Andrew: Well, I find that I myself can quite easily resist jumping on a plane to Rome again for a few more decades.

My resistance might weaken a bit if the carabinieri called to tell me they have located the %*%@!+&%#$!@ who stole my bag at the Rome Termini.

Like THAT is going to happen.

Your comment about the immigrant flow being mostly one way does not compute, though. Doesn’t every member of the London chattering classes have a villa in Tuscany? And in fact, to judge from Edwardian novelists, the desintaion of choice for a chap who wanted to run off with someone else’s wife was Italy. There must have been a large colony of British adulterers there.