From the Colosseum, cutting across the ancient racecourse Circus Maximus, it is a wonderful stroll up the Aventino, one of Rome's seven hills, home to a dreamily upmarket residential district with deep-green trees shading its orange-ochre buildings.
Each day, when the first rays of sun warm its ochre walls, the doline comes alive with the sounds of the red-green macaw, as formations of these exotically-plumaged parrots dive and wheel below the lip, periodically alighting en masse to bicker, preen and survey their domain.