In the Eternal City hoping for a brush with a Caravaggio

Conor Power dodges the pigeons as he pounds the pavements of the Eternal City while visiting its churches and chapels on the trail of the fast and furious Caravaggio — famed as both genius and sociopath.

Rome is a city of many layers: Ancient Rome was mostly destroyed and then built over and bits of it are still being unearthed. Then there’s Renaissance Rome of the great masters and magnificent places of worship, after which come several more historical strata, topped by Modern Rome with its chaotic traffic liberally sprinkled with manic teenage “motorini” drivers and hordes of tourists.

I went for the middle of the sandwich and hand-in-hand with my wife, we went past temples, apartment blocks, palazzi, piazze and paparazzi, through crowds and fluttering pigeons from church to museum and back to church again. We weren’t after the Da Vinci Code, but something more tangible and priceless: the great works of Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio.