ROME – While Pope Francis was out of town in Asia and Oceania, a mini-tempest erupted in Rome after a French court appeared to assert that France, not Italy or the Vatican, actually owns not only the Church of the Trinità dei Monti in the city’s famed Piazza di Spagna, but also the famed 135-step adjoining staircase, referred to in Italian as the Scalinata but better known in English as the Spanish Steps.
To say the least, Italians did not react well to the suggestion that one of the most iconic sites actually belongs to a foreign state.
