ROME (AP) - President Bush arrived 15 minutes late for his meeting with Pope John Paul II - unusual for a president who makes no secret of his impatience when others keep him waiting.
It was a rare breach of protocol in Vatican City, too, and raised eyebrows in the papal delegation.
"The president is 15 minutes late," John Paul's secretary, Archbishop Stanislaw Dziwisz, pointed out to Vatican reporters.
White House aides blamed Bush's tardiness Friday on a longer-than-expected preceding meeting with the Italian President Carlo Azeglio Ciampi.
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Protesters in the city were yelling "George Bush, terrorist," yet the president was insulated from the anti-war demonstrations, tucked safely away in plush digs behind high stone walls and razor wire.
During Bush's 36-hour visit to Italy and Vatican City, he was staying at the home of U.S. ambassador to Italy, Melvin Sembler. The manicured grounds feature stucco buildings with red-tiled roofs, small mazes of hedges interspersed with roses and gurgling fountains.
A security perimeter extended several blocks out from the residence, situated on a six-acre plot. The blare of Italian sirens drifted over the walls as faintly as if they were miles away. Noise from outside the compound was practically drowned out by the sounds of birds chirping and breeze rustling through pines.
What was unclear Friday was whether noise from inside the compound is audible from outside the walls. Aides said Sembler has thrown parties virtually every night for the last week.
Sembler also summoned tailors Friday from a well-known suit maker in the heart of Rome, Brioni. They brought dozens of suits for the men in Bush's entourage to try on. There was no immediate word on whether Bush modeled suits, too.
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Bush also managed to avoid the tens of thousands of protesters in his lengthy travels throughout Rome and the Vatican.
In fact, the famously expressive Italians seemed downright nonplussed by the presidential motorcade barreling through their cities throughout the early part of the day.
The heavy police presence did not keep ordinary Italians from getting close to the line of vehicles that trailed the presidential limousine.
As the cars and trucks sped through curving, narrow streets, a woman casually stepped in front of a minibus mid-motorcade. Scooters and the occasional wayward car drifted into the motorcade briefly, then eased back out to let it pass.
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Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi offered his verdict on the demonstrations in Rome, declaring them "a flop." Berlusconi made the comment to reporters as President Bush and the first lady climbed out of their limousine for dinner with the prime minister.
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Two days before commemorating the 60th anniversary of the D-Day invasion in Normandy, Bush quietly paid tribute to Italian victims of World War II.
Bush visited Fosse Ardeatine, where on March 24, 1944, German troops killed 335 innocent Italian men and boys in an abandoned quarry in retaliation for an attack by Italian partisans the day before.
Bush, first lady Laura Bush and Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi trailed a pair of soldiers, who somberly carried a green wreath with a blue ribbon and laid it under an engraved inscription. Bush, alone, approached the wreath, straightened its blue ribbons and bowed his head as a bugler played a mournful melody.
The inscription read in part: "Italians do not curse. Mothers and wives do not weep. Sons, carry proudly the memory of your fathers' holocaust. May the cruel massacre perpetrated against us help, beyond any vengeance to consecrate the rights of human life against the crime of murder."
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Associated Press Writers Alessandra Rizzo and Victor Simpson contributed to this story.