Fortress Genoa - a tale of two cities. Yesterday's opening day of the G8 summit in the Italian port of Genoa told the tragic tale of a divided city in which the world's makers and shakers met for talks behind a concrete and steel cordon while outside their fortress gates, an angry young Italian protester from Genoa died, almost certainly killed by security forces.
Carlo Giuliani's death was the almost logical outcome of a day of running battles between police and a minority anarchist fringe of the anti-globalisation movement.
Although earliest reports suggested he had died after being hit in the head by a tear gas canister fired at close range, a growing body of evidence indicated that he had been shot in the head by police after he had thrown a fire extinguisher at a police van.
Further reports indicate that, after being shot, he was crushed when the police van ran over him.
He died in the mayhem of "Genoa 1".
That is the part of the city outside the high security "Red Zone" around the central Palazzo Ducale, seat of this annual get-together of the leaders of the world's seven most industrialised countries, plus Russia.
A woman demonstrator was also fighting for her life, a television report said. And a paramilitary policeman was stable after being treated in hospital for a serious injury.
Inside the "Red Zone", all was eerily quiet in what has become a deserted town centre peopled only by policemen, summit delegates and journalists.
Walking along the empty, traffic-free streets of "Genoa 1", past shuttered shops and recently spruced-up buildings, the atmosphere was weirdly uneasy, as if a military putsch had just been enacted.
At the Palazzo Ducale itself, an almost reverential silence was broken only by the whirring of the sprays in the splendid fountain in Piazza De Ferrari and the quiet purr of the huge Cadillacs, Zils and Mercedes used to deliver world leaders to their summit deliberations.
Outside the "Red Zone", beyond the heavily-manned steel and concrete barriers, the atmosphere was radically different.
There was shouting and screaming, the smell of tear gas, smoke and blood as urban guerrilla warfare raged. In particular, one group of anarchists, called the "Black Blocks", went on the rampage, smashing shop windows, looting shops, threatening reporters and TV cameramen while throwing cobblestones at the police and burning cars and dustbins.
Reports that the "Black Blocks" threatened to march on the press room of the Genoa Social Forum, an umbrella anti-globalisation body committed to a peaceful protest, says much about their violent intentions.
While both the Italian State President, Mr Carlo Azeglio Ciampi, and the Prime Minister, Mr Silvio Berlusconi, expressed their profound dismay at the death, this latest incident will only increase the ranks of those who feel that summits like this should simply be abandoned.
In a gesture that may prove more than merely symbolic, Mr Annan, the heads of the World Health Organisation and the UN's Food and Agriculture Organisation as well as government representatives from Algeria, Mali, Nigeria, South Africa, Bangladesh and El Salvador have all been invited to attend the summit. Their presence represents an attempt to address some of the concerns - the fight against AIDS, relief of developing world debt, the growing North-South gap - championed by the Seattle People, while making the summit look less like a rich man's club.
Today, there will be much talk about the ailing world economy, global warming and the US missile defence shield.
Out there in "Genoa 2", there will almost certainly be more violence.