Thick snowflakes fell in Rome yesterday, a rare sight for the historic city usually blessed by a temperate climate.

The snowfall prompted authorities to stop visitors from entering the Coliseum, the Roman Forum and the Palatine Hill, the former home of Rome’s ancient emperors.

The director of the Coliseum, Rossella Rea, said the sites were closed out of fears that visitors could slip on ice.

The last substantial snowfalls in Rome were in 1985 and 1986, though there have been other cases of lighter snow since then, including one in 2010.

Red wine for zoo monkeys

A zoo in the freezing steppes of Kazakhstan is giving its monkeys red wine to ward off winter colds, its chief animal specialist said yesterday.

“We give the monkeys wine because in the winter it protects them from respiratory infections. You could say we douse them with wine to ward off flu... After all, primates are just like people. They enjoy drinking an alcoholic drink, they like it,” “ said Svetlana Pilyuk of the Karagandy zoo in the ex-Soviet state.

The zoo feeds the monkeys a kind of red Communion wine, making it more appetising for them by adding chopped fruit, honey, lemon, sugar and hot water.

The outside temperature in Karagandy Friday was minus 33 degrees Celsius.

Schwarzenegger’s dream dashed

Arnold Schwarzenegger’s dream of visiting the Taj Mahal has been dashed.

The former California governor travelled to the Indian city of Agra yesterday, the one day each week the famous monument is closed to tourists because of Muslim prayers at a nearby mosque.

His tour guide Nitin Singh said the Terminator star was disappointed and had to view the Taj Mahal from a nearby road. Mr Schwarzenegger took pictures with his mobile phone and posed for photos with the Taj as the backdrop. He is in India for an environmental conference.

“I’ll be back,” he told the cheering studio audience.