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Last week, for the first time in too long a time, I found myself again in Rome. Europe is changing so rapidly that returning to once-familiar places no longer feels like a homecoming. It feels like entering an alien terrain for the first time. I perceived a similar sensation when I visited Ireland again after an absence of a few years. Shops and locales that I frequented have been closed down or replaced and renamed. Inflation — and in the case of Ireland, a sudden and record-breaking influx of migrants and “refugees” — has caused prices of the formerly cheap hostels where I used to stay to increase by 1,000%. What once were affordable sojourns to reunite with friends and family now require several months of savings. Of all the changes, what stands out the most is the change in the very inhabitants of these places. The Great Replacement, deemed by liberals a nonsensical “far-Right conspiracy theory,” is not only an obvious and observable thing — it is underestimated.

The demographic disfigurement of European countries has been apace for decades, and this wasn’t the first time that I’ve seen with my own eyes the literal changing face of Italy, but this was the first time that I had set foot in Rome since the migrant invasion of Il Bel Paese became the incessant onslaught that is now the ‘‘new normal’’ we are just supposed to accept. It was also the first time since the policies of “refugees welcome” types such as Rome’s ex-Mayor, Virginia Raggi, turned areas of Rome into the third-world Skid Rows that are now common in cities across Europe.

It was noticeable immediately. I will discount the mass of humanity bustling around Rome’s main train station, as such hubs in major cities are always full of people and tourists from all over the world, and for some reason are like a dungheap attracting all manner of Afro-Arab flies. Name a major European city (and even some minor ones), and without fail there will be a mob of “new Europeans” just milling about at the train station. In Naples, exiting the Napoli Centrale station is like arriving in Mogadishu. I often wonder what the tourists must think as they pull their suitcases over the craggy stone pavements while surrounded by sub-Saharan Africans hawking black-market goods arrayed on a white cloth or — as ever — just standing around idly. Honey, I thought you said we were going to Naples. Are you sure we’re in the right place?

But even disregarding the morass at Stazione Termini, it didn’t take long to see that the rot has spread to the rest of the city. Just a few minutes’ walk from the train station, at the Basilica di Santa Maria Maggiore, I spotted two African men sleeping on dirty mattresses at the base of the Egyptian obelisk that stands in front the basilica. I thought perhaps they were tired after a long day’s work paying for elderly Italians’ pensions, but then I realized it was only ten o’clock in the morning.

Onward and inward into the city I marched. It was as trafficoso as ever, but this time I noticed something different about the drivers behind the wheels of all those roaring cars: so many of them were Chinese. When we think of the migrant invasion of Europe, the image that most likely comes to our minds is that of Africans huddled together aboard rubber dinghies or packed into ships belonging to non-governmental organizations (rather like they used to be packed into slave ships, although I doubt the NGOs notice the irony), yet there is a more insidious invasion afoot. The Chinese incursion into Europe, and in particular into Italy, is a matter worthy of deep study which I will not provide in this article. For now, it suffices to say that China has been quietly moving in and buying up Italy.

From trifles such as restaurants and hairdressers, to major infrastructure such as seaports, to an assortment of top-flight football clubs, you can find Chinese owners pulling the strings. Now, it seems, they’ve brought the rest of their countrymen along with them. It’s worth keeping in mind that I’m not speaking of the famous “Asian tourists.” These were not tourists. These were clearly-established and omnipresent residents of the Italian capital. Incredibly, even the shops selling SPQR kitsch and unofficial A.S. Roma apparel were staffed by Chinese women, a person from the Indian subcontinent, or a combination of the two. The clerk in every shop selling Rome postcards and magnets: brown. The street vendor hawking Rome-themed cigarette lighters: brown. The staff behind the ice creams at the gelaterie: brown. The security guard ushering tourists into the Pantheon: brown.

On and on the noticing went. Near the Pantheon, I walked past a restaurant whose entire waitstaff were Indians. Every single one of them. I counted at least five. There they stood outside the restaurant doors, next to the tables aligned in the street, on the corner trying to entice tourists to sit down for a meal, pacing briskly with a platter balanced on their fingertips — each one of them a leather-coloured, oil-black-haired Indian. Totally bemused, I saw that the giant menu displayed on a sandwich board was replete with every stereotypical Italian dish a hungry know-nothing foreigner could ask for, with the obligatory pictures and translations into various languages to help them along. This wasn’t an Indian-themed eatery. This was an “Italian” restaurant in Italy serving “Italian” food.

Imagine going to Mumbai and having dinner in a typical Indian restaurant, only it’s entirely staffed by Italians. Would be a bit weird, no? Imagine going to Beijing and discovering that all the tourist-tat shops had loads of Italians working in them. It might cause a few head scratches. In Italy, we’re just supposed to accept that the place is full of Indians and Chinamen, just as we are supposed to accept the country itself being sold piecemeal to the highest Chinese bidder. To object or raise questions would be RACIST, and we wouldn’t want to be that.

Later, as the twilight hour painted a pink-and-blue sky and the Eternal City lit up with a warm glow, I made my way to the Castel Sant’Angelo. I wanted to walk along the bridge to the dauntless fortress and under the watch of the 12 angels, and contemplate the Sack of Rome in 1527, when an army of Habsburg soldiers invaded the city and forced the Pope to flee via a secret passage from the Vatican to the refuge of the castle.

Unfortunately, all I really contemplated was the gaggle of African merchants sitting on the pavement, selling knock-off Adidas trainers, belts, and wooden carvings of elephants of varying sizes. I can’t remember a time in any major European city when the streets, the beaches, the town squares, and the famous monuments weren’t crawling with Africans selling something. No one else seems to notice them, or if they do, they never ask how it is that they’ve ended up here — how they’ve ended up everywhere — doing the exact same thing. It never ceases to amaze me, however. Think of the network that must exist in order to get untold numbers of men from sub-Saharan Africa onto the Ponte Sant’Angelo, supply them with a limitless coffer of “Made in China” crap, and put them up in a place to stay (something tells me selling fake Gucci handbags isn’t enough to pay rent in Rome). And for what? For what kind of life? Why are these people here? But again, we Europeans are just supposed to accept as normal that our cities and holiday destinations are full of these people.

As night fell, Rome’s thoroughfares and piazzas erupted in a cacophony of cartoonish noise as more brown and black street vendors took up their stations and began launching candescent toys into the air which wheezed and cackled as they descended. Why are these people here? I meandered the darkening streets — ffwwwwheeeeeeeeeee! buzzed the glowing toys all around me, now one, now another — ffwwheeeeeeee! ffwwwheeeeeee! Now comes a fat little Bangladeshi(?) to offer me and my missus a rose. Ffwwwheeeee!

Why are these people here?

A black African man was sitting on the floor with an upturned baseball cap between his legs, begging for change.

Why are these people here?

Some Middle Eastern and Northern African youths were milling about, scrolling on their phones.

Why are these people here?

I walked back to the Pantheon, my favourite monument in Rome. I love to feel the weight of the old temple. I love to listen to it, to hear its imposing thud amidst the symphony of all the baroque architecture. There were fewer crowds in the area at nighttime, but the atmosphere was little more tranquil than during the day. Fwheeee! sang the toys as they fell back into the outstretched hands of the assortment of brown men. Then a woman began to play the theme song from The Godfather on a harp. I stood before the 1,900-year-old Roman monument serenaded by Chinese toys sold by Bengali(?) men while a woman played the soundtrack of a Hollywood movie about Sicilian-American gangsters from the 1970s.

A different song started to fill my mind’s concert hall:

I am walking through Rome
With my heart on a string
Dear God, please help me.
And I am so very tired
Of doing the right thing.
Dear God, please help me.

— Morrissey