Italy: I’ve got Rome on repeat

My year was topped and tailed with trips to Rome. In March, as the blossom unfurled along the Tiber and the city’s churches prepared for Easter, I met four girlfriends from university, one of whom was working as a chef for the Rome Sustainable Food Project based at the American Academy. Then, in late November, I went back by myself and stayed at the Villa Spalletti Trivelli. It’s hard to say which was more pleasurable; Rome is Rome in every season.

In spring, we all crammed ourselves into a bedsit in an old pasta factory in the fashionable Trastevere district. During the day we pretended to be a bunch of young intellectuals studying Rome’s secrets as we lolled about in the gardens of the Academy, which is high on the Janiculum hill in the Villa Aurelia (built for Cardinal Girolamo Farnese in 1650).

Now a private institution, it is similar in concept to the British School at Rome.