ROME -- A chorus of honking horns arises from a gridlocked road almost in the shadow of St. Peter's Basilica. Sidewalks are clogged with tour groups doggedly following colorful plastic flags waved by their leaders.

In this Easter season in this millennial year, Rome is all but bursting at its ancient seams with visitors.Many are Roman Catholic faithful heeding Pope John Paul II's call to come to the city during what the church has proclaimed a Holy Year, a 700-year-old tradition dating to Pope Boniface VIII.

But plenty of others are in town for pilgrimages of a decidedly secular sort, lured by the Eternal City's eternal seductions: sumptuous meals, designer Italian goods, eye-popping art and architecture, a cool and sunny Roman spring.

"I'm an agnostic -- I'm here because it's beautiful," said Jane Forbell, a 52-year-old Canadian visitor heading into the Vatican for a look at the Renaissance paintings in its opulent museums.

The devout, too, are making their mark. In the four Rome basilicas designated as sites where pilgrims who visit this year can obtain plenary indulgences -- wiping out or lessening punishment for sins -- crowds of faithful light candles, bow their heads in prayer and head into booths to make confession in one of half a dozen offered languages.

On a recent day at one of those basilicas, St. John Lateran, pilgrims waited in a long line to climb on their knees up the adjoining marble Scala Santa, or Holy Staircase. Tradition holds that the staircase was trod upon by Jesus. So the Empress Helena, the religiously industrious mother of Constantine, had the whole thing packed up and brought to Rome from Jerusalem.

Sister Katya, a young Romanian novice nun who arrived in Rome only last week, had tears in her eyes when she reached the top. "I am so fortunate to be in a holy place at a holy time," she said softly.

Heading into one of the year's most crowd-drawing seasons -- Holy Week, commencing with Palm Sunday and ending with Easter -- it wasn't yet clear whether official forecasts of up to 30 million visitors to the city this year will prove overblown.

Some hoteliers and restaurateurs grumble that millennial hype has actually scared away would-be tourists. And shopkeepers say that crowds of visitors don't necessarily translate into booming business.

"Are they going to stop and buy something nice to eat from me? No," Agneli said glumly. "They're going to get back on their bus and go to their hotel and eat there."

Teresa Belardeti, whose family runs the venerable Libreria Belardeti near Vatican City, said she had thought business would pick up in this holy year. But despite the flocks of faithful passing by her door, sales have stayed flat.

"Maybe the pilgrims are buying a few more religious items, but that's it," she said.

The big crowds have brought heightened security concerns. Italian police have set up metal detectors and X-ray machines in the colonnade around St. Peter's Square, where tens of thousands of worshippers are expected for Easter ceremonies.

The chaotic snarl that is Roman traffic -- buzzing Vespa motorbikes, speeding Fiat compacts, darting pedestrians -- is now exacerbated by lumbering tour buses and vans, plus the special fleet of blue Jubilee buses ferrying pilgrims around town.

To the chagrin of locals, many of the pilgrim buses glide about half-empty even as they clog the roads. In a coffee bar near the city center, two old friends argued animatedly over whether the influx of visitors had really made traffic tie-ups any worse.

"It's become a catastrophe!" said Salvatore De Ruccia, 67. "Yes! Just as always!" retorted his 78-year-old pal, Gianni Masini.

Nationwide, the tourist crush leading up to Easter is augmented by Italians taking in-country trips of their own. At popular destinations like Florence or the vacation island of Capri, last-minute requests for hotel reservations are greeted these days with peals of laughter.

Some of Rome's traditional tourist attractions report they get a short shrift from visiting faithful.

At the Keats-Shelley Memorial House, where sensitive souls can swoon over mementos like a lock of John Keats' hair, curator Catherine Payling said attendance has fallen off this year. Paying homage to a pair of dead poets, she dryly observed, might be low on a busy pilgrim's agenda.

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In the end, though, there are probably as many reasons for a Roman holiday as there are visitors to the city. Asked why he had come here, university student Daniel Trent of London beamed at his Italian girlfriend Graciela, snuggled beside him on the Spanish Steps.

"I made a pilgrimage -- to her," he said.

On the Net: Vatican site: www.vatican.va

Rome Jubilee 2000 site: www.romagiubileo.it

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