The Italian government has swooped in to save Rome’s oldest cafe – once a haunt of the poets Lord Byron and John Keats – from imminent closure.

The Antico Caffe Greco opened near the Spanish Steps in the heart of the Italian capital in 1760.

Artists, intellectuals and writers including Mark Twain and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe gathered there to share their ideas and it was a must-see on the Grand Tour for privileged Europeans in the 18th and 19th centuries.