Roma Guida alla Scoperta

Roma è la sola città in cui tremila anni di edilizia continua sono visibili da un solo angolo di strada: un tempio imperiale diventato chiesa e ancora coperto dal tetto originale, uno stadio diventato piazza, il mausoleo di un imperatore diventato fortezza. Qui nulla è stato conservato tanto quanto riusato, e la stratificazione è l'esperienza stessa.

Due cose la complicano. L'estate romana è calda e asciutta, e i siti a pagamento sono più affollati proprio nelle ore centrali, quando il caldo è peggiore. E il Vaticano è uno Stato sovrano: orari, codice di abbigliamento, controlli e biglietteria sono suoi e non si coordinano con nulla di ciò che sta sul versante italiano.

Conviene quindi prenotare i siti principali direttamente e con anticipo, e costruire ogni giornata intorno all'orario d'ingresso che si possiede anziché il contrario. Al Vaticano va dedicato un giorno a sé. E la metà gratuita di Roma va tenuta per le ore centrali: chiese con i Caravaggio e l'interruttore della luce accanto alla porta, fontane da cui si beve, una sera a Trastevere o al Testaccio.

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.