The Eternal City, I am glad to say, is back in business. You can’t get into the Pantheon for the queues, the restaurants are crowded and the traffic is back to its old homicidal character (my companions laughed at my optimism using a zebra crossing).

I’m here because there’s to be a Raphael exhibition at the National Gallery, and so the Gallery is taking a group of journalists to have a look at Raphael in situ in Rome before it opens. (Dirty work, but someone’s got to do it.) As soon as we arrived, we set off for the Palazzo Doria Pamphilj to see a fine double portrait by him, but there’s lots more besides (paintings are triple stacked on the walls here), including a lovely Brueghel in poor repair, showing the Creation, with God the father (with a triangular halo) standing in a clearing surrounded by the teeming creatures he has made, but minus man. As ever with Brueghel, there’s delight in the detail. At the bottom there are two characterful cats, one of whom is eyeing up a barely visible mouse at the very edge of the picture; it’s not so much a hungry look as a speculative one. After the Fall of Man, we know things aren’t going to go well.