You’ll find a very particular kind of art in Rome, and it’s not on display in museums or hanging over church altars. It’s on the metal serrande, the roll-down shutters that guard the city’s shops when they’re closed. These painted metal canvases are a category all their own, commissioned by proprietors who want to give their storefronts a little flair. Yet they inevitably end up with something just a little off: a hamburger with a mustache and the word pizza written underneath, a plate of carbonara against an inexplicable backdrop of palm trees, a butcher’s happy pig giving a thumbs-up to its own impending fate. These are not artistic masterpieces, but they are unmistakably Roman.

There is something deeply endearing about these works. They are earnest, often unintentional tributes to the things that keep Rome running: coffee, bread, a butcher with a meat cleaver. They are declarations of purpose—this is what we do here, in case you had any doubts—but also reminders that the city is lived in, that commerce here is not faceless or corporate. These aren’t chain stores with sleek branding. They are butchers who want a giant, disembodied steak on their shutter and tobacco vendors who insist on a portrait of a horse smoking a cigarette for reasons only they understand.

The painted serrande of Rome are like the city itself: imperfect, quirky, and a little bit haunting.