Rome: what to see, where to stay and how to get around
Everything here was buried. The Forum was a cow pasture until they dug it out in 1803, and medieval Rome simply built on top of the ancient city and quarried it for stone. The holes you see in the Colosseum walls are where the iron clamps were dug out. Two and a half hours, and almost no shade.
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A short history of Rome
According to tradition, Romulus founded Rome in 753 BC. In 509 BC the last king was expelled and the republic was established, followed by an empire that ruled from Britain to the Land of Israel. The Arch of Titus in the Forum commemorates the destruction of Jerusalem, and the Jews of Rome, the oldest community in Europe, have lived here continuously for more than two thousand years. In 410 the city was sacked by the Visigoths, and for centuries it was the city of the popes. In 1555 Pope Paul IV forced the Jews to live in a ghetto. In 1871 Rome became the capital of Italy, and on 16 October 1943 more than a thousand of its Jews were deported from the ghetto to Auschwitz.
The ten best sights in Rome
1ColosseumBook online. The ticket covers the Forum for two days
2Roman ForumIt was a cow pasture until they dug it out in 1803
3Palatine HillThe word palace comes from this hill
4Arch of ConstantineMost of its sculpture was stripped off older monuments
5Capitoline MuseumsThe oldest public museum in the world, 1471
6PantheonFree, and the dome is open to the sky. Go when it rains
7St Peter’s BasilicaFree. The queue is for security, not for a ticket
8Vatican MuseumsSeven kilometres of corridor before the chapel
9Sistine ChapelNo photographs, no talking, and look for the hand
10Castel Sant’AngeloA tomb, then a fortress, and a secret corridor to the Vatican
Scan with your phone camera to open the map there
What is an audio walk?
Tours in Rome →A guide in your headphones: open the walk on our site, walk from stop to stop, and at each one your phone tells its story. No guide, no group, and free. This is the first walk in Rome:
Free walking tours in Rome
The Empire
Everything here was buried. The Forum was a cow pasture until they dug it out in 1803, and medieval Rome simply built on top of the ancient city and quarried it for stone. The holes you see in the Colosseum walls are where the iron clamps were dug out. Two and a half hours, and almost no shade.
- Colosseum · Fifty thousand people could leave it in under fifteen minutes through eighty numbered arches — your pottery ticket told you which one, which row and which seat. Modern stadiums still use the same principle, and it is still called a vomitorium.
- Arch of Constantine · Most of the sculpture on it was cut off earlier monuments of Trajan, Hadrian and Marcus Aurelius and reused — the heads were simply recarved into Constantine’s. By 315 the empire could no longer carve at that level, and this arch is the proof.
- Roman Forum · For a thousand years this was the centre of the western world, and for the next thousand it was called the Campo Vaccino — the cow field — and lay under ten metres of earth and rubble. The level you walk on now is the level Julius Caesar walked on.
- Palatine Hill · Augustus was born here and chose to live here in a deliberately modest house, and every emperor after him built bigger on the same hill until the whole thing was one building. The word palace, in every European language, is the name of this hill.
- Circus Maximus · Two hundred and fifty thousand spectators — a quarter of the city at once, and the largest venue ever built by anyone. Nothing of it is left but the shape in the ground, and that shape is six hundred metres long.
- Capitoline Museums · The oldest public museum in the world: in 1471 a pope gave a collection of bronzes to the people of Rome, and it has been open to them ever since. Michelangelo designed the square outside, but the oval paving he drew was only laid in 1940.
Fountains and Domes
Baroque Rome was built for one eye: the eye of someone who walks into a square and stops. The popes of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries repaired the Roman aqueducts and sent the water to fountains — so every great fountain here is the end point of an ancient channel. Two hours, mostly on cobbles.
- Pantheon · Nineteen hundred years on, it is still the largest unreinforced concrete dome on earth. The concrete gets lighter as it rises — pumice at the top — and the nine-metre hole is open to the sky, so the floor is domed and drilled with twenty-two drains.
- Piazza Navona · The shape is not a design decision — it is the running track of the stadium of Domitian from AD 86, which is still there four metres below the pavement and can be visited. The houses stand on the foundations of the spectator stands.
- Trevi Fountain · About three thousand euros a day are thrown into it, swept up every night and given to a charity that runs a supermarket for the poor of Rome. The water arrives through an aqueduct built in 19 BC and still flowing.
- Spanish Steps · A hundred and thirty-five steps paid for by a French diplomat, leading to a French church, and named after the Spanish embassy at the bottom. Sitting on them has been a two-hundred-and-fifty-euro fine since 2019.
- Piazza del Popolo · The obelisk in the middle was cut in Heliopolis around 1300 BC and shipped here by Augustus — it is older than Rome itself by seven hundred years. The two churches flanking the street are deliberately not identical, and almost nobody notices.
- Terrazza del Pincio · The terrace above the square, free, with the whole historic centre and the dome of St Peter’s lined up behind it. Romans come here for the sunset and not for the view, and the difference is the hour.
The Other Bank
Across the river lived the people who were not Romans: Syrians, Jews, Greeks and fishermen. In 1555 Pope Paul the Fourth walled the Jewish quarter in and locked it at night — and it stayed locked for three hundred and fifteen years, until 1870. This is the oldest continuous Jewish community in Europe. Two hours, and best towards evening.
- Jewish Ghetto · Jews have lived in Rome continuously since the second century BC — longer than anywhere else in Europe, and longer than Christianity has existed. The brass plaques in the pavement outside the doors name the people taken from each house in October 1943.
- Portico d’Ottavia · The fish market was held under these columns for a thousand years, and an inscription still orders that any fish longer than the slab have its head cut off and given to the city magistrates — the best part, as tax.
- Isola Tiberina · The Romans faced the island in travertine so it would look like a ship, and put a temple of the healing god on it in 291 BC. There has been a hospital here ever since — the same patch of ground has treated the sick for twenty-three centuries.
- Santa Maria in Trastevere · Possibly the first place in Rome where mass was openly celebrated, and the mosaics across the apse are from the 1140s. The columns holding the nave up were taken from the Baths of Caracalla, and the pagan heads carved on them were left in place.
- Trastevere · The name means across the Tiber, and for most of Roman history that is exactly what it was — outside, foreign, and cheap. The ivy, the washing lines and the lack of straight streets are not picturesque by design; the quarter was simply never rebuilt.
- Gianicolo · A cannon has been fired from this hill at exactly noon every single day since 1847, so that all the church bells of Rome would ring together instead of each at its own time. It still fires, and it is still loud.
Getting to Rome and getting around
- Fiumicino Airport · The Leonardo Express is 32 minutes to Termini, €14
- Ciampino Airport · Low-cost flights. Bus to Termini, €6, 40 minutes
- Roma Termini · Where both metro lines cross, and every train arrives
- Roma Tiburtina · Night trains and the cheap buses north
Museums in Rome
- Vatican Museums · Book a timed ticket, or lose two hours in the queue
- Galleria Borghese · Two-hour slots only, 360 people, book weeks ahead
- Capitoline Museums · The oldest public museum anywhere, 1471
- Palazzo Massimo · €8, five minutes from Termini, and nearly empty
- Centrale Montemartini · Roman gods standing between 1912 diesel engines
- Galleria Doria Pamphilj · The family still lives upstairs and reads the audio guide
- MAXXI · Zaha Hadid, and the only modern building Rome allowed
Holy places in Rome
- St Peter’s Basilica · Free. The dome climb is €10, and worth every step
- Basilica of San Clemente · €10 for the lower levels, and it is the best €10 in Rome
- San Pietro in Vincoli · Michelangelo’s Moses, free, and usually empty
- Santa Maria Maggiore · Mosaics from 432, and the ceiling gilded with the first gold from America
- San Giovanni in Laterano · The actual cathedral of Rome, and it is not St Peter’s
- Catacombs of San Callisto · Twenty kilometres of tunnels on five levels
Cheap eats in Rome
Eight counters where Rome eats standing. A bakery that sells pizza bianca by weight and has done since 1888, a market stall that puts yesterday’s boiled beef into a roll, and a porchetta window near Termini with four stools and nothing else.
- Forno Campo de’ Fiori · Pizza bianca by weight, about €3 a piece
- Supplizio · The supplì done properly — rice, ragù, a string of mozzarella, €3
- Trapizzino, Testaccio · €4.50 each, and two is a meal
- Mordi e Vai, Testaccio · A butcher’s stall that fills a roll with yesterday’s stew, €4.50
- Pizzarium Bonci · Pizza by the slice, sold by weight, and there is nowhere to sit
- Er Buchetto · One roll, €5, and it closes when the pig runs out
- Sant’Eustachio Il Caffè · Standing at the bar costs a third of sitting down, €1.30
- Giolitti · Gelato since 1900. Pay at the till first, then order
Parks and gardens in Rome
- Villa Borghese · Eighty hectares, rowing boats on the lake, and bicycles
- Giardino degli Aranci · Free, and the best view of the dome in Rome
- Villa Doria Pamphilj · The biggest park in Rome, and no tourist ever goes
- Appian Way · Original Roman paving. Closed to cars on Sunday
- Protestant Cemetery · Keats and Shelley, cats, and a pyramid next door
- Villa Ada · A real wood, and concerts in it all summer
Things to do in Rome with kids
- Bioparco · Inside Villa Borghese, and small enough for small legs
- Castel Sant’Angelo · A ramp spiralling up, and the terrace at the top
- Centrale Montemartini · Giant engines and marble gods in the same room
- Ostia Lido beach · Half an hour on the train, and it is the sea
- Ostia Antica · A whole Roman town to run around in, and you can climb it
Nightlife in Rome
- Trastevere · Starts at nine, and the squares fill before the bars do
- Monti · Where Romans drink when they want to avoid Trastevere
- Campo de’ Fiori · A market at dawn and a drinking square at midnight
- Pigneto · Pasolini’s quarter, cheap, and no tourists at all
- Big Mama, Trastevere · A blues cellar running since 1984, €10 at the door
- Auditorium Parco della Musica · Concerts most nights, and the ruins are free to see
Frequently asked questions about Rome
What is there to see in Rome?
The top sights in Rome are Colosseum, Roman Forum and Palatine Hill. The full list on this page has 10 sights, each with a photo and a short note.
How many days do you need in Rome?
Three to four days are enough to see the best of Rome without rushing, including at least one walking tour.
Is there a free walking tour in Rome?
Yes. sleepntrip has 3 free audio walks in Rome, with no guide and no group: your phone tells the story at every stop. The first one: The Empire.
How do you get to Rome and get around?
The main ways are Fiumicino Airport, Ciampino Airport and Roma Termini. Full details are in the transport section on this page.
Where to stay in Rome, and for how much?
sleepntrip shows only rooms in Rome that meet nine conditions: a good location, high guest scores, cleanliness, and a price of up to $80 a night for two. Pick your dates and see what is free.
Looking for a hotel in Rome for your dates?
Only rooms that meet nine conditions, up to $80 a night.