Rome, the “Eternal City”, has so many different aspects – the ancient city, the papal capital, fashionable modern Rome – intertwined with each other, that visitors looking for one continually come up against the others. However, to begin at the beginning, a good introduction to Rome is to go first to the Palatino 1 [map] (Palatine Hill; daily; combined ticket with the Forum and Colosseum). It was here, the story goes, that Romulus and Remus were brought up by a wolf in a cave, before Romulus went on to found Rome in 753 BC. Archaeologists have discovered traces of Iron Age huts that actually date back even earlier, to the 10th century BC.
Much later, the Palatine with its view of the city below became the preferred residence of Rome’s emperors. Byron’s description of the romantic pastoral ruins still rings true: “Cypress and ivy, weed and wallflower grown/ Matted and mass’d together, hillocks heap’d/ On what were chambers, arch crush’d, column strown/ In fragments, choked up vaults, and frescos steep’d/ In subterranean damps…” You can wander around the romantic ruins of imperial dwellings, see the frescoes in the Domus Augustana (House of Augustus) and view relics from the Palatine villas in the Museo Palatino (Palatine Museum; daily). Excavations are ongoing at the Palatine, which sadly means that several of its buildings are periodically closed.
The Trevi Fountain.
Susan Smart/Apa Publications
Heart of ancient Rome
Below the Palatine lies the Foro Romano, the Roman Forum 2 [map] (daily), ancient Rome’s commercial and political centre. In the fading light, and with some imagination, the columns and ghostly white blocks of weather-beaten marble take on flesh and life. And if there are pieces missing, the blame should be placed on later Romans, grand or obscure, who for over 1,000 years used it as a stone quarry. The star attraction is the Arco di Settimio Severo (Arch of Septimius Severus), built in 203 after the emperor had conquered the Parthians and made Mesopotamia a new province of Rome.
Tip
Because of ongoing archaeological work and the fragility of the ancient structures, many of Rome’s ancient sites are sometimes closed to visitors. It’s a good idea to check on current closures before visiting, through tourist offices or the official site http://archeoroma.beniculturali.it.
To the west of the main Forum are the Fori Imperiali (Imperial Fora, added by five successive emperors. The Museo dei Fori Imperiali (Museum of the Imperial Fora; Tue–Sun) occupies the best preserved of the five, Trajan’s Forum and Markets (Mercati di Traiano), dominated by the soaring Trajan’s Column. The market buildings are astonishing, and just as astonishingly well preserved is an ancient multi-storey shopping mall that now forms a superb backdrop to the museum’s illuminating displays on every side of ancient Rome.
The Temple of Saturn.
The Capitoline and Piazza Venezia
Overlooking the Forum on its western side, the Capitolino 3 [map] (Capitoline Hill) was also a centre of power in the ancient city, but its most prominent feature today is the magnificent Piazza del Campidoglio, created in the 1530s by Michelangelo. The two palazzi either side of it – Palazzo Nuovo and Palazzo dei Conservatori – house the Musei Capitolini (Capitoline Museums; Tue–Sun). The collection comprises priceless treasures from ancient Rome, along with artworks by Italian 16th- and 17th-century masters such as Veronese, Titian, Caravaggio and Tintoretto. The equestrian state of Marcus Aurelius on the piazza is a replica; the original is given pride of place in the museum’s new glass-roofed hall.
On the western side of the hill, the ruined Teatro di Marcello (Theatre of Marcellus) 4 [map], looking almost like a small Colosseum, was built as a classical theatre in the reign of Augustus.
Ancient and modern Rome and all the main streets of the modern city meet at Piazza Venezia 5 [map], with on one side the Palazzo Venezia. The central balcony of this Renaissance palace, built in 1455 for a Venetian Cardinal, is famous as the place from where Mussolini addressed adoring crowds in the 1930s. Today it houses a museum (Tue–Sun), with a varied collection that includes medieval and early Renaissance paintings, Bernini sculptures, tapestries and armour. However, visually the square is unavoidably dominated by the bombastically vast white wedding cake of the Vittoriano, a giant “Roman-style” monument erected in the 1880s to the first King of a united Italy, Vittorio Emanuele II. Visible from all over the city, it has been the butt of jokes ever since it was built.
How Rome looked in Hadrian’s day
Rome was famously founded on seven hills – the Palatine, Capitoline, Aventine, Caelian, Quirinal, Viminal and Esquiline – although the oldest settlement was on the Palatine, and the early citadel was on the Capitoline. The dip between these two hills was used for markets, public business and social contacts, and so grew into the first Forum. As well as ever larger markets, this would contain the Curia or Senate House, the Rostra where public announcements were made – and from where Mark Antony supposedly asked fellow Romans to lend him their ears – and many temples and other public buildings.
Wealthy Romans lived with their slaves in large houses of several patios, called a domus, on the central hills, but the Roman poor occupied blocks of small apartments and shops called insulae. On the Esquiline there was a notorious criminal slum called the Suburra (a status some streets around Stazione Termini still maintain). Public baths were an important part of Roman life, open to rich and poor. Rome’s famous aqueducts were built up over centuries to supply them and the city in general with water, but providing all kinds of services for a city the size of Rome – under Hadrian it had perhaps a million people – was not something its rulers attempted. All around the ancient city were vast heaps of fetid refuse, where its waste was simply dumped each night.
The Colosseum and Baths of Caracalla
South of the Palatine are some of the most famous relics of ancient Rome. At the foot of the hill one can still see the line of the track of the Circo Massimo (Circus Maximus), where chariot races were held. Nearby is the most awesome monument to Roman ambition (and bloodlust), the Colosseum 6 [map] (Colosseo; daily), built in AD 72–80, and which in its heyday had room for up to 55,000 spectators to watch gladiatorial combats and other bloody entertainments. Every kind of animal from across the empire was brought to be fought and killed here, along with criminals, Christians and other unfortunates. To create space to build it, the Emperor Vespasian drained the lake of the Domus Aurea 7 [map] or Golden House, a palace built for the tyrannical Emperor Nero after the great fire of Rome in AD 64, which Nero was accused of having started in order to clear the way for his own megalomaniac plans. The Domus Aurea was near-legendary as the most extravagant of all Roman palaces, but after Nero’s fall in 68 most of it was rapidly destroyed. It was forgotten until the 15th century, when a young man fell down a hole and discovered it, and artists such as Raphael and Michelangelo climbed down too, to be stunned by its elegant frescoes. Modern conservation has been complex, and the house is often closed, but it’s worth checking whether it’s currently open.
The Colosseum is even more impressive at night.
From the Colosseum a broad street leads to the Piazza di San Giovanni in Laterano 8 [map], overlooked by the magnificent Basilica di San Giovanni in Laterano. In few other places is Rome’s extraordinary accumulation of history so palpable: this is actually the oldest Christian basilica in Rome, founded by Constantine in 313, but rebuilt many times. Borromini created the marble-clad Baroque interior in the 1640s, while the grand facade dates from the 1730s. Across the street, the pope’s private chapel in the former Lateran Palace is reached via the Scala Santa, a staircase said to be made of steps that were trodden by Jesus before his trial by Pontius Pilate, and so are ascended by pilgrims on their knees.
From the piazza, Via Amba Aradam leads southwest towards the Terme di Caracalla 9 [map] (Baths of Caracalla; Tue–Sun and Mon am). Many baths had been built by previous emperors, but Antoninus Caracalla was determined to relegate them all to history when construction began in AD 212 on the largest baths Rome had ever seen. Holding up to 1,500 bathers at a time, the baths functioned until the Goths invaded two centuries later and destroyed the aqueducts that supplied them with water.
The poet Shelley composed his Prometheus Unbound (1820) on a visit to the ruins of the baths, and their cultural associations are evoked each summer when operas and ballet are staged here.
Southwest of the baths, the Testaccio district was once Rome’s dockside. Vast amounts of oil and wine were landed here in clay pots or amphorae, which were then discarded in a giant heap that became the base of Monte Testaccio. Modern Testaccio was a working-class quarter around Rome’s main slaughterhouse (Mattatoio), but recently has become trendy for restaurants and nightlife, and MACRO Testaccio (Tue–Sun), in the old slaughterhouse, is the city’s leading contemporary art centre. On the district’s eastern side is the tranquil Protestant Cemetery, where both Keats and Shelley are buried.
The heart of papal Rome
After the empire’s fall, the core of Rome shifted northwest of the Capitoline to the bend in the River Tiber that juts west towards the Vatican, and this, the Centro Storico or historic centre, has remained its heart. This is Rome’s most charming district, and the best for exploring in no particular direction. Away from the broad Corso Vittorio Emanuele II, created in the 1880s to speed up traffic, the Centro is a maze of intertwining alleys and squares, with streets like Via dei Carbonari, full of antique shops, or Via del Governo Vecchio off Piazza Navona, with tiny individual shops and cupboard-sized wine bars. Campo de’ Fiori is one of Rome’s most popular squares, with an exuberant food market by day and buzzing restaurants and cafés at night. Among these atmospheric streets there is also plenty of magnificent architecture, such as the Renaissance Palazzo Farnese south of the Campo.
In the southwest corner of the Centro is the former Jewish Ghetto. Jews had lived in Rome since ancient times, but were confined to this area by papal order from 1555 to 1870. Much of the community survived persecution in World War II, and the district retains some of its Jewish character. Jews have a place of honour in Roman traditional cookery, and the Ghetto is the place to sample Roman-Jewish specialities such as fried artichokes.
The Pantheon.
Susan Smart/Apa Publications
There are also, naturally, relics of ancient Rome. The Pantheon ) [map] (daily) was first built as a temple in 27 BC, rebuilt by Hadrian in the 2nd century, and converted into a church in the year 609. The best preserved of all Rome’s ancient buildings, astonishingly unchanged, its most extraordinary feature is its massive dome, which has a single hole at the centre of the coffered ceiling, providing the only light. The gracious 16-columned portico, too, has been a model for all Neoclassical architecture. In 1520 the artist Raphael, on his own wishes, was buried inside the Pantheon, and he has been followed by many other distinguished figures.
Eat
The two most celebrated gelaterie (ice cream shops) in Rome are Giolitti, off Piazza Montecitorio in the Centro Storico and open since 1900, and I Tre Scalini on Piazza Navona, which benefits from a fabulous view, as well as its famous speciality truffle ice cream.
The great hub of the Centro Storico is the Piazza Navona ! [map], one of Rome’s most popular squares with locals and tourists, with pavement restaurants, cafés and gelaterie that are great for people-watching and soaking up the atmosphere. The Piazza’s oval shape reflects the fact that it follows the shape of an ancient stadium for chariot races, but it was given its definitive appearance in the mid-17th century, when Bernini added the superb Fontana dei Quattro Fiumi (Fountain of the Four Rivers) to the two earlier fountains by Giacomo della Porta, the Fontana del Moro (of the Moor) at the south end and Fontana del Nettuno (Neptune) at the north. On the west side is the equally magnificent church of Sant’Agnese in Agone, by Bernini’s great rival Borromini.
The Trevi Fountain.
Susan Smart/Apa Publications
Tridente and Villa Borghese
Modern Rome’s central thoroughfare of Via del Corso, from Piazza del Popolo to Piazza Venezia, forms the boundary of the Centro Storico. Just to the east, the extravagant Baroque Fontana di Trevi @ [map] (Trevi Fountain) is a popular rendezvous, where tourists come to have their picture taken and toss coins into the water, which, so the superstition goes, ensures their return to the Eternal City. Designed by Nicola Salvi and completed in 1762, the central figure is Neptune, flanked by two Tritons holding sea creatures.
To the north is the area known as the Tridente, because of the three streets that run out like prongs of a fork from Piazza del Populo; Via del Babuino, Via del Corso and Via Ripetta. They and the little streets between them are Rome’s fashionable shopping area par excellence, and Via Condotti, especially, is lined with the outlets of designer labels. The ancients are still present, though, for by the river near Via Ripetta is the Ara Pacis (Tue–Sun), an intact 1st-century altar-temple celebrating the achievements of Augustus that is now displayed in a beautiful modern museum space, and the less well-maintained Mausoleo di Augusto, the emperor’s tomb.
On the east side of the Tridente is another of Rome’s perennially popular meeting places, the Spanish Steps £ [map] leading up from the Piazza di Spagna to the twin-towered church of Trinità dei Monte. The steps take their name from the Spanish embassy, which once stood here. Everyone gathers here to watch the world go by, as they have done for centuries. The Keats-Shelley House (Mon–Sat) is the place where the poet John Keats died in 1827; Henry James stayed at the Hotel Inghilterra; Goethe lived nearby at No. 18 Via del Corso, where there is a museum devoted to his travels in Italy.
Boating on the lake of the Villa Borghese.
Susan Smart
Behind Trinità dei Monti is the Villa Borghese, so called because it was once the estate of the aristocratic Borghese family, but is now Rome’s favourite park. Its gardens provide a wonderful respite from the heat and hassle of the city; here you’ll find an artificial lake, fountains and follies, a zoo and museums and galleries. The cultural highlight is the Galleria Borghese $ [map] (Tue–Sun; reservations obligatory; www.galleriaborghese.it) within the Baroque Villa Borghese, built in 1613–15 for the extravagant Cardinal Scipione Borghese. His exquisite art collection features works by Raphael, Titian, Caravaggio and Bernini, supplemented by later works including Canova’s famous marble sculpture of Napoleon’s sister, Pauline, the wife of a later Borghese prince, as a topless, reclining Venus.
Harry’s Bar on Via Veneto.
Susan Smart/Apa Publications
The Quirinale
Sant’ Andrea al Quirinale % [map] , on Via del Quirinale, is often considered the finest architectural work by the Baroque genius Bernini. Its interior decoration is supreme justification for the high esteem in which he is held: every inch is covered with gilt and marble, and carved cherubs ascend the walls as if in a cloud of smoke.
Baroque splendour in Rome
The Baroque movement was born in Rome, spurred by a desire, rooted in the Counter-Reformation reaction against Protestantism, to glorify the Catholic Church and present its beliefs in the most visceral and dramatic way possible. The popes decided that their capital had to be a city of unchallengeable grandeur, “for the greater glory of God and the Church”.
One of the first great architects of Roman Baroque was Carlo Maderno (1556–1629), who in 1612 added its august facade to St Peter’s, left unfinished by Michelangelo. His work was surpassed by that of Gian Lorenzo Bernini (1598–1680), who was equally brilliant as an architect and a sculptor. Curving forms and stunning light effects are a Bernini trademark, as in Sant’Andrea al Quirinale, but his most famous constructions are the great colonnade embracing St Peter’s Square, and the giant Baldacchino or canopy above the main altar inside. His sculptures such as Apollo and Daphne in the Galleria Borghese, or the fountains of Piazza Navona, have an unrivalled sensuous vitality.
Bernini’s rival as an architect was Francesco Borromini (1599–1667), whose eccentric designs were far more adventurous. Many hinge on a complex interplay of concave and convex surfaces, as in the undulating facades of San Carlo alle Quattro Fontane, Sant’Ivo, and Sant’Agnese in Piazza Navona (1652–5).
Bernini, along with his rival Borromini and Carlo Maderno, all played a part in the design of the Palazzo Barberini in the 1620s, and Bernini’s sculpture also features inside in the Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Antica ^ [map] (National Gallery of Historic Art; Tue–Sun), a priceless collection of medieval, Renaissance and Baroque art.
Northeast of the Palazzo, the church of Santa Maria della Vittoria & [map] is home to one of Bernini’s supreme creations, the Ecstasy of St Theresa. This depiction of the 17th-century Spanish mystic evokes for many visitors a sense of sensual ecstasy rather than the physical pain that might seem more appropriate.
The tomb of Bernini lies in Santa Maria Maggiore * [map] to the south. The basis of this huge basilica was built in the 5th century; the marble floor and belltower are medieval; the interior with its gilded ceiling is unmistakably a product of the Renaissance; while the twin domes and imposing facades are pure Baroque. Inside the church there are stunning mosaics from the 5th century in the nave and on the triumphal arch, and medieval mosaics in the loggia and apse.
A few streets to the east is one of the great hubs of modern Rome, the Stazione Termini, the huge main train station and axis of the Metro lines. The Esquilino area around the station is one of Rome’s busiest, with a great many hotels.
The Castel Sant’Angelo, the setting for the last act of Puccini’s Tosca.
Susan Smart/Apa Publications
Across the Tiber
Trastevere, from trans Tiberim (“over the Tiber”), was a working-class, bohemian neighbourhood, which has developed into a trendy and colourful tourist quarter, with atmospheric restaurants and bars. It is also popular for the Porta Portese flea market that bursts into life every Sunday morning. There are also two churches of note: Santa Cecilia in Trastevere ( [map] is dedicated to the patron saint of music, who was martyred here in AD 230, and has a fresco of The Last Judgement by Pietro Cavallini (c.1290).
Santa Maria in Trastevere ‚ [map] is one of the oldest churches in Rome, and its foundation is credited to Pope Callixtus I in the 3rd century. Inside are spectacular 13th-century mosaics.
Tip
When in Rome Pope Benedict gives a general audience in St Peter’s Square (or sometimes inside, depending on the weather) on Wednesdays at 10.30am, and gives a blessing after Mass on Sundays at 12 noon. Tickets are free but reservations are recommended, especially for large groups, through www.papalaudience.org or tel: 06-6988 5863.
A little way north is the Renaissance Villa Farnesina ⁄ [map] (Mon–Sat am), built around 1510 for Agostino Chigi, “the pope’s banker”, who commissioned Raphael and his pupils to decorate the interior with frescoes, many of which survive.
Across the road, the late Baroque Palazzo Corsini houses another part of the Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Antica ¤ [map] (Tue–Sun), with works by Rubens, Van Dyck, Caravaggio, Tintoretto, Poussin and Guido Reni.
An overview of St Peter’s Square.
Susan Smart/Apa Publications
Castel Sant’Angelo and the Vatican
Dominating the Tiber to the north are the mighty brick walls of Castel Sant’Angelo ‹ [map] (Tue–Sun), linked to the city by the ancient Ponte Sant’Angelo. The castle started life as a mausoleum for Emperor Hadrian in AD 139, and was later adapted as a fortress, a prison and a hideout for popes (a secret passageway links it to the Vatican). Over 50 rooms chart its remarkably chequered history, from dark prison cells to lavish Renaissance papal apartments. If time is short, seek out the trompe-l’œil frescoes by Perin del Vaga and Tibaldi in the 16th-century papal apartments that play little tricks with the eye, and admire the views from the terrace, scene of the last act of Puccini’s Tosca.
Detail of the School of Athens frescoes by Raphael in the Vatican Museums.
Susan Smart
From Castel Sant’ Angelo, Via della Conciliazione leads to the Città del Vaticano › [map] (Vatican City). Piazza San Pietro (St Peter’s Square) is packed when the pope appears on the balcony to address and bless the vast crowds. When the square was completed by Bernini in 1656, the effect he intended for his grand colonnades, which sweep into an embrace of the Basilica of St Peter was quite different from what is experienced today. His idea was to surprise the pilgrim visitor with a sudden view of the basilica, but when Via della Conciliazione was built in the 1930s it provided a new, monumental approach to St Peter’s.
The Vatican
The Vatican is an anomaly, a sovereign city within a city. A place of pilgrimage for devout Catholics, it is on every visitor’s itinerary.
Rome and the Vatican have lived for more than one and a half millennia in symbiosis, not always perfect, not always happy, but always mutually rewarding. Rome is where the Church gained its martyrs, where Emperor Constantine made Christianity the predominant religion by the time of his death in AD 337. In return, the Vatican eventually gave Rome another empire, a spiritual and a political one, at times almost as powerful as the worldly one lost to the barbarians.
Vatican is the name given to a hill on the right bank of the Tiber. There Emperor Nero completed the circus that Gaius (Caligula) had built and adorned with an obelisk brought from Egypt (the one which now rises in the middle of St Peter’s Square). Early Christians were tortured here, and Emperor Constantine gave the land to the church where, over the grave of St Peter, who had been martyred in Nero’s persecutions of AD 64, a place of worship was built that developed into the vast complex seen today. St Peter’s Basilica is the largest in Christendom, and more than one billion Catholics are governed from this walled-in hill known as the Vatican City.
There is plenty to see and do, beginning perhaps with the purchase of some Vatican stamps and the posting of a card from the Vatican post office, or a climb up the 244 stairs to the top of St Peter’s dome. As you enter St Peter’s, on the right, Michelangelo’s Pietà enthrals today as much as it did in 1499 when the artist finished it at the age of 25. Since being vandalised in 1972, the marble sculpture has been enclosed by glass. Further up the nave is the bronze statue of St Peter, its toe worn away by the countless kisses of pious pilgrims. A highly ornate Baroque canopy by Bernini dominates the nave above the Papal Altar.
The Vatican Museums (Mon–Sat, last Sun of the month 9am–1.45pm) comprise eight museums, five galleries and the Borgia Apartments, with tours culminating in the star attractions: the Stanze di Raffaello (Raphael Rooms) and Michelangelo’s Cappella Sistina (Sistine Chapel). The walls of this famous chapel are covered in frescoes by Botticelli (Temptations of Christ, with the devil disguised in a monk’s habit, and Punishment of the Rebels), Ghirlandaio (Calling of St Peter and St Andrew) and Perugino (The Delivery of the Keys); the celebrated ceiling was painted by Michelangelo between 1508 and 1512, and he added the awe-inspiring Last Judgement above the altar in 1535–41.
Michelangelo worked alone on the ceiling from a specially designed scaffold, and the controversial restoration work of the 1980s has allowed a new generation of visitors to appreciate the skill and passion that went into the work. The only subject matter that is not from the Old Testament is the classical Sibyls, and they only get a nose in because of the highly suspect story that they prophesied the birth of Christ.
“All the world hastened to behold this marvel and was overwhelmed, speechless with astonishment,” the art historian Vasari wrote of Michelangelo’s handiwork. The validity of his judgement may help sustain you as the queue to enter the chapel makes its way slowly forward.
Nuns posing in St Peter’s Square.
Susan Smart/Apa Publications
Around Rome
Not far from the city are more attractions that complete any visit to Rome. Some 31km (19 miles) east, the hill town of Tivoli has been an escape for Romans for over 2,000 years. The Villa Adriana (Hadrian’s Villa; daily), built for Emperor Hadrian around AD 117, is mostly a ruin, but its pools and gardens still give a vivid impression of a Roman luxury retreat. Nearby, the Villa d’Este (Tue–Sun) and its famous gardens have a similar feel but are much later (and so more intact), having been created for the d’Este family in the 1550s. About the same distance to the southwest of Rome is the ancient port of Ostia Antica with streets, temples, mosaics and baths among the site’s impressive remains.
Southeast of Rome, the small towns in the Alban Hills known as the Castelli Romani (“Roman Castles”) such as Frascati, Grottaferrata or the papal summer residence of Castel Gandolfo all have a distinctive charm, and are known for their wines and food.