Each year, as cold winds sweep across Northern Europe, Rome becomes a refuge and a stage. At dusk, the starlings rise in vast, shifting formations, drawing gasps from tourists and the relentless attention of cameras and scientists. Their murmuration seems impossibly coordinated, as if thousands of tiny hearts beat to a single, invisible rhythm, painting the sky with living ink.

Yet when the sun sets on the spectacle, reality stains the streets. Cars, monuments, pavements—everything lies under a slick, sour layer of droppings. Residents hurry beneath umbrellas on cloudless nights, city workers scrub and hose until dawn, and officials test new lights and noises that never quite work. Still, the birds return, faithful to a city that both resents and reveres them. In this uneasy truce, Rome learns to live between wonder and annoyance, captive to a winter sky it cannot con.