With fears being heightened over possible terrorist attacks, should the sight of armed security forces guarding top tourist spots fill us with reassurance? Discuss. I only ask because on a trip to Rome the other week the streets were awash with soldiers clutching powerful machine-guns. Not only soldiers but armed police of every persuasion – I didn't realise Italy had such a full panoply of uniforms for its law enforcers.

Around almost every corner, we encountered security vehicles either parked or patrolling purposefully around the area, each with its occupants bearing arms. At the entrances and exits to the metro stations soldiers were posted in pairs – both male and female, many of such a tender age that they must only just be out of school – their fingers poised over the triggers of their automatic weapons.

Rome was not so much the Eternal City as the Embattled City.

It's not just Italy, of course. You are likely to come across police with guns on the streets of London these days, around places like the National Gallery in Trafalgar Square and other so-called 'soft targets'. But in Rome on our visit security appeared to have been taken to another level.

Along with the multitude of tourists thronging St Peter's Square and heading for the Vatican Museum and Sistine Chapel we had to negotiate one of the many long queues snaking across the piazza to negotiate special security gates. It was like being back at the airport. They even had the same plastic boxes sliding over conveyor belts for us to stash jackets, coats, mobile phones, watches and the entire contents of our pockets before we were allowed to present ourselves for electronic body scanning. It was a similar painstaking process to enter other major churches.

To return to my opening question – should we be reassured by all this armed activity? One woman, a fellow tourist, I spoke to was unequivocal: 'I'd rather be searched than dead,' she declared without hesitation. I can certainly appreciate where she's coming from, and there's an indisputable logic in her sentiment. But I'm not so sure.

The presence of such all-pervasive, gun-carrying personnel brings a menacing dimension to the proceedings and there's something vaguely unsettling in the fixedly portentous expressions in the eyes of the callow youths in uniform. Will even the most conspicuous phalanx of armed-to-the teeth guards ever deter a determined suicide bomber or a gang of fanatics hell-bent on achieving martyrdom by dying for their cause after bringing mayhem and mass murder to a packed street?

On balance, I guess the prospect of damage limitation justifies the high-profile show of armed strength. Inevitably, we must come to accept that such a state of affairs is, insidiously, becoming the norm. The world we recently took so much for granted is no more. And that's rather sad, is it not?