The Central Cloister of Museo Nazionale Romano

'Even in December it is full of flowers - canea and chrysanthemum, rose and iris, heliotrope and purple veronica. Broken statues and columns peep from among the greenery; here the marble bust of a dead Roman is crowned by a spray of tiny red roses which have not realized in this sheltered pleasaunce that winter has come; there some broken amphorae are half hidden in a clump of yuccas. In the heart of the garden where the four paths meet is a lichen-covered fountain almost smothered in waterplants, which never tires of singing to a dying cypress, the only one of all the five planted by the hand of Michelangelo himself, which still stretches its tired old limbs in the sunshine.'

from The Colour of Rome - Olave Potter

Campo dei Fiori

'A gayer scene is not imaginable. The sunlight filters between a forest of enormous white umbrellas on to the brilliant fruits and flowers piled up in their shade; and glitters on the silver fish still lying in the round tubs in which they were brought to the market... The women are as gay as their own wares, with their full swinging skirts bunched up on their hips, and their velvet stays, and brilliant flowered kerchiefs. There are all sorts and conditions of attire - here you see an old woman with a face as wrinkled as a walnut, wearing blue stays over a pink bodice, and a bright scarlet cloth on her head; there a girl, as beautiful as a Madonna, with a tovaglietta [headcloth] on her glossy hair, and red stays over a St. Anna green bodice.'

from The Colour of Rome - Olave Potter

Marble Pavement

'Peasants kneel on the marble pavement and tell their rosaries with eyes clouded with introspection; and nuns in blue robes and flat Dutch collars bend their heads reverently till only the enormous snowy wings of their caps are to be seen. The voices of the invisible choir thrill through the church, and clouds of incense float up between the purple columns of the High Altar and the purple-clad priests who stand before it. Contadini [peasants] come in at the east door and advance towards the High Altar one after another, when they have dipped their toil-worn hands in the holy water. Their skirts are full, and often blue, of the colour which is to be found in a hundred faded frescoes. They wear their green or red velvet stays outside their bodices, and their ear-rings glisten under their snowy tovagliette [head-cloths]. Thrown into relief against the dark group of worshippers near the chancel rails, they are like a chain of the gaily-coloured stones found in the tombs of dead Etruscans.'

from The Colour of Rome - Olave Potter