Rekindling a romance with Rome

When I was 19 I spent a year living in Rome. The chairman of the company I worked for was a wonderful old grandee, tall and craggily handsome, who'd been a producer in Cinecittà, Italy's small but superbly glamorous equivalent of Hollywood. Sitting in a smart restaurant next to Bobo Craxi, the socialist politician whose career, mired in allegations of bribery, was about to come to an abrupt end, he would reminisce about his time filming

He was just one of the magical characters who flitted in and out of my Roman life. There was also a husky-voiced, raven-haired nightclub entrepreneur, Lucy, who always wore a black leather catsuit, and an equally beautiful angelic blonde Rockefeller, living incognito, who took me under her wing and into her honey-coloured flat overlooking the Tiber. And that's without mentioning the swarthy David Ginola-lookalike French boss who caused such havoc with my teenage emotions.

But the star of my time there was the city itself, and my greatest pride was my familiarity with it. I worked in the Piazza Navona, which is on the site of an ancient Roman circus, but was transformed by Bernini and Borromini into a Baroque jewel of a square. I knew where to get the best cappuccino in the centro storico; where to stand so I wouldn't get groped on the bus; which quirky little dress shop in Trastevere had the best sales.

No surprise, then, that I cried on the Tube home from Heathrow when the time came to leave. Nor that I spent almost 20 years desperate to return to Rome, but too frightened to go back in case it had changed out of all recognition.

At first sight, when I landed at Fiumicino, things were indeed different. When I lived there, I shared a shabby little flat with two rather strange students, Antonio and Franco from Bari. This time, I checked into the Rome Cavalieri hotel in the hills north of the city, an area which I had never ventured to when I lived there.

The Rome Cavalieri is the most over-the-top place I have ever stayed, and I mean that in the best possible way. The lobby is hung with gigantic Tiepolo canvases and what isn't upholstered in figured silk is bedecked with gold leaf. But the greatest luxury of the hotel is space. In a city as crowded and complex as Rome, a swimming pool (the Cavalieri has three) is a welcome retreat. This is particularly the case when your poolside Sunday brunch is enlivened by Flavio Briatore, the scandal-hit F1 magnate. He pitched up in his blue-tinted sunglasses, his glamorous new wife pushing a Billionaire-branded baby buggy behind him and, with his multiple gadgets, procession of courtiers and expansive gesticulating, turned the feast into a performance.

But even he couldn't make it my most memorable meal in the hotel, because on its top floor the Cavalieri boasts a three- Michelin-starred restaurant, La Pergola, run by the German genius Heinz Beck. The food has to vie for attention with a peerless view that sweeps from St Peter's dome, glowing gold in the dark sky, via the Colosseum, to the Baths of Caracalla, but Beck is up to the challenge. His perfectionism can be judged by the fact that there is a choice of eight different salts, from Australian pink to black volcanic from Hawaii, to have with your bread and that's before you even start on the first of nine exquisite courses. My delectable clams with langoustine foam looked like a miniature mermaid's bra.

I know that because there were plenty of opportunities to view mermaids the next day when I hopped on the hotel's shuttle bus, was dropped in Piazza Barberini, with its Triton Fountain, and started exploring all my old haunts. And to my delight, I discovered that they don't call it the Eternal City for nothing: everything was exactly the same, even the bakery, Il Fornaio, where I used to buy a lunchtime slice of pizza,
only quite a lot cleaner. I mooched happily around the Piazza della Rotonda, admiring the ice-blue and terracotta-coloured Renaissance houses and the Pantheon with its miraculous dome, dodged the living sculptures in Piazza Navona (I'm sure I recognised a few from last time) and ended up strolling through the Campo de'Fiori to Palazzo Farnese to drink in its Michelangelo-designed façade. Here I stopped for a Campari and soda in Bar Farnese, a place I'd always fancied the look of but couldn't afford. It was just as good as I'd hoped, and well worth the wait. I'll be back again in another 20 years, hopefully for good.

Where to stay

Rome Cavalieri, a 15-minute drive north of the centre of Rome (00 39 06 35091; romecavalieri. com). There's a very smooth tennis pro to knock up with, you can hire Ferraris by the day, and they will even arrange a private tour of the Sistine Chapel for you. The Emperor Heliogabalus, renowned for his lavish tastes, who is said to have smothered guests to death at a banquet by drowning them in rose petals, would have fitted right in. Nightly rates start from £218 per person, per night on a B&B basis. Citalia offers seven nights' bed & breakfast at Rome Cavalieri from £1,385, based on two adults sharing. Flights depart from London Gatwick (0871 664 0253; citalia.com).

What to do

Once you've thoroughly investigated the charms of the centro storico, the galleries in the Vatican Museums (of which my favourites are the map rooms leading up to the Sistine Chapel), the wonders of the Forum and the Circus Maximus, the shops around Via Condotti and the off-beat glamour of Trastevere, all of which would occupy you thoroughly for weeks anyway, take a metro to Esposizione Universale Roma. This is Mussolini's misguided attempt to build a second forum as a showcase for Fascism before the Second World War got in the way. Its wide boulevards, monumental sculptures and, particularly, the Palazzo della Civiltà Italiana (or Square Colosseum, above), are deserted, strange and evocative and can, against a denim-blue sky, be beautiful.