Reaching out: tour guides in Rome are losing patience with visitors who ask ignorant questions. American tourists often ask to see the "Sixteen Chapel", but the British tend to be better informed DID Moses pose for Michelangelo? Was the Colosseum built as a ruin? And just where is the grave of Christ? If you are thinking of coming to Rome, its chief tour guide has a suggestion: you might bone up on the answers before you arrive. That way you will avoid wasting your time and that of your tour guide by asking "embarrassing questions". Marco Colzi, head of the tour guides' trade union, said that he tried to be helpful in such cases, but patience wears thin when visitors ask whether Moses had posed for his sculpture by Michelangelo or whether the Colosseum has a chunk missing by design. Visitors often asked where Jesus was buried, and reacted "sceptically" when told that his Resurrection took place in Jerusalem, Signor Colzi said. "They look incredulous when we tell them that Jesus never carne to Rome at all," he said. Signor Colzi, who was inaugurating a campaign to "raise the level of knowledge" about Rome, said that British, French and German visitors tended to be best informed. Among Americans, it was, oddly, those of Italian origin who were the most ignorant, he told Il Messaggero, the Rome daily. One guide said that the Sistine Chapel, named after Pope Sixtus IV, for whom it was built at the end of the 15th century, was often referred to as the "Sixteen Chapel", especially by Americans. "They ask me where the other 15 are." The campaign follows a drive by the tour guides to protect their profession from "impostors". Last month a woman was fined 172 (120) for pointing out the artistic beauty of the Trevi Fountain to tourists without authorisation.