Roma Eterna: What You Cannot Miss in the Eternal City
There is a moment that happens to almost every first-time visitor to Rome, usually on the second or third day, when the accumulated weight of the city becomes almost too much to hold. You have walked through the Forum, where the Senate once met and Caesar was cremated. You have stood inside the Pantheon, which has been in continuous use for nearly two thousand years. You have thrown a coin into the Trevi Fountain, as travellers have done in one form or another since the fountain was completed in 1762. And you realise, with a kind of vertigo, that Rome is not a city with a history. Rome is history — layered, compressed, impossible to exhaust.
This is a guide for the curious traveller: not a list of opening hours and ticket prices, but an account of what makes each place worth your time, and why Rome rewards those who come prepared to pay attention.
The Colosseo and the Foro Romano
Begin here, because everything else in Rome makes more sense once you have stood inside the Colosseum and understood what it was. Built between 70 and 80 AD under the emperors Vespasian and Titus, it held between fifty and eighty thousand spectators — a number that most modern sports stadiums still struggle to match. The games held here — gladiatorial combat, animal hunts, public executions — were not the marginal entertainments of a brutal fringe. They were state-sponsored public spectacles, funded by emperors, attended by senators, and understood as expressions of Roman power and Roman values.
Walk from the Colosseum down into the Foro Romano, the civic heart of the Republic and the Empire. What you see now is a field of ruins — broken columns, eroded pavements, the stumps of temples. What stood here, at the height of the Empire, was the most important square mile in the Western world: the Senate house, the law courts, the temples of Saturn and Vesta, the Arch of Septimius Severus. Julius Caesar was cremated here, in the Forum, after his assassination in 44 BC. The spot is still marked, and Romans still leave flowers.
Practical note: Book tickets in advance. The combined Colosseum and Forum ticket is the standard option. Go early in the morning or late in the afternoon to avoid the worst of the crowds and the heat.
The Pantheon
The Pantheon is the best-preserved ancient building in the world, and it is best-preserved for a simple reason: it has never stopped being used. Built by Emperor Hadrian around 126 AD on the site of an earlier temple, it was converted to a Christian church in 609 AD — a conversion that saved it from the fate of most ancient Roman buildings, which were quarried for their stone throughout the medieval period. It has been a church ever since. Raphael is buried here. So are two kings of unified Italy.
The dome is the building's great achievement. At 43.3 metres in diameter, it remained the largest dome in the world for more than thirteen centuries, until Brunelleschi completed the dome of Florence Cathedral in 1436. The oculus at its centre — a circular opening nine metres across — is the building's only source of natural light. When it rains, the rain falls through the oculus onto the slightly convex floor, which drains through hidden channels. The building breathes.
Practical note: Entry now requires a timed ticket, bookable online. Go at opening time if possible — the morning light through the oculus is extraordinary.
The Vatican: San Pietro and the Musei Vaticani
The Vatican is a state within a city, and it contains two of the most visited sites in the world: St Peter's Basilica and the Vatican Museums, which end in the Sistine Chapel. They are adjacent but require separate planning.
St Peter's Basilica is free to enter, and it is worth entering slowly. The scale is deliberately overwhelming — Michelangelo's dome, Bernini's baldachin over the papal altar, the vast nave lined with marble and gold. Climb to the dome for the best view of Rome available from any point in the city. The climb is partly by stairs, partly by lift; the final section, through the curved interior of the dome itself, is not for the claustrophobic, but the view from the top is worth every step.
The Vatican Museums require a full half-day at minimum, and a full day if you want to see them properly. The collection spans Egyptian antiquities, Greek and Roman sculpture, Renaissance painting, and the Raphael Rooms — four chambers painted by Raphael and his workshop between 1508 and 1524, among the finest examples of Renaissance fresco in existence. The Sistine Chapel, at the end of the museum circuit, is always crowded and always worth it. Michelangelo painted the ceiling between 1508 and 1512, lying on scaffolding, in conditions he described as physically agonising. The Last Judgement on the altar wall came later, between 1536 and 1541. Stand in the middle of the room and look up.
Practical note: Book Vatican Museums tickets well in advance — weeks ahead in high season. Early morning entry or late afternoon entry reduces the crowds in the Sistine Chapel.
Piazza Navona and the Baroque City
Rome's Baroque layer — the Rome of the seventeenth century, when the Catholic Church was rebuilding its authority after the Reformation and commissioning the greatest artists of the age to make that authority visible — is everywhere, but it is concentrated most beautifully in Piazza Navona. The piazza follows the outline of the ancient Stadium of Domitian, built in 86 AD, whose curved end is still visible in the shape of the northern end of the square. In the centre stands Bernini's Fountain of the Four Rivers, completed in 1651: four colossal figures representing the Nile, the Ganges, the Danube, and the Río de la Plata, supporting an Egyptian obelisk. It is theatrical, exuberant, and completely characteristic of Bernini's genius for making stone look like it is in motion.
From Piazza Navona, walk to the Campo de' Fiori — a market square in the morning, a gathering place in the evening, and the site of the execution of Giordano Bruno in 1600, whose statue stands at the centre of the square, facing the Vatican. Then walk to the Palazzo Farnese, the finest Renaissance palace in Rome, now the French Embassy, whose courtyard can be glimpsed through the gates.
The Trevi Fountain
The Trevi Fountain is the largest Baroque fountain in Rome and one of the most famous in the world. Designed by Nicola Salvi and completed in 1762, it marks the terminal point of one of ancient Rome's aqueducts, the Aqua Virgo, which has been supplying water to this part of the city since 19 BC. The central figure is Neptune, god of the sea, riding a chariot pulled by sea horses guided by Tritons — one calm, one wild, representing the two moods of the sea.
The tradition of throwing a coin into the fountain — over the right shoulder with the left hand, to ensure a return to Rome — generates approximately one and a half million euros per year, which is collected nightly and donated to a Roman charity. Go early in the morning, before the crowds arrive, when the light is soft and the square is almost empty. It is a different fountain at six in the morning than it is at noon.
Trastevere
Trastevere — literally “across the Tiber” — is the neighbourhood on the right bank of the river that has been continuously inhabited since ancient times and retains, more than any other part of central Rome, the character of a working neighbourhood rather than a tourist destination. Its streets are narrow, its buildings are old, its piazzas are small and irregular. The Basilica di Santa Maria in Trastevere, founded in the third century and rebuilt in the twelfth, contains some of the finest medieval mosaics in Rome. The neighbourhood is best explored on foot, without a map, in the late afternoon when the light turns golden and the residents come out.
The Capitoline Hill and the Museo Capitolino
The Capitoline Hill is the smallest of Rome's seven hills and the most historically significant. It was the religious centre of ancient Rome, the site of the Temple of Jupiter Optimus Maximus, the most important temple in the Roman world. Today it is crowned by the Piazza del Campidoglio, designed by Michelangelo in the sixteenth century and completed after his death, with its distinctive oval pavement pattern and the equestrian statue of Marcus Aurelius at its centre (the original is inside the museum; what stands outside is a copy).
The Museo Capitolino, founded in 1471 by Pope Sixtus IV, is the oldest public museum in the world. Its collection includes the Capitoline Wolf — the bronze she-wolf suckling Romulus and Remus that has been the symbol of Rome since antiquity — and the original Marcus Aurelius equestrian statue, the only large-scale gilded bronze equestrian statue to survive from antiquity. From the terrace behind the museum, the view over the Forum is the best in Rome.
A Few Things Worth Knowing
Rome rewards the traveller who walks. The historic centre is compact enough to cover on foot, and the best discoveries — a courtyard glimpsed through an open door, a medieval church hidden behind a Baroque façade, a fountain in a small piazza that appears on no tourist map — happen between the major sites, not at them. Wear comfortable shoes. Carry water. Stop for coffee at a bar, standing at the counter, the way Romans do.
The city is best in spring (April and May) and autumn (September and October), when the heat is manageable and the crowds are thinner than in July and August. It is also worth visiting in winter, when the light is low and golden and the major sites are almost empty.
And bring something to write in. Rome generates notes — observations, questions, the names of things you want to look up later, the sentences that come to you while sitting in a piazza watching the light change on an old wall. A journal is not a luxury in Rome. It is a necessity.
Our Rome Journal celebrates the Eternal City's landmarks — from the Colosseo to Trastevere — in a commemorative collage inspired by the Italian tricolor.
References
Coarelli, F. (2007). Rome and Environs: An Archaeological Guide. University of California Press.
Hughes, R. (2011). Rome: A Cultural, Visual, and Personal History. Knopf.
Hibbert, C. (1985). Rome: The Biography of a City. Viking.
Klynne, A. (2009). The Pantheon. Cambridge University Press.