Rome’s new mayor tackles his predecessors’ mess

FOR A MAN with the least enviable job in Italian politics, Roberto Gualtieri looks surprisingly cheerful. By last October, when he became mayor of Rome, the city had been visibly deteriorating for years, accumulating such a vast range of problems that its decline seemed irreversible. Wild boar rummaged in mounds of uncollected rubbish and potholes scarred many streets. The city’s highest-profile infrastructure project, the construction of a third underground line, was not even close to finished after 14 years, despite having overrun its budget by €714m ($793m).