The best attractions, monuments, museums, archaeological sites, neighborhoods and experiences to enjoy in Rome.
Rome’s Museo Civico di Zoologia is a compact natural-history museum that works particularly well for families, science-minded travelers and anyone looking for an indoor complement to Villa Borghese. It is less famous than Rome’s art and archaeology museums, but that is part of its appeal: collections can be explored at a manageable pace without 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…
The National Roman Museum is not a single building but a network of major archaeological collections spread across central Rome. Its four historic sites—Palazzo Massimo, Palazzo Altemps, the Baths of Diocletian and Crypta Balbi—tell different parts of the city’s story, from imperial portraiture and painted villas to monumental bath architecture and the archaeology of Rome’s…
Villa Ada is one of Rome’s largest green spaces and one of the best places to see how the city changes once you move beyond the monumental center. Its woods, lawns, lake and former royal landscape make it a different experience from manicured Villa Borghese: less about ticking off sights and more about walking, running,…
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 Celimontana is one of central Rome’s most useful “breathing spaces”: a historic park on the Celio where shaded paths, old trees, archaeology and an Egyptian obelisk sit only a short walk from the Colosseum. It fits naturally into the Celio and works especially well when you want a quieter hour between major monuments. This…
The Jewish Museum of Rome is essential for understanding a community whose history in the city stretches back more than two thousand years. Located within the monumental synagogue complex beside the Tiber, it presents ritual objects, textiles, manuscripts, silverware and historical material that connect ancient presence, the centuries of the Ghetto, emancipation and the traumatic…
Casa di Goethe is a small literary museum with an unusually strong sense of place. It occupies the rooms on Via del Corso where Johann Wolfgang von Goethe lived during his Roman stay, making it one of the best stops in the city for travelers interested in the Grand Tour, European cultural exchange and the…
Rome’s Roseto Comunale is a seasonal garden where the city’s archaeology, skyline and flowers meet in one of the easiest beautiful stops to add to an Aventine walk. Located above the Circus Maximus and below the Aventine Hill, it is especially valuable in spring, when hundreds of rose varieties turn a usually quiet slope into…
The Rome Botanical Garden is one of the capital’s most rewarding quiet stops: a scientific garden, historic landscape and green escape rising behind Palazzo Corsini on the lower slopes of the Janiculum. It sits in Trastevere but feels far removed from the busiest restaurant streets, making it a useful counterpoint to a day built around…