JD Vance’s three-day visit to Rome offered an opportunity to attend a Good Friday service in Saint Peter’s Basilica, take his wife and children to meet the Pope’s top aide and stroll through the sumptuous corridors of the Apostolic Palace.

But the vice-president’s visit may be remembered instead for an ill-fated stop at the Colosseum on Saturday, which resulted in the monument being closed early to accommodate the vice-presidential family and crowds of angry tourists baying at the gates.

As it happened, Vance dropped out at the last minute and it was his wife, Usha, and three young children, brandishing plastic swords, who got to enjoy Italy’s most popular tourist attraction on their own.

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The Corriere della Sera described Vance on tour, dressed casually in jeans, a white shirt and baseball cap, accompanied by a cortege of 40 vehicles and 50 security guards: “A simple American tourist, if it wasn’t for the escort of an emperor.”

The paper’s account suggested some hillbilly diplomacy. “At the Colosseum he didn’t want anyone, not the culture minister, Alessandro Giuli, not the archaeological superintendent, no institutions,” the paper wrote. There had been an initial plan for a meeting with selected members of the US and Italian press, but that had been scotched too, the paper said.The Italian news website, Open, contrasted the choice with that of the King and Queen , who preferred to view the amphitheatre from outside, so as not to interfere with regular public visits, accompanied by the TV presenter, Alberto Angela.“The sovereigns’ choice was due to the respect that they wanted to show for tourists who arrive from all parts of the world,” Open wrote. “To visit the Colosseum you have to book some time in advance. Missing the visit at the last minute can mean you won’t ever get to see it.”• Vatican announces death of pontiff — follow latestPolice secure the area during the private visit of Vance’s family at the Colosseum in RomeANGELO CARCONI/EPAVance’s visit also left a bad taste with Andrea Malaguti, the editor of La Stampa.“It’s impossible to see him kneeling in Saint Peter’s with his hands joined, his eyes raised to heaven and his splendid family honoured by the Swiss Guards, without wondering what type of Christ he carries in his heart. A God for everyone? Or a white nationalist lord, ready to put anyone to the sword who wanders from the moral rules of the cotton plantation?”Malaguti recalled how Vance had berated the “parasitic” Europeans, who were rolling out the red carpet for him now, for their inability to defend their frontiers and freedom of speech. He also pointed out how the Trump administration was undermining the international institutions that had underpinned the past 80 years of European peace in favour of an outdated will to power “revived by the visionary narcissism of a narrow and aggressive tech oligarchy”.Malaguti summed up the concept: “We’re the gorillas. The jungle is ours.” Vance would soon be on his way to India, to continue the new muscular diplomacy.