I turned 62 last month. But as I licked my way across Rome, I felt the same as I did when I first came to Italy and had my first gelato in front of the Duomo in Milan. I was 22. I’m firmly convinced if I keep eating gelato in Rome I’ll be young forever.

Like everything else in Italy, gelato is all natural, as pure as the olives in olive oil and grapes in wine. It is Italy’s lunch break, its afternoon snack, its nightcap. Strolling the cobblestone passageways snaking off Piazza Navona or in front of the 2nd-century Pantheon, romantic Romans can’t seem to hold their lover’s hand without holding a gelato in their other one.