EVER wonder what showtime must have been like at Rome’s Colosseum? Cast your mind back to Ireland and Italy’s recent rugby showdown at the Stadio Olimpico. The Six Nations is as close as rugby gets to all-out gladiatorial combat: by the time the Irish and Italian teams were done tearing chunks out of each other, bruised and battered bodies were legion.

The remains of a missing Waterford man have been found in Rome.

THE mayor of Co Waterford has extended his sympathies to the family of a man feared drowned after slipping into the River Tiber in Rome.

Searches are continuing in Rome today for an Irish man who disappeared in the Italian capital at the weekend.

The Department of Foreign Affairs is offering consular assistance to the family of an Irish man missing in Rome.

Searches will resume in Rome this morning for a missing Irish tourist.

IT was hard to know which shone the brightest, the searing sun on our backs, the scalding giant arc lamps of the TV cameras or the beatific smile on the face of Benedict XVI.

THE souvenir sellers were busy enough as the cameras snapped the famous sights in Rome and the normal number of tourists for this time of year wandered around.