Via Giulia is one of the best streets in Rome for travelers who want to understand the Renaissance city at walking speed. Created under Pope Julius II in the early sixteenth century, it runs roughly parallel to the Tiber through a zone of palaces, churches, courtyards and quiet architectural details. Unlike the Colosseum or Trevi…
Cinecittà is the best place in Rome to step out of ancient history and into the city’s twentieth- and twenty-first-century identity as a film capital. The studios have been active since 1937 and are still a working production complex, while the public visitor experience includes exhibitions, sets, costumes, props and the MIAC audiovisual museum. It…
Santa Maria del Popolo is one of Rome’s richest churches for art, yet it is easy to walk past it while crossing Piazza del Popolo. Inside a relatively compact basilica you can see two of Caravaggio’s most dramatic paintings, a chapel designed by Raphael and later reshaped by Bernini, Renaissance frescoes linked to Pinturicchio, important…
Few artists shaped the experience of Rome as completely as Gian Lorenzo Bernini. His work is not confined to a museum: you encounter it in fountains, churches, tombs, chapels, bridges, public squares and the enormous spatial theatre of St. Peter’s Square. Following Bernini is therefore one of the best ways to understand Baroque Rome. The…
Rome is one of the best cities in the world to understand Caravaggio because several of his greatest paintings remain close to the streets, churches and neighborhoods where his career exploded. You can see major works inside functioning churches without turning the day into a conventional museum marathon. The painter’s dramatic light makes more sense…