This photograph was taken on Monday the 26th of February 2018, after the ‘Beast from the East’ had dumped several centimetres of snow on Rome, giving the city’s schoolchildren, and many of its shop and office workers, an unexpected day off.
Several of the city’s main tourist attractions, including the Colosseum, the Palatine Hill and the Roman Forum, were also closed, and many of those left at a loose end took to St Peter’s Square for a massive snowball fight. Prior to the 2012 event, the last significant snowfalls in Rome had occurred in 1985 and 1986. The last one before that was in 1971.