Rome Discovery Guide

Rome is the only city where three thousand years of continuous building are visible from the same street corner.

An imperial temple became a church and is still standing with its original roof; a stadium became a square; an emperor’s mausoleum became a fortress. Nothing here was preserved so much as reused, and the layering is the whole experience.

The Colosseum, the Forum and the Pantheon are the obvious reasons, and they earn it. The Vatican Museums hold the Sistine ceiling and one of the greatest collections anywhere.

But the better half of Rome is free: fountains you drink from, churches with Caravaggios on the wall and a light switch by the door, and an evening in Trastevere or Testaccio that costs the price of dinner.

Ancient Rome

The Colosseum, Roman Forum and Palatine on one combined ticket, best early or late; the Pantheon, which has been roofed continuously since AD 126 and still has the largest unreinforced concrete dome in the world; and the Baths of Caracalla for scale without crowds.

The Vatican

The Vatican Museums and the Sistine Chapel — book a timed slot, go at opening or on a late evening, and accept that the last kilometre of corridor is a crush. Saint Peter’s Basilica is free, with a separate queue and a dome you can climb.

Free art

Caravaggios in San Luigi dei Francesi and Santa Maria del Popolo, Michelangelo’s Moses in San Pietro in Vincoli, and Bernini in half a dozen churches — all free, all with a coin-operated light.

Walking

Piazza Navona, the Trevi Fountain and Campo de’ Fiori in a morning; the Appian Way on a Sunday when it closes to traffic.

Evening

Trastevere, Monti or Testaccio, eaten late.

Rome is a capital city that behaves like a large, chaotic, deeply provincial town, and Romans rather like it that way.

Romanita

There is a distinct Roman character — sardonic, fatalistic, quick with an insult and slow with paperwork — and a dialect to go with it. Romans are famously unimpressed by their own city’s monuments, which they walk past on the way to work, and equally unimpressed by Milan, the north, the government and each other.

The prevailing attitude to bureaucracy, traffic and public services is an amused shrug. Things work eventually or they do not.

The church

The Vatican is a separate state inside the city, the pope is the bishop of Rome, and the church’s presence is architectural and institutional as much as devotional — there are over 900 churches, and religious observance is lower than the skyline suggests.

Neighbourhood

The rione you come from matters, and Testaccio, Trastevere and Garbatella all have strong local identities.

Football

Roma and Lazio divide the city and the division is taken extremely seriously.

Book the big sites ahead with timed entry. The Colosseum, Borghese Gallery and Vatican Museums all sell out, and turning up hoping is how people lose half a day in a queue.

Do not sit on the fountains or the Spanish Steps. This is enforced with fines — the city introduced them after decades of wear and rubbish — along with rules against eating messily at monuments and wading in fountains.

Refill your bottle. The nasoni — cast-iron street fountains with a curved spout — run continuously with clean drinking water from the ancient aqueducts, and there are around 2,500 of them. Buying bottled water in Rome is unnecessary.

Eat away from the monuments. Restaurants with photographs on the menu next to the Pantheon are a tax on not knowing better; walk ten minutes into Monti, Testaccio or Trastevere’s back streets.

Cover up in churches, which are places of worship and enforce it at the major ones.

What a day costs, by how you travel

Relative cost across the city

Rome is cheaper than Paris or London for food and drink and comparable for accommodation. The single biggest saving is eating and sleeping ten minutes from a monument rather than next to one.