Italy likes to boast of its antiquities. Now, it has something else remarkably old - its population.
Fast-rising life expectancy and the world's lowest birthrate are combining to make Italy "the oldest country in the world," as demographers put it.Italy has the world's highest percentage of people over 60 - 23 percent - and the lowest percentage of those under 15, at 14 percent.
If the trend continues, which demographers say is likely, the numbers could add up within a gen-er-a-tion to serious problems: a lack of money to pay pensions and a shortage of workers to keep Italy competitive globally.
And then there's the dimension that can't be put on a spreadsheet.
A generation ago, when Caterina De Santis was raising her family, the laughter and chatter of children on balconies of the eight apartments across her courtyard kept her company.
"Now there's just one child in the entire building," said De Santis, 69. She spoke between hands in a card game under a grape arbor at a seniors' center in the working-class neighborhood of Testaccio.
After she retired from her ice cream parlor in 1985, De Santis, who won't let her cane stop her from dancing, turned to the daily company of the other retirees to keep her spirits from sagging.
"For me it's sad that there's so few children. Kids are happiness. Kids are joy," she said. "Thirty years ago, the elderly were less alone."
Not that life is so bad for most elderly Italians, De Santis and her fellow card-players agreed.
Their free, city-run center stays open until everyone goes home for dinner. It has a dentist's office where care is free. There's a barber for the men, a podiatrist who stops by, ceramics lessons and a billiard room.
But the ladies playing cards worried that retirement might not be so good for their grandchildren. How to pay their pensions looms largest.
"In 2030, Italy could be the first (country) in the world where there are more `over 60s' than people of working age, and in Italy many of those of working age don't work,"' said demographer Antonio Golini of Rome's Sapienza University, referring to chronic unemployment. "That's crazy."
More elderly means more pensions to pay. Fewer workers means less revenue to pay them.
Part of the reason is that Italian women of childbearing age have an average of 1.19 children, one of the lowest averages in the world. The consequences of Italy's shrinking baby population became more wor-ri-some with the news that the "dolce vita" is getting longer.
The U.N. World Health Organization reported in May that people born in 2025 can expect to live the longest, 82 years, if they reside in Italy, Iceland, Japan or Sweden.
The pension burden is acute in a system that lets some state employees retire as young as 40 after 20 years on the job. Many Italians howled when the government in 1995 raised the general retirement age to 62 for men and 60 for women to battle huge budget deficits.
Many of the reasons for the shrinking Italian family are well known: jobs and affordable housing are tough to find, and tax writeoffs for dependants are paltry.
"I was married when I was 20, had my first child at 21, the next at 22," said Margherita Napolitano, an 82-year-old grandmother. "Now, a man at 30 doesn't even have a first job. They should give us houses, jobs. Then Italians will have more children."