• Italy

    Angels and Demons and Churches of Rome

    I first visited Rome in 2003, a few months after the release of Madonna’s ‘American Life’. In ‘Nothing Fails’, the album’s third single, she’d sing ‘I’m not religious/But I feel so moved/Makes me wanna pray’. Back then, this lyric resonated with me, albeit only in part. Still a teenager, I wasn’t particularly interested in churches, so I headed to the Colosseum instead of the many churches of Rome I visited this year. I’m still not religious, though. In the words of Madonna, ‘I’d like to express my extreme point of view/I’m not Christian and I’m not a Jew’. During the last 19 years, however, a lot has changed. On a…