHUCKLES

The experience in the mouth

is that it's such a refined dish, it's such a delicate flavour.

So light. We're touching this small history, the human history.

On the one hand, you've got the artichoke,

which is made by people who know that,

at any point, they might have to run away.

So, they're doing something that they can keep,

they can eat in a week. You can literally put it in your pocket.

Yeah. The other hand, with the meatballs,

they're making food that, simultaneously,

is completely of this place - Rome - with these wonderful ingredients,

but also they just have this little memory

of the travels of the Jews in the form of the cinnamon... Mm.

..which is not something I associate at all with Italian food.

Yeah, I wouldn't think any Italian would put any cinnamon.

I mean, I don't know where cinnamon comes from,

but, to me, it's a little taste of, you know, the Middle East.

And the little girl can be told by her mum, "You see the cinnamon?

"That's because we've been there."

It's lovely. Thank you, Giorgio. That's absolutely delicious.

I never had something where the appearance is so,

as it were, ordinary, and the taste is so sublime.

Grazie. Oh, Andrew! Look at that. That's...

..30% and 50% schiuma.

Schiuma. La schiuma. There's no milk, just cream?

No, this is the cream of the coffee.

What I like about Rome is that, in most other cities,

if you want to experience the past, you have to go into a museum.

You have to go inside, to a museum. Right. Here in Rome - no, no.

If you want to tell me about the past, and the slaughterhouses,

and what it was like one date, you just take me over there,

and it's all still there. Old places - that can be the museum.

Yes, you're right. But it's not a museum of history with a capital H.

It's a museum of history with a small H for humanity.

For humanity. It's the history of food,

or it might be the history of what the Jews once did here,

how they once lived.

That's what I like. Everywhere you turn,

there's another story. Yes.

So, today, we're going to go and see something from high, high culture.

OK. We're going to go to one of the great palaces.

My favourite thing in there is actually not,

like, a famous, great masterpiece.

It's something quite strange and unusual, and it's food-related.

Grazie. Grazie. Buona giornata.

This would be a nice street to live in,

with all these beautiful views across the Tiber.

HORN HONKS

Here we are.

We're heading to the Palazzo Colonna,

one of the oldest and largest private palaces in all of Rome.

Nice little abode. HE CHUCKLES

Yes, humble - not quite.

The Palazzo Colonna spans an entire city block.

Its construction began in the 14th century,

and the building work lasted for 500 years,

hence the rich mix of different architectural styles.

Even the great artist and architect Gian Lorenzo Bernini

lent his expertise to the building and design of the palace.

So, this is the great symbol of the Colonna - the column.

And then, on the side, this inscription.

"Semper immota." Never moved. Never moved.

Always here.

And you can't say that it's a hollow boast,

cos they are still here. Right. That's Aslan for us, to meet us.

Salve. Buongiorno, Aslan. Buongiorno. Buongiorno. Buongiorno.

Aslan, a member of the modern Colonna family,

is going to show us around.

Giorgio, after you. Oh, thank you.

The Colonna family was among the most powerful and influential

of the Roman baronial dynasties.

Within their family tree, you can find a Pope, a saint,

a spiritual adviser of Michelangelo, a general, a patron of Caravaggio,

and many other church and political leaders.

Oh! That's why I took my glasses off.

Yes, yes, you need to take your glasses off.

What a room!

Giorgio, hai visto?

Amazing. Amazing.

Not a bad room to have a party in.

The splendid Galleria Colonna

was commissioned in the mid-17th century

by Cardinal Girolamo and his nephew Lorenzo Onofrio Colonna.

What a thing, huh? Oh, my God!

From the outset, the gallery was conceived as a vast stage set

to celebrate the Colonna family's part

in a famous military victory of 1571.

The room is 76 metres long

and every square inch is decorated, gilded,

or adorned with sculpture.

You can't come in here and not be amazed.

On the roof, you've got the great Battle of Lepanto.

It's really the one great victory of the Christians over Islam.

In command of the victorious fleet is Marcantonio Colonna,

and the Colonna family will never let the world forget

that they were at the centre of this triumph.

Still, in Italy, you know, if you see a big guy,

you say, "Che bel pezzo di Marcantonio."

It means, "What a great big man."

So, still hundreds and hundreds of years,

these guys set the standard,

and the Italians still, you know, aim to Marcantonio.

I mean, the action there, you can actually...

You feel the spray of the sea coming down towards you.

You see these people drowning and...

And all the flags. ..it is unbelievable.

Beautifully vibrant and beautiful colour.

It's a very famous room even for people

who are not perhaps interested in art history,

because this is where they shot the final scene of Roman Holiday.

Roman Holiday was here.

And up there was Audrey Hepburn

saying hello to all the journalists here.

That's right. And then there's poor Gregory Peck.

Was it Gregory Peck? Gregory Peck, yeah. Yeah, with his broken heart.

But, I mean, if ever a room was waiting for the cinema...

It's this one. ..it's this one.

Thank you, Aslan. Grazie.

Grazie. Is it OK if we stay just a little while longer?

Of course. There's plenty of space.

There's quite a lot of things to look at.

This palace, every room - every room - is a cornucopia.

I love this painting.

This is such a strange, weird, wonderful painting.

It was commissioned by him, Filippo Colonna,

after the death of his wife and the death of his mother.

And what he wanted was a depiction of the souls of the blessed

rising on the last day when Christ comes back,

and we are all born again.

And everyone being born again is a Colonna.

Look, there's Marcantonio Colonna. Marcantonio.

And when I see him there,

I see what you mean when you say he's like a big guy.

I mean, he looks like a wrestler!

He's going to wrestle his way into heaven.

Isn't that something? By Pietro Da Cortona.

So, by a famous artist, I've never seen a painting quite like it.

Talking of eternity and the soul, this is the family's chapel. Mm.

Even in such a rich art collection as this,

if you dig a little, there's always a surprise to unearth.

Look at this. Oh, my God.

This has only been discovered

by the Colonna family themselves last year.

There was always a rather dirty cross on the altar,

but they only recently realised that it was actually a box,

and that, inside... No way! Yeah.

This was inside the box! This was inside.

It's late 15th century, it's from Florence...

..but they don't know who it's by.

Some people have suggested Antonio da Sangallo.

Some people have suggested it could even be by Michelangelo.

Look at the ribcage, look at the blood,

look at the handling of the drapery and the face.

Absolutely amazing thing. Mm.

Can you imagine having that, you know,

sort of forgotten in a cupboard?

That is unbelievable.

Not bad, eh?

I've got something that I think

is definitely going to be to your taste,

and I mean taste with a capital T.

From the sacred to the profane.

If ever there was a picture for Giorgio Locatelli,

surely, it's this one. It's called...

BOTH: The Beaneater. Yeah. You know, I know this picture,

because that was right in the front of the cookery books...

Oh, really? ..I used to have at school. Yes.

This is beautiful because, look, these are black-eyed beans.

You see a little bit of the juices there.

Can you see it falling down? Yes!

And that's like... Look at that. Like a cipollotto.

Brown bread, cos, obviously, at that time, you know,

they didn't make white flour yet.

Typical Roman way to cut it on the top like that.

And then you can see that you can break it up in pieces.

So, he's holding one piece.

You know this is painted by Annibale Carracci in the 1590s?

This was his version of Arte Povera.

This was his way of painting the life

of poor, ordinary, working people.

He pioneered this, along with Caravaggio.

It's almost as if Carracci has changed his style

to adapt to the subject matter.

He's painting something that is quite a poor subject

and he's doing it very quickly.

He's doing low colours,

not bright flashes of red or ultramarine blue.

It's brilliant that they've put it underneath this picture,

which is all about Mary as the Queen of Heaven,

you know, wearing her wonderful draperies.

And then, beneath, it's the people's king of the beans!

And it's lovely, as well, I think that, you know,

in the Palazzo Colonna, which is so much a place

about this huge span of history,

in the end, what's the painting we've finished in front of?

A peasant eating his dinner. And how Roman is that?

This is great for me to have seen this. Really.

HORN HONKS It wouldn't be Rome if we didn't hit

an occasional traffic jam, would it? Yeah.

I Vigili del Fuoco - the fire brigade, Andrew.

Andiamo. HORN HONKS

So, where are we going, Giorgio?

We're going to see a very good chef. What's her name?

Si chiama Cristina Bowerman.

She's very inspiring, the way she works with old recipes.

Her food is really top-notch.

Maybe she can cook us some beans, eh?

Well, that's... Let's hope so.

Cristina's Michelin-starred restaurant is called Glass Hostaria.

It's in the trendy neighbourhood of Trastevere

in the centre of the city.

You come from these great, wide avenues

into these little almost like labyrinths of streets.

With all these bars and restaurants, everybody eating and drinking.

HORN HONKS This is it?

I'm going to introduce you.

Cristina. In this beautiful tavern. How are you?

Can we come in? Welcome. Very well. Yes. Come on over.

Cristina uses ingredients from traditional Roman cuisine.

Today, she's going to cook for us a unique cheesecake.

A cheesecake? A cheesecake with pasta, with beans and mussels.

Are we talking about almost a scherzo on the cheesecake?

Exactly. Cos it's a joke on the cheesecake.

That is exactly it. Cos we're savoury here.

We're not sweet. Exactly.

This is actually the base of the cheesecake,

but let me show you how I did it.

She boiled it, and then she put it into a dryer and dried.

Can I just get that right?

The base of the cheesecake - you cook pasta?

Exactly. You, then, when it's cooked...

Dry them. ..you deep-fry it?

Yes. Deep-fried it. Then you dry it in the oven?

And then you crunch it up?

So, it's instead of the biscuits? Exactly.

How thick do you want it? I want it, like, this thick.

OK. And you need to press it.

So, now... What's this extraordinary...?

That's the beans. That's the beans. This is cannellini beans.

The cannellini beans that have been made into a puree.

This is what that becomes? Exactly. That's exactly it.

Beans are really part of our tradition.

They used to say the Roman army would travel on their stomach

and, you know, what they would carry would be like cicerchie.

They will have... Chickpeas? Yeah, like...

Cicerchie is like wild chickpeas

that they used to carry on their bags with their salt -

their own salt - and a little bit of flour.

So, they would do this, like, cook the beans,

add things, and make some... I don't know. Some bread.

And they would make up something like that,

even as they were advancing.

So, even this would probably very much surprise a Roman soldier,

but he would still, in some taste memory,

he would know what it is.

It's going to look like a dessert! Exactly.

And this is my last touch. Smell it.

Wow! That is... Those are mussels.

Goodness me. So, how have you prepared those?

I cooked them up, then I dehydrated them,

and then I powderised them. Goodness me. I never heard of that.

Can you buy this or...? No, you have to make it fresh.

No, no, no, I made them. You make it yourself? Yeah. Yeah.

So, you're going to have that bean taste, pasta taste,

and then you're going to be hit by that sort of flavour of the fish

because, you know, like, the mussel, they've got that really fish...

Rich, fishy flavour. That is very ingenious.

So, when did you invent this recipe? Last month. Last month?!

So, this is straight off the wheel of time.

Mm! Can you taste the mussels? Yeah. Very strong.

The mussel comes at the end... At the end.

..with the seasoning and...

And that's the thing that should stay with you.

What I love also is this crust.

I have one little more surprise.

Could you wait just 20 seconds? I'm going to go get it. OK.

We can wait. You can clean up here, so I can put it right there.

We can eat a bit more of this if you want. So...

Ooh, wow! Cannelloni.

I want you to taste it and guess what it is.

Mm! It's some kind of beautiful semifreddo.

Mm-hm. Made of...?

If you're going to put me to the test, it's like nougat?

Almonds? OK, I'll make it easy for you.

They are all beans. That's all beans?!

This is a meringue made out of the leftover water

from cooking the beans.

That's a bean powder, and that's a bean mousse.

You're kidding me! Yes. You are kidding me.

The only different thing is it's an almond outside.

There is an almond. I knew there was an almond. Yeah, the green stuff.

But everything else is a bean? Everything else is a bean.

You are kidding me. So, you can make anything out of a bean, right?

Not only. You use everything, even the water.

No, I don't mean... I don't mean one.

I mean YOU can make anything out of a bean.

Thank you. Yes. You really can.

Come on, let's go. Thank you. This was delicious. That was fantastic.

It's BEAN great. SHE CHUCKLES

But in the 1920s,

there was a man who wanted to shake up the Italian way

of living and thinking.

Everything, from the food they ate

to the attitude towards work and the state.

Fascist dictator Benito Mussolini

dreamt of restoring the glories of the past -

to turn a nation of spaghetti eaters into gladiators, even gods.

In 1922 he came to power,

determined to transform what was still a very young and weak country.

So beautiful, isn't it? Look at that.

In Rome, he demolished old neighbourhoods,

creating new districts full of angular buildings

in a style known as fascist architecture.

It's really striking, isn't it?

We've come to visit one of his most symbolic architectural projects

in the northern part of Rome.

This is the Stadio dei Marmi, designed by Enrico Del Debbio.

This is very much Mussolini's vision for a new Italy -

strong, tall.

The statues evoke the ancient Roman idea of health, physique.

"If our boys can be trained up to win the 100 metres, the shot put,

"the boxing, then Italy can win a war.

"Italy can rule Europe."

The statues are made of Carrara marble.

Each one has the name of a different province of Italy. Yes.

So, apparently, each of the provinces was to...

They agreed to donate one of the statues.

They "agreed". THEY CHUCKLE

Like they had much choice! They agreed to donate a statue.

Oh, I see. So, that's why Venice is the sailor. Of course.

Football - that must be Milan, right?

THEY LAUGH

Have you noticed, they all have the same bottom?

It's the bottom of Michelangelo's David.

Also, they're all in this kind of Michelangelo pastiche.

Also, the same style as Hitler's statues.

Yeah. Arno Breker. This idea of the Aryan perfect body.

There's a bit of eugenics, I think, about this.

You know, "If we breed from the right stock,

"Italians will all grow to be 20ft tall."

The setting is incredible,

but I can't stop that little bit of sadness

to really think what this really represents -

this delusional moment,

this moment that Italy thought about themselves

really something that we are not.

Is there anywhere else in Europe than...?

Something like that was there from a previous regime

would have been, like, blown away and broken down. That's very Rome.

You know, if you want to find the sculptures created

to project Hitler's idea of Germany, you have to go to the storeroom

of the German Museum of History in Berlin.

If you want to see Stalin's great images of

the Soviet state as he envisaged it,

you have to go to the basement of the New Tretyakov Gallery.

But here in Rome, because, somehow, they have this tolerant attitude

that every part of history, it's OK to have it remembered.

I don't think they celebrate it, but they leave it here,

maybe almost now for us as a kind of lesson of a mistake

that shouldn't be made again.

Salve.

Do you know, in this helmet,

you look a little bit like Mussolini?

Andrew, that's not a very nice thing to say.

Mussolini's idea of displaying power through architecture

was not a new concept.

It has been part of the Roman DNA

since the Caesars built monuments like the Colosseum.

This architecture of power reached its peak

during the age of the Baroque,

when one man above all others used stone and sculpture

to express the glory of the Christian church

in a multitude of breathtaking forms.

The great 17th-century sculptor, painter and architect

Gian Lorenzo Bernini was responsible for many great works,

including the colonnade of St Peter's,

the beautiful statues which line the Sant'Angelo Bridge,

and the masterpiece which stands in this square.

This is Piazza Navona.

This is one of the most beautiful squares in the world.

Very unusual shape. It's an unusual shape

because this was

Imperatore Domiziano Stadium for running.

So, the people used to run around here.

So, we've got the footprint of a stadium,

but now it's a Baroque square, and in the middle,

the most ambitious, perhaps the most brilliant

of Bernini's monuments to the power of the papal states.

Look at that. It's fantastic, isn't it?

You know, he very nearly didn't get to design this because

the Pope who commissioned it, Innocent X... Right.

..he didn't like Bernini

cos Bernini had done a lot of work for the Pope before.

Bernini played a clever trick, cos he had a female friend -

an aristocratic friend - who was quite close to the Pope. Mm.

And she, one day, took a silver model

that Bernini had made of a fountain -

an imaginary fountain - and took it into the Pamphili Palace.

That was the family palace of the Pope.

And he saw this silver model,

and he said, "Oh, that's my fountain.

"That's the fountain I've been dreaming of."

And she said, "Yes, but it's by Bernini."

And he said, "Oh, well, Bernini's going to have the job.

"I said no, but I've got to say yes cos it's so beautiful."

And this is how it turned out in marble.

Is that all Carrara marble? All Carrara marble

with an entire Egyptian obelisk

pillaged from ancient Egypt by the ancient Romans,

which was set up on top of Bernini's fountain.

So, the idea of the fountain is that the whole world -

symbolised by the great rivers of the four continents -

the whole world is cowering in awe of this papal erection,

this symbol of papal power.

Bernini is such a Roman.

You know, he's almost got Roman marble

in his veins instead of blood.

So, he knows very well that the ancient Roman sculptors

created these figures of the river gods.

But in Bernini, everything is about movement, motion, drama, theatre.

If the Roman river gods of the past have been woken up,

they've been dynamised and energised.

Each one has a different pose.

This one is the River Plate, the New World.

That's the Ganges. That's India.

Isn't that wonderful - the palm tree just sort of

growing up towards the base of the obelisk?

I mean, it's amazing, how it's made of this marble,

and the travertino.

And also this idea of the movement is incredible, isn't it?

Well, the lion is drinking. That's what it's doing.

The lion's come to drink.

So, this is Africa. What animal is that?

Is it a crocodile, an armadillo?

What is it? That's where you can see, in the sculpture,

the limits of his knowledge. He can do a lion...

Oh, yeah. ..because they had lions in Baroque Rome.

They had... You know, they knew what they looked like.

But, yeah, I think it's meant to be an armadillo,

but it's almost like a dragon in a fairy story.

This fountain is one of the many works by Bernini

to have defined his public image as a great artist,

someone with the title "the man that built Baroque Rome".

But I want to scratch below the surface

to see what else Rome can reveal of him.

Bernini is all over this town, but as a man,

he remains, to most people, I think, quite mysterious.

It's as if you can't really touch his personality.

In fact, he was quite a troubled guy.

He was a very unsuccessful human being.

Yeah, you could put it like that.

He ordered his servant to disfigure his mistress.

He had a lot of problems with his brother.

So, at the centre of his life, there's this profound sense of guilt

and anxiety, but nowhere do you touch it in his work -

except one place, and that's where I want to take you.

Here - Spanish Embassy.

There are two sculptures that give you, if you like,

his personality, and we have an appointment.

OK, let's have a look.

This rarely-seen sculpture

was commissioned by the Spanish Cardinal Montoya in 1619

when Bernini was only 20 years old.

I wanted you to see this cos this is the great Bernini

that no-one ever sees.

This is actually a self-portrait.

This is Bernini's face.

The vein going down his neck, like pumping blood into the...

Unbelievable.

I mean, his understanding of muscle and things is incredible.

The expression of the nose, the bags under his eyes...

It's like he's there for real.

One of Bernini's great gifts as an artist

would be the ability to turn marble into human expression.

Even Michelangelo doesn't capture this level of expression.

I actually can hear him screaming.

You're right, you can hear. You can hear the cry of anguish!

Bernini was a violent man.

When Bernini's brother slept with Bernini's mistress,

he was so enraged

that he tried to beat his brother to death with a steel bar.

His brother only survived by seeking sanctuary in a local church.

And Bernini then, very brutally,

ordered one of his servants to go and cut the face,

with a razor, of his mistress -

literally to disfigure her

for having injured his face, his reputation.

But do you know what it really represents?

Someone in torment. The soul condemned to damnation.

Dannati. So, there he is, screaming,

as he first sees that he's going to experience

the rest of his existence, all eternity, in the flames of hell.

But to fully understand this work of art,

we need to look at its twin - light to its darkness.

Come on this side, cos on this side, we've got the blessed soul -

the soul that goes to heaven.

Bernini placed both of the sculptures

five metres away from the other one,

and each had to have a mirror behind it.

And, you know, when you look down mirrors,

you get this perspective of infinite time

that these sculptures occupy. Of course, because you can see...

So, whether you're damned or whether you're blessed,

you're going to be looking into infinity always.

I think maybe you're also meant to think about yourself.

Where am I going to be at the end of the day?

Am I going to be down in the flames of hell with him,

or am I going to be the one with eyes fixed heavenward?

Bernini has left an indelible mark on Rome.

But there is another less celebrated body of work

which is dotted all over the city,

and before we leave, we want to pay tribute to it.

You know these little Madonnas that we keep seeing...

Yeah. ..here, there, everywhere? Everywhere.

Apparently, there are 2,000 of these Madonnas...

Yeah? ..here in Rome, and this is one of my favourites.

The Madonna of the Tunnel is what I call her.

I think, here, they call her Maria di Roma.

But isn't that such a wonderful thing?

A piece of folk art, probably been repainted...

..100, 200 times.

You know, this is a mile away from Annibale Carracci,

Caravaggio, Michelangelo, but I love it all the more for that.

It's so Roman. As you say, there's about 2,000 of them around.

So, that means that you have one Madonna,

I've got my Madonna, and he's got his Madonna.

Every apartment block has its own Madonna. That's right.

You know, there's people, they put this little statue,

they put a candle, they put the flowers.

They treat it almost like they might treat

their mother's grave in the cemetery.

I love the fact that it's just so straightforward.

Look at these clumsy little...

They're like Roman babies in their nappies,

and they're just happy to be here holding up the Virgin's tunnel.

And the ceiling is actually, you know...

As folk art goes, that's kind of pretty brilliant, isn't it?

It's actually a fresco - real fresco.

HE CHUCKLES And it's just a pedestrian tunnel.

How more Roman than that can you be? That is incredible.

The beauty of this city is immense. There's no beauty like that.

After delving through the many layers of this great city,

we are ending our journey at Rome's foundations.

What a glorious scene. What beautiful light.

This is incredible. Amazing!

That's the Colosseum down at the end there. Yeah.

It's the corner.

Well, that's 2,000 years of history right there,

and looking down on it, you know, we're looking down

on the central site of all Roman archaeology - the Forum.

And in the past, when I've come here and looked at this view,

I've always imagined, in my mind, I always wondered, you know,

where's Emperor Nero, if we could go back in time?

Where are the senators? Where's Cicero?

I'm not thinking that now. No. I'm thinking,

"Hmm, I wonder where the artichoke seller would have been?

"I wonder where the butcher would have come in?

"Where's the Jewish cook?"

"Where is the little Jewish guy that does the recipe?"

We did the archaeology of a different city this time, didn't we?

A different kind of archaeology. We did, we did.

This is super special. Think of all the places that we haven't visited.

We haven't actually been down there in the Forum,

we haven't visited the Colosseum, we haven't seen the Sistine Chapel.

We've done our unpacked thing, where we, you know,

we stick to the edges, we go to the less well-known places.

But, you know, do we feel any worse for that?

Have we missed those other things? I don't think so.

In order to understand this Rome through history,

you've got to also understand the life of the normal people,

not only of the kings and the emperor.

Yeah, yeah, I agree. Or the popes.

I mean, maybe that's the truest version of history.

You know, you try to find the book that is lost

at the bottom of the library.

Try to turn the pages that no-one's read.