I have always felt far removed from the English Romantic poets. It isn’t that I question the genius of a Keats or a Coleridge but merely that what they had to say doesn’t echo within me as perhaps the verse of a more contemporary poet does. Even my admiration for Lord Byron is founded on his persona rather than his poetry. And thus this essay would have remained unwritten but for serendipity.

Easter Monday, Rome was filled with what seemed to be all of Italy. It was as if towns and villages all over the country had emptied out; fires stamped out, doors locked, fish fed, dogs put on their leashes and everyone – man, woman, child, dog; grey old plodders, gay young friskers; mothers, fathers, uncles, brothers; had all trundled and truckled into Rome. Add to it the Japanese, the Americans, the devout pilgrims and nuns/frocked fathers of various orders and us. And everyone seemed to be everywhere.

‘Rome is yet the capital of the world. It is a city of palaces and temples, more glorious than those which any other city contains, and of ruins more glorious than they’ Percy Bysshe Shelley wrote to Thomas Love Peacock. An awe that the crowds thronging Rome seemed to share for they flocked to every point that was marked with a red circle on the tourist map. From the Dunkin Donuts outlet to McDonald’s to the Trevi Fountain, the Vatican City, the Forum, the Colosseum, museums and galleries, on the roads, in the cafes, rather like Hamlyn’s rats, the tourist spared nothing. At the best of times I hate crowds and Easter time in Rome was beginning to seem like a mistake and an expensive one at that.

In sheer desperation, we sought places everyone else dis–dained. And so it was as we stood near the Spanish Steps, where it seemed the whole world had also gathered, wondering if we should brave the steps – climbing up the steps was easy compared to wedging our way through the crowds – that we spotted a little sign alongside the steps that said Keats-Shelley Memorial House.

The guidebook made a mention of the house but I wasn’t sure if it was open to the public and besides it seemed rather morbid to want to visit a house where a man had died. But then without looking for it, there we were. Besides, everyone seemed to ignore the house and preferred to sit on the steps, licking at their ice cream cones (which is perhaps Italy’s best kept secret: the cornucopia of ice creams and outlets), kissing or putting new film into their cameras, yelping into their mobiles and sometimes trying to do all four things together.

Despite no one wanting to climb the many flights of stairs to Keats’ apartment, the house is part of Roman folklore. For generations, the Piazza di Spagna has been visited by architects, painters, musicians and poets who all lodged here. Tobias Smollett, George Eliot, Goethe, Coleridge, Shelley, Byron, the Brownings, Henry James, Edith Wharton, Oscar Wilde and Joyce were just a few of the many who were attracted and inspired by the celebrated centro storico.

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