We roll our 'r's. He laughs, then swerves to avoid someone driving on the right side of the road. For refugees we head to the Piazza Venezia. A cosmopolitan crowd mills around the tomb of the unknown soldier and queues for the modern art gallery. In one corner, a less colourful and predominantly Kurdish queue forms for the soup kitchen.
Volunteers control the flow inside and down the stairs towards pots of steaming soup and pasta.
In his office, the round-faced and slightly stern Jesuit priest, Padre Francesco, gives out orders. This is refugee care Italian-style. There's plenty to offer tourists, the ancestors took care of that, but not much for asylum seekers, so charity fills the gap. Italy has been mainly a transit country, a staging post after the arduous journey from the East, overland through Turkey, Albania, and Greece, and then across the Adriatic, dodging the customs patrol boats. From here most asylum seekers head for Northern Europe, particularly the UK and Germany.