ITALY: Roman Holiday

"Here we are in Rome," complained an American tourist, camera in hand and vivid sport shirt on torso, one red-hot day last week. "But where are the Romans?"

They were taking a holiday. It was Ferragosto Day (Aug. 15), Italy's best loved and most ancient annual holiday,* and from the teeming Eternal City (pop. 1,600,000) a million Romans decamped to their seaside villas and to public picnic grounds in the Abruzzi Mountains or at war-famed Anzio Beach. Shops, offices, banks, even Vatican City's Sistine Chapel, were closed up tight, though St. Peter's, as...

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