It could have been a desert trek.
Instead, it was a triumphal procession.
Spring winter 2021, after a year of pandemic and state of emergency, a unity government was formed here in Italy.
Giorgia Meloni and her Fratelli d'Italia, the Brothers of Italy, chose to stay out of it.
It was a risk-taking that turned out to be a stroke of genius.
When everyone else was compromising and cowering, Meloni and the FdI could loudly criticize the government's decisions and policies.
Millions of Italians thus experienced Giorgia Meloni as the only real opposition and the only strong voice against power and the elite.
Cards she played well.
In a series of her emotional election speeches, on stages around Italy, she has emphasized that the Brothers of Italy are on the side of the people: against big finance, Brussels, the EU and the judgments of the outside world, but also against the domestic political elite in Italy.
In this way, the right-wing nationalist party has also won many workers' votes.
The other issues are migration, a focus on traditional values such as the nuclear family and a Christian base of values, and harsher punishments.
But in addition to the Brothers of Italy's own policies and Meloni's skillful rhetoric, the party has also managed to capture many disaffected and worried voters, in a difficult time.
Disaster election for Lega
The Five Star Movement, which captured that discontent in the 2018 election, has plummeted to just 15 percent.
And Lega, which was the clear alternative on the right in that election and in the 2019 EU election, is making a disastrous choice.
With only nine percent of the vote
Matteo Salvini is now being questioned as leader of Lega, which is now only equal in size to ancient Forza Italia.
This makes the role of Giorgia Meloni and the
Fratelli d'Italia in the right-wing government that will take office shortly, extremely strong.
She will become prime minister, as the first Italian woman ever, and she will have a strong mandate to push her policies and have former powerful men Matteo Salvini and Silvio Berlusconi largely obey her command.
Reactions to the election results are, as expected, mixed.
For the left, it is not only the election result that hurts, but also the fact that the PD, Italy's social democrats, only got just over 19 percent, far more than expected.
What role the EU's third largest country will play in Europe and the world in the future is unclear.
Giorgia Meloni has since last summer started to tone down her attacks on the EU and assured that Italy will continue to have an important role, but perhaps a little differently.
How exactly remains to be seen.
Meloni also promises that it will continue to support Ukraine, but gets two Russia-friendly leaders in the government, in Salvini and not least Berlusconi, a personal friend of Vladimir Putin.
Concerns about the economy
What was clear to us journalists on the spot is that many voters we interviewed, regardless of political color, expressed great concern about the economic and security situation and emphasized that the election was a fateful choice.
Nevertheless, turnout was only a record low of just 64 percent.
Now President Sergio Mattarella is expected to summon Giorgia Meloni to the presidential palace Il Qurinale as soon as possible, with the task of forming a government, in accordance with the election results and the will of the majority.
Some predict a short life for the coming right-wing government, other political analysts believe it will be long-lived.
The only thing that seems clear is that Giorgia Meloni and her party are the big winners of the election - and that it arouses strong emotions, both sadness and anger and celebration and jubilation, here in a rainy Rome and all over Italy.