Ah Rome. The Eternal City. The ancient monuments, the romance, the pizza. The eternal bloody queue for Easyjet. I’ve visited before and appreciated all this but last week I was struck by the art. Johnny Roman is not ashamed of his interest in art. Good for him. On arriving in my hotel the curtains were drawn. I opened them and there was this thing sitting there embedded in the half constructed building next door. At first I thought it might be an attempt to construct a giant flying saucer in the middle of an office block. Perhaps they thought it would be inconspicuous – it was not! In fact it was the half constructed Italian Government’s Congress Centre designed by Massimiliano Fuksas and which will contains an enormous ‘cloud’ made of teflon. That’s right, you read correctly. A cloud made of teflon and what’s more the cloud will glow from within, and will contain an auditorium. What I was viewing was the skeleton of this building. Why Teflon? Well your Roman doesn’t eat much fried food and so they have no real use for their their quota of EU teflon production and so they have decided to paint it all over their public buildings. Imaginative thinking you see.

In England we have consternations and letters from Prince Charles whenever the Shard or the Gherkin are mentioned but your Roman takes pride in this sort of nonsense. In the office the next day I found a dozen paintings in the style of a range of famous artists portraying the company product. Witty and fun. Later, after I’d had a chance to explore the hotel, I found a selection of artwork decorating the interior from statues and paintings to some beautiful small model buildings. This is not to say that Rome does not suffer the ghastliness of hyper-capitalism like the rest of us. At the airport, while taking pictures, I was told to refrain as photography was “not possible”. However, I managed to get this glimpse of the almost Soviet advertising poster for some kind of photocopy machine. All hail to the polit bureau for another year exceeding EU teflon production targets!

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