San Bartolomeo all’Isola gives Tiber Island one of its strongest historical and spiritual anchors. Founded around the end of the tenth century on a site long associated with healing, the basilica connects the island’s ancient Temple of Aesculapius tradition with medieval imperial patronage and a modern memorial dedicated to Christian martyrs of the twentieth and…
Santa Maria in Portico in Campitelli is one of Rome’s most elegant Baroque churches and a natural stop between the Jewish Ghetto and Capitoline Hill. Built after the plague of 1656 as a monumental setting for a revered Marian image, the church was designed by Carlo Rainaldi and uses architecture to focus attention on the…
Santa Maria in Via Lata hides one of central Rome’s most interesting archaeological layers beneath a polished Baroque church on Via del Corso. At street level, the building is easy to read as another elegant seventeenth-century church. Below it, however, are ancient and early-medieval spaces connected with a diaconia, fragments of old decoration and a…
Santa Maria della Pace is one of the most rewarding small churches near Piazza Navona. Tucked into a bend of narrow streets behind the great square, it compresses several layers of Roman art into a surprisingly intimate visit: Renaissance painting by Raphael, a theatrical Baroque façade by Pietro da Cortona and the atmosphere of a…
Villa Sciarra is one of Rome’s most atmospheric small historic parks, tucked on the slope between Trastevere and the Janiculum. It combines Mediterranean planting, clipped hedges, playful fountains, statues, an old aviary and shaded paths in a space that feels far more intimate than Villa Borghese or Villa Doria Pamphilj. The park is especially useful…
Parco Archeologico del Celio and the Museo della Forma Urbis are among the most useful newer additions to an archaeology-focused Rome itinerary. Opened to the public in its current form in 2024, the park displays architectural and epigraphic material in a green setting, while the museum presents surviving fragments of the enormous marble plan of…
San Giorgio in Velabro is one of those Roman churches that becomes far more interesting once you understand the ground around it. The modest medieval interior stands beside the Arch of the Argentarii and almost opposite the four-sided Arch of Janus, in a low-lying district traditionally connected with the earliest legends of Rome. This is…
San Francesco a Ripa is one of Trastevere’s most rewarding churches for travelers who want more than the neighborhood’s restaurants and evening atmosphere. The sanctuary is tied to the Roman memory of Saint Francis of Assisi and contains one of Gian Lorenzo Bernini’s most moving late sculptures, the Blessed Ludovica Albertoni. Because the church lies…
The Museum of the Souls in Purgatory is one of Rome’s strangest small collections: a handful of objects said to bear traces left by souls asking the living for prayers. It occupies a room beside the sacristy of the neo-Gothic church of Sacro Cuore del Suffragio on the Tiber in Prati, a building sometimes nicknamed…
Quadraro is one of the most interesting neighborhoods in Rome for travelers who want street art tied to local history rather than murals treated as decoration alone. The MURo project began here and in nearby Torpignattara, creating an open-air collection of works developed in dialogue with the neighborhood. Many pieces speak directly to identity, resistance…