As mentioned previously, I have not spent any time inside the city of Rome since 1990. Two weeks then, and 10 days in 1987, while covering sports events … and I saw more than a few sights.

But I never saw a Rome as overrun by tourists as I did today.

Tourist tip. When you’re new to a city, or haven’t been there in a good long while … take the bus tour. Sure, you look silly, sitting up there on the second deck, with ear buds jammed into your head as you rubberneck your way through town.

But it allows you to plot the major sights on a mental map and gives you a sense of what is close to what else. It’s good for orienting yourself, then, but also to have a quick look at something you won’t be coming back to because you’re Just Not That Interested.

We boarded the bus at Termini, the semi-notorious main train station here — which does not seem nearly as scary as I remember it being 23 years ago, when drug addicts and thieves haunted the place, morning, noon and (especially) night.

South around Santa Maria Maggiore, southwest to the Colosseum, past the Circus Maximus (which is under some kind of construction/excavation), around the Palatine Hill (where the city began), north to the Capitoline Hill (where the government of ancient Rome was located) past the Monument to Victor Emmanuel II, then on the Corso Victor Emmanuel and over the river to the Vatican, back past the Palace of Justice, across the Tiber, and creeping up on the north side of the Trevi Fountain, where we exited the bus.

I was stunned by the enormity of the crowds. It was a bright, sunny, temperate day, sure, but it was also May 13. Not even prime tourist season yet. And the whole of the southern half of Rome (from Trevi south to the Colosseum, was at the mercy of roving bands of tourists. Marching classes of fourth-graders. Armies of old folks on package tours. Polyglot guides holding up flags leading around shifting mobs of foreigners. And Rome was helpless before them. Actually, it seemed to welcome them.

The Trevi Fountain is a wonderful place — except when thousands of tourists are already there, sitting and blinking in the sun. In mid-afternoon, an effort was required to squeeze up to the rail above the fountain, just to get a good look at the water — as well as another thousand tourists sitting on the edge of the fountain with their feet in the fountain. (It would have required a strong toss, from that distance, to get a coin in the fountain.)

You soon realize that no one appears to live in these neighborhoods, and you pity anyone who might, because it looks like for much of the year to emerge on the street is to be swallowed up by map-toting, picture-snapping foreigners.

No commerce is particularly obvious, other than gelato shops and grim, overpriced restaurants and touts endlessly trying to get you to buy useless gee-gaws.

We fought our way “upstream”, towards the river — people were still heading for the center of the city — and got a look at the Pantheon, which I had never seen. Impressive. Really. Especially considering it is most of 20 centuries old and has an enormous dome that has yet to collapse.

But after that, and some overpriced gelato … we wanted back to the other side of the Tiber. Turns out, Trastevere, where we are staying, is not nearly as tourist-clotted as is the center of the old city.

I don’t remember people in these numbers. This is recent. And in their masses they seem to be turning Rome into a sort of history theme park, complete with crushing crowds and food and drink far too expensive, and streets constantly tidied up by workers.

(It is impressively clean, in these central precincts; not at all the unkempt Rome I remember.)

This is what Florence looked like 20 years ago. I wonder how bad it is there, now. In about 10 days, I will find out.