When Henry James first went on his own to Rome in the 1860s and contemplated the Pantheon, this is more or less the way he saw it, with a couple of carriages drawn up out front to accommodate parties of lady visitors.
Thank God for the Internet, I say, because otherwise it would be all too easy for a romantic-minded American to imagine things can't have changed all that much.
Of course even in the olden days, the prettified Rome of the tourist paintings responded to the market by denying the existence of beggars and pickpockets – and very much denying the existence of the tourists themselves.
We will be staying on the third floor of the building that runs along the right-hand side the staircase below. It was built in the early 19th century as rental flats for long-term English visitors. Keats died there, and a museum to his memory is housed on the lower floors. From here it will not be at all too far to walk to the Pantheon McDonald's.
Or perhaps to walk to one of these other potential alternative destinations.
