I hope you’re hungry,” my guide, Dimitri, says. We’re strolling through Rome’s Centro Storico, but in the opposite direction to the Colosseum and Pantheon. I’ve joined a food tour with The Tour Guy, searching for Rome’s best traditional food. For that, Dimitri says we need to cross the Tiber into the city’s first suburb: Trastevere.

Like most vibrant hubs of nightlife and dining, Trastevere has deep working-class roots, but not ones embedded in industry and warehouses. This neighbourhood’s history is ancient. In the heyday of the Roman empire, it was home to fishermen and sailors who worked on the River Tiber, and it became the refuge where Roman slaves lived as freedmen after their servitude in the city.