Our return flight to England last month was cancelled, but were we upset? On the contrary, extra time in Rome in glorious sunny weather without the crowds was a bonus. We decided to visit places outside the centro storico where it was likely there’d be no tourists at all. We were right.

The Foro Italico, north of the city centre, is one of the few parts of Rome to survive intact pretty much the way Mussolini planned it. Known originally as the Foro Mussolini, it was built from 1928-38, designed by Enrico Del Dubbio and later Luigi Moretti, who created one of Italy’s most important examples of Fascist architecture in order to stage to 1940 Olympics in Rome - though of course that didn’t happen.