4 Days in Rome

There is no such thing as Italian food, and every Italian will tell you so. Cross a single valley and the butter turns to olive oil, the rice to durum wheat, the ragù to something the next town over would barely recognise. The whole country runs on its markets — the pre-dawn clatter of crates, tomatoes still warm from the vine, the fishmonger calling out the morning’s catch — and on the unshakeable conviction that Nonna’s version is the only correct one.

The magic is how little it takes. Rome spins gold from pecorino and black pepper in a bowl of cacio e pepe; a Florentine bistecca is charred, salted and left gloriously alone; Venetians drift bar to bar grazing cicchetti with a spritz in hand; Naples treats its pizza as something close to scripture; Sicily laces Arab-Norman sweetness through everything it touches. Sit down, order the thing the region is proud of, and let the arguing begin — you’ll be planning the next meal before this one’s finished.