Rome in December doesn’t ask for approval. It doesn’t pose. It lights up because it’s December, not because it has something to prove. The lights on Via del Corso come on with the same inevitability as the moment Romans find themselves, at some point on Christmas Eve, sitting down at the table. It isn’t excitement, it’s familiarity, it’s home calling.

Anyone looking for Nordic perfection, the kind of cities that at Christmas seem to have stepped out of a tin of Danish biscuits, everything neat, everything scheduled, everything photo ready, has chosen the wrong latitude. Here it’s as it always is, beautiful and impossible, generous and chaotic. Capable of handing you a sunset that takes your breath away, and then leaving you at a bus stop waiting for a bus that never turns up.