There is a sullen reminder of what terrorism is doing to some aspects of life in Italy right outside the window of TIME's bureau in Rome. The office is just a few doors down from the Via Veneto, the broad, sunny avenue lined with outdoor cafes where the rich traditionally mingled with the curious. By day, the street is still busy, and tourists converge over wine and soda. But at night, the crowds no longer throng the avenue that was one of the most gay and fashionable in Europe. The dolce vita has been soured.

The job of covering the work of the Red Brigades and the murder last week of Aldo Moro was directed for TIME by Rome Bureau Chief Jordan Bonfante, whose parents are Italian. The story had its problems. Says Bonfante: "The main difficulty was the 'gray-out' that authorities imposed from the outset, clamping down hard on information to avoid giving any help to the terrorists and to minimize the sensationalism on which the Red Brigades thrive."

Like many foreign correspondents these days, Bonfante has become all too familiar with the varieties of terrorism and what they do to people. While in the London bureau he covered Northern Ireland. He reports that the mood there, where the population is badly split, is quite different from that in Italy, where only a tiny minority of the people sympathize with the cause of the Red Brigades. Belfast is grim, day or night, but Rome -- for those who are not rich or famous -- is still a pleasant city by day. The tourist season is already under way. The flowers are blooming, and long lines of cars wind out to the nearby beaches. After dark, however, most of the streets in central Rome button up as the police, armed with submachine guns, begin their patrols.

One effect of the terrorism in Italy, says Bonfante, is that fear has paralyzed the instinct of Italians to excel in something and thereby catch the public eye. Anything they might do that attracted publicity could also attract a terrorist.

Filing for the Moro story, which was written by Associate Editor Marguerite Johnson, Bonfante and his staff faced a situation that was keeping everyone -- police as well as journalists -- off balance, feeling out of touch. But the story had a way of intruding on the private lives of staffers. A Via Gradoli Red Brigades hideout turned out to be next to the school attended by the daughter of TIME'S Logan Bentley. And the spot where Moro's body was found was just 25 yards away from Correspondent Roland Flamini's apartment. That night, Flamini watched from his window while Romans created a flower-filled shrine on the spot. The shrine, photographed in color, appears in this week's World story on the Moro murder.

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