Rome

Top things to do in Rome

1. 01

   Colosseum, Roman Forum and Palatine Hill - the imperial core

   history 👍 Popular

   One ticketed archaeological zone covering three sites. The amphitheatre still shows the brick and travertine skeleton with the hypogeum, the tunnel and cage network under the arena floor, laid open beneath it. The Forum next door is the flattened civic centre of the Republic and empire, and the Palatine above it holds the imperial palaces and the best free-standing view back down over the whole thing. Go at opening or in the last slot of the day.

2. 02

   Pantheon - the concrete dome and its open oculus

   history 👍 Popular

   The most intact building to survive from ancient Rome, rebuilt under Hadrian and still carrying the largest unreinforced concrete dome ever built. The coffered ceiling steps up to a single open eye at the crown, so rain falls through onto a slightly convex floor drilled with drains. Raphael is buried against the wall, and the shaft of light tracking round the interior is the whole point of standing there a while.

3. 03

   Vatican Museums and the Sistine Chapel - the papal collections

   culture arts 👍 Popular

   A one-way march of several kilometres through the papal holdings, ending in the chapel. The stretches worth slowing for are the Laocoon and the Belvedere torso in the sculpture courts, the Raphael Rooms, and the map gallery. The Sistine ceiling and the Last Judgment come at the end, in a crowded room where you are asked to keep quiet and not photograph. Book a timed slot, and go early or late in the day.

4. 04

   St Peter's Basilica - Michelangelo's dome and Bernini's colonnade

   history

   The largest church in the world, entered across an oval piazza that Bernini wrapped in curved colonnades to look like arms. Inside are Michelangelo's Pieta behind glass just to the right of the door, Bernini's twisting bronze baldachin over the papal altar, and floor markings comparing the length of other cathedrals. The dome climb ends on the drum walkway inside, then a squeezed staircase out to the lantern and the view over the city.

5. 05

   Galleria Borghese - Bernini's marble in a garden villa

   culture arts ⭐ Highly recommended

   A cardinal's pleasure villa in the park, still hung and arranged roughly as a collection rather than a museum, and capped at a fixed number of visitors per timed session, so it never feels mobbed. The Bernini sculptures are the reason to come: Apollo and Daphne turning into laurel, Pluto's fingers pressing into Proserpina's thigh, the David mid-twist. Six Caravaggios hang downstairs. Booking ahead is compulsory, not advisory.

6. 06

   Caravaggio in the churches - the canvases still in their chapels

   culture arts ⭐ Highly recommended

   Three parish churches in the centre hold Caravaggios in the chapels they were painted for. San Luigi dei Francesi has the Matthew cycle, Sant'Agostino the Madonna of Loreto with its dirty-footed pilgrims, and Santa Maria del Popolo the Conversion of Saul and the Crucifixion of Peter. Bring coins for the light timers, go outside Mass times, and treat it as a walk between three stops rather than one visit.

7. 07

   Basilica di San Clemente - three cities stacked under one church

   history

   The clearest single demonstration of how Rome actually works. A twelfth-century basilica with a gold apse mosaic sits over a fourth-century church with faded frescoes, which sits over a Roman house and a Mithraic temple with its altar still in place, water running audibly through the ancient drains at the bottom. You descend roughly a thousand years per staircase.

8. 08

   Capitoline Museums - the bronze emperor and Michelangelo's piazza

   culture arts

   The oldest public museum collection anywhere, on the hill that was the religious centre of the ancient city, reached by Michelangelo's ramped staircase into a piazza he laid out around the gilded bronze Marcus Aurelius on horseback. Inside are the she-wolf, the Dying Gaul, the colossal marble fragments of Constantine, and a tunnel across to a terrace looking straight down the Forum.

9. 09

   Trevi Fountain, Piazza Navona and the Spanish Steps - the Baroque set pieces

   scenic

   The three most photographed spots in the centre, all within a short walk of each other. Trevi is a whole palace facade turned into a seascape and is packed at every hour, so come at dawn or near midnight. Navona is built on the outline of a Roman stadium and holds Bernini's four-rivers fountain. The Spanish Steps are a place to sit and watch, although sitting on the steps themselves is now policed.

10. 10

    Testaccio and the Roman kitchen - carbonara, cacio e pepe and the quinto quarto

    food

    The old slaughterhouse quarter, where the Roman canon was formed out of offcuts. The four pastas are carbonara, cacio e pepe, amatriciana and gricia, all built on pork cheek, pecorino and pepper rather than cream. Beyond them sit oxtail stew, tripe, saltimbocca, supplì fried rice balls and pizza al taglio sold by weight. The covered market is the easiest way in for a first-timer.

11. 11

    Jewish Ghetto - the Portico of Octavia and fried artichokes

    food

    A few dense lanes by the river holding one of the oldest Jewish communities in Europe, walled in for three centuries and still the centre of Roman Jewish cooking. The carciofo alla giudia, an artichoke flattened and deep-fried until the leaves crisp like petals, is the dish, and it is properly in season in winter and early spring. The ruined portico and the theatre of Marcellus are at the end of the street.

12. 12

    Baths of Caracalla - the scale of imperial bathing

    history

    Brick walls still standing several storeys high over the floor plan of a bathing complex that took thousands of people at a time, with fragments of mosaic paving and the outlines of the cold, warm and hot rooms readable on the ground. It is one of the largest ancient sites in the city and one of the emptiest, which tells you something about how visitors distribute themselves here.

13. 13

    Via Appia Antica and the catacombs - the basalt road out of the city

    history

    The Republic's road south, still paved in its original basalt slabs and lined with tombs, umbrella pines and stretches of aqueduct in the parkland alongside. Several catacomb complexes underneath open to guided visits, with kilometres of burial galleries cut into soft tufa. Best on a Sunday, when the inner stretch closes to traffic, and best covered by bike or on foot rather than by car.

14. 14

    Castel Sant'Angelo - Hadrian's tomb turned papal fortress

    history

    A drum-shaped imperial mausoleum recycled into a castle, prison and papal bolthole, joined to the Vatican by a raised escape corridor along the top of a wall. A spiral ramp climbs from the ancient core through frescoed Renaissance apartments to a terrace under the bronze angel, with the statue-lined bridge and the dome of St Peter's lined up in front of you.

15. 15

    Villa Borghese and the Gianicolo - the parks and the terrace view

    scenic

    Villa Borghese is the big landscaped park above the Spanish Steps, with a lake, rowing boats and the Pincio terrace looking over the rooftops. The Gianicolo, the ridge above Trastevere, is the better view and the quieter walk, lined with busts of Garibaldi's volunteers and topped by a fountain, with a cannon fired from the terrace at midday.

16. 16

    Centrale Montemartini - classical marble in a disused power station

    culture arts

    Roman statues, mosaics and sarcophagi displayed against black diesel engines and turbine housings in a decommissioned power plant south of the centre, originally a temporary overflow from the Capitoline that proved better than the arrangement it replaced. Almost nobody is there, and the collision of white marble and industrial iron is genuinely worth the metro ride.

17. 17

    Trastevere after dark - the old quarter across the river

    nightlife music

    Narrow ivy-hung lanes on the far bank that fill after sunset with people spilling out of trattorias and wine bars onto the cobbles. The medieval church on the main square has gold mosaics on its facade lit up at night, and the streets west of Viale Trastevere are markedly quieter and more residential than the ones east of it.

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