ROME - It is unwise to learn your part when you are already centre stage… even unwiser to change parts.

ROME - 10 Feb was the “Day of Remembrance” (Giorno del ricordo) in which Italy remembers the Italians either killed or forced to leave Yugoslavia at the end of World War II.

ROME - There is a spectre haunting Italy - the spectre of the Beppe Grillo, the Genoese comic turned populist leader of the Five Star Movement (M5S).

ROME - Pope Benedict being in the monastery in the Vatican Gardens might influence the conclave.

ROME - Soon Benedict will retire to a monastery,  no longer Holy Father but a godfather, not of Cosa Nostra, more like the mostly

ROME - In Puccini’s La Bohème, the best aria for the philosopher, Colline is his farewell to his old coat, “vecchia zimarra”.

Rome – On September 13, 1978, the Corriere della Sera published on page 1 a letter by a 50-year-old man whose love was unreciprocated by a girl much younge

ROME - The Day of Memory is a moment when the world looks back on the Shoah.

ROME - Today Barack Obama is sworn in for his second term, a visibly older and, I would guess, politically wiser man than four years ago.

ROME - Politics is about power and policy, the two motivations for anyone to get involved.

ROME - A tactless remark from a cabinet minister was the cue for Silvio Berlusconi to storm back onto center-stage. The consequences for Italy and for the rest of Europe are likely to be dire.

ROME - On the Italian chessboard a year of positioning is moving rapidly towards a conclusion.

The Italian justice system doesn’t have the best reputation, but just like in Italian politics, we keep looking for a sign of change. And sometimes we find it.

ROME - It is such a sad debacle, the original errors of conception and execution in the first version have been compounded and increased.

 Confusion still reigns over next year's elections, says Rome's premier political commentator.