The camcorders whir on

The camcorders whir on.Luckily, outside you can buy any number of T-shirts decorated with the works of Michelangelo - which lose something on the artistic front but certainly spare you the tyranny of the attendants Yet you don't have to take such extreme measures. A Tannoy orders us in five different languages to be silent and not use cameras. The hubbub of admiration is broken by fierce clapping and a fearsome shushing sound from the attendants We shrink back at this onslaught It gets worse. We all stand there heads cocked reverentially upwards gazing at La Creazione Camcorders whir remorselessly. Thousands of us trek through the Museo Etrusco, the Museo Pio-Clementino, Galleria degli Candelabri, the Appartimento Borgia, gaze in vain for Raphael's cheeky cherubs, which ornament the stall of every T-shirt vendor in town (it's being restored), and end up weary but prepared to be awed by the Sistine Chapel.Except you aren't The place is teeming Solid Like the underground.

Don't panic, look the whirring attacker in the headlamp and stand your ground. The scooterists will whirl disdainfully past you.There are so many tourists, perspiring Germans, camera-wielding Koreans, puzzled Americans, pink Brits - all of us happily fulfilling our national caricature - that it seems perverse not to join the throng, milling its way to all the obvious sights.Take the Sistine Chapel. Chic young things with their skirts pulled dangerously high zip along the cobbled streets on them, dapper chaps making mobile phone calls while eating sandwiches weave through the taxis on them. And don't think for one moment that being on a pedestrian crossing means you are safe Quite the opposite It means you are nicely lined up for target practice. You stumble on the entrance to the Foro Romano and once in there is little attempt, apart from a brusque stone label or two, to tell you which column, which loose arrangement of stone, which line of statues is pre-Gracchi, post-Septimus, ante diluvian It's a blur of BCs and ADs.

You have to pinch yourself that you are looking at monuments built 2,000 years ago as tributes to mighty egos and soaring genius.The only way to see the city is to walk But beware scooters The place teems with them. They are signed by Francis Coppola, Robert de Niro, Gregory Peck. Obviously, rehearsing for a spaghetti western.Whether we are talking Gregory P or Gregorius Xl, the Romans take celebrity status lightly. It's as if all that history littered around the city in dusty piles is an aside to their main passions: high politics, low politics, lunch, wild scootering, shopping, dinner and ignoring tourists.For a place with a palace on every piazza and a church on every corner there are few signs to tell where things are.

She collects a potato or two from the pavement, carrots, avocado and a lemon disappear into her voluminous cardigan. The market is over until tomorrow.As I pay the bill - about pounds 10 - I notice tributes to Enzo, the "maker of the best pasta in the world". I select the caprese - small mounds of creamy mozarella, slices of tomato straight from the market, sprinkling of basil Of course, signor, of course. The right choice. A half litre of fresh white wine and a basket of crunchy new bread and it is time to study Rome.From here, it is the back end of a market stall, which is closing down for the day. The trays of veg are stacked, the unsold containers of spices piled on to trolleys and taken off A few shoppers dive in for the last bargains of the day As the stalls come down the square is revealed It is like many others. Apartments piled on top of each other in buildings of grey and ochre with terracotta roofs.

The balconies sport a few tired geraniums, the roofs proudly proclaim their Roman monuments, 20th-century style: lines of aerials and satellite dishes. In the middle, a convenient resting point for the pigeons, a statue to a heroic monk who was burned in 1600 for heresy.As the dust carts move in, the cafe attracts a few customers from the market, and an old lady in crocheted hat, widow's weeds and odd socks takes stock of what is left. Just three tables make the pavement and there are only about eight more inside. The maitre d' greets you with the air of a man who knows you have made the right choice He recommends the gnocchi. It doesn't spill out into the square like its three or four rivals.