Dampyr #172 (2014) pages 41-42: Kurjak hits the mall

Harlan and Kurjak are looking for a vampire somewhere in Rome. But it's a big city!

“Trastavere district.”

“Hi, Kurjak! Are you done playing tourist?”

“This area is very interesting, full of quaint shops. I bought a couple of books by a guy named Trilussa, a poet of the Romanesco dialect. Understanding them won’t be easy going.”

“I don't feel like sightseeing right now.”

“How's the review of Palmieri's book going?”

“I found something very interesting.”

“Shoot!”

“As he said, Palmieri found new information about Olimpia Maidalchini starting from the study of her land holdings. Maidalchini was one of the most influential figures in seventeenth-century Rome. To convince her father not to lock her up in a convent, she accused her priest of molestation. Then at a very young age, she married an elderly man who soon left her a rich widow.”

Trilussa was the pen name of the early twentieth century poet Carlo Alberto Camillo Mariano Salustri. As Kurjak says, Trilussa wrote in Romanesco, a variant of Italian common in certain areas of the city of Rome.