Totti, Roman born and bred, Roma to his core, has never hidden how much Rome means to him.

“It is my family, my friends, the people I love,” he said a few years ago, when asked why he had stayed at Roma. “It is the sea, the mountains, the monuments.”

He has not been short of opportunities: A.C. Milan and Real Madrid, to name but two, have made concerted attempts to coax him away in the 23 years since he first appeared as a cherubic teenager in the yellow and red colors of the team he supported as a child.

He could not bring himself to leave.

“I am fortunate to have only worn one shirt in my career,” Totti, 40, said in a recent interview. “It is something that is fundamental to me. It is something I have always wanted, to be one of these few who wear only one shirt, a fan and a player of the same team.”

During his apparently endless twilight — and despite the delicate politics between Rome’s two clubs, Roma and Lazio, as demonstrated in the continuing struggle on the Via della Madonna dei Monti — the city has done what it can to reward that loyalty, to reciprocate his affection.

A few years ago, the street artist Lucamaleonte was commissioned to compose an officially sanctioned mural in the sleepy San Giovanni district. Totti grew up here, in an apartment on Via Vetulonia. He went to school a few streets away, on Via Pascoli.