Rome Travel Guide

Rome is less a city than an open-air palimpsest where three thousand years pile up in plain sight: a Renaissance palazzo built into the ruins of a Roman theatre, a baroque church on a pagan temple's foundations, an ancient column holding up a medieval wall. Walk it and the icons come one after another — the Colosseum, the Roman Forum, the Pantheon's impossible dome, the Trevi Fountain, the Spanish Steps — close enough that a single day's wander links most of them.

Then there's the Vatican, a country of its own, with St Peter's Basilica and Michelangelo's Sistine ceiling. But the Eternal City is also trattorias where cacio e pepe is religion, cobbled Trastevere lanes made for evening passeggiata, and espresso taken standing at the bar. Chaotic, sun-warmed, and gloriously layered, Rome asks only that you stop trying to see it all and start living in it.