Top 12 tips when visiting Rome

Here are a few tips that will make your visit somewhat easier in the city. They are not in order of importance. They are meant to save you time and improve your visiting experience.

1. Never queue up at the Colosseum line.
2. Avoid visiting the Vatican Museums in the morning.
3. Do not miss the New Wing or Braccio Nuovo in the Vatican Museums.
4. Exit the Sistine Chapel using the right door.
5. Always eat away from tourist hot spots.
6. Follow the recommendations of friends and trustworthy guides.
7. Get a good map.
8. Get under the city!
9. Visit the National Museum of Palazzo Massimo.
10. Visit the rich art held in Roman churches.
11. Visit Rome during the Week of Culture: Free entrances and rare sights.
12. Do not expect great information in archaeological sites and museums.


1. Never queue up at the Colosseum line. Rather, buy your ticket at the Palatine entrance (see map), a hundred yards back, behind the Arch of Constantine. The lines here will always be shorter (even in congested holidays or Sunday mornings). The ticket is valid for the Palatine, that you can start visiting right there, the Forum, and the Colosseum (which you can chose visiting immediately; you will save time doing this queue). The Colosseum has a security line and then another for the tickets. The security line is rather fast (chose the shorter of the two) and then, once inside, with your ticket in hand, make sure to take the fast lane for ticket holders.

See the exact location:
http://www.tiwanakuarcheo.net/Roma_blog/Palatino_viasangregorio.jpg


2. Avoid visiting the Vatican Museums in the morning. Even with a reservation (and its surcharge) it can be a crowded experience, starting of course with the queue (except in January or February). In the morning you are bound to fin all the large groups with reservations as well, so no fast lane here. The time to start the visit to the museums is from 1.30 to 2.00 in the afternoon. The queue will be shorter, faster, and the halls less crowded. You will have time to stroll the museum, visiting the most important rooms...and get to the Sistine Chapel by 4.30-4.45pm (it closes by 5.15pm).

3. In the Vatican Museums: Do not miss the New Wing or Braccio Nuovo. It takes a detour from the traditional path leading to the Sistine Chapel, the aim of most visitors. After crossing the Pine-Cone Courtyard, take a right on the long room with dozens of sculptures (named the Chiaramonti Museum). At the end to the right is a very special room of the museum: it holds the most important assemblage of statues of the museum, including the Augustus of Prima Porta and its great historical details, and the Nile. (Other rooms with great sculptures are often closed).

4. To wrap up your visit to the Vatican Museums in style, always exit the last room, which is the Sistine Chapel, taking the RIGHT door. It will take you directly into the Basilica, where you will visit the crypt, climb the dome, or stroll in the immense space of Saint Peter's basilica. (The left door would put you back into the very long museum circuit towards the exit...If you have checked something at the entrance you will have to take this one. This is not an uninteresting visit, as you see many of the "trinkets" collected by the Popes in the museum, but it seriously affects the "smoothness" of the visit.)

5. Always eat your meals or get your pizza or sandwiches away from tourist hot spots (i.e. Saint Peter, Fontana di Trevi, Colosseum...and the very deluding food at Piazza Navona where you are paying the view which is not always very agreeable with a very huge crowd of vendors). The rule of thumb would be to move away at least two blocks from them, unless you come with a recommendation which gives a certain seal or approval to the place.

6. Follow the recommendations of friends and trustworthy guides (Rick Steves is extremely popular with good reason: his information is accurate and realistic, although I believe his maps, within their simplicity and creativeness, are somehow unreliable, not very useful for strolling around.) This is most important on the subject of restaurants where you will spend many interesting moments and where perhaps your expectations are quite high (We all want a good Italian meal in Rome). There are hundreds of restaurants in Rome and I have seldom had the same choices with other visitors or friends. For example, while many Carbonaras are good, each restaurant has it own style (cooking time for the pasta, the crunchiness of the guancialle or pancetta -the bacon-, the runniness of the egg, the amount of pecorino romano...) I have three choices: when crunchiness is sought, I go to Perilli in Via Marmorata in Testaccio, a non-tourist residential area with great restaurants and one outstanding food market. If I want pasta very al dente...almost crunchy... da Enzo in Trastevere is the choice. None of these choices is considered the best Carbonara in town but you are the sole judge to your taste. The best Carbonara is said to be, according to a local newspaper, Roscioli's on Via dei Guibbonari.

See Carol's website on Roman culinary tourism http://www.flavorsofrome.com/ and her blog on Roman eateries http://flavorsofrome.blogspot.com.
Click here to download a list of known and "eaten" restaurants in the city compiled by ContextRome
http://www.tiwanakuarcheo.net/Roma_blog/Restaurants_ContextRome.doc

7. Get a good map. The most popular map, free at the hotel lobbies is a disaster. Another free map is available at the information offices of the Municipality of Rome. The difference with both is the orientation and scale given to the main monuments, not always accurate in the former, therefore having many visitors disoriented in town. I've seen more lost visitors with the first map. The good free map is distributed at several information booths which is also a good place to get a booklet of monthly events in the city. You will find them at Viale Trastevere at one gate to the popular neighborhood, at the end of Piazza Navona, next to Castel Sant'Angelo on the Vatican side...

8. Get under the city! Rome is a marvelous town to walk along the monuments of different time periods, side by side... Classical, Medieval, Baroque... But today's city is squarely built on top of the large, bustling and dense metropolis that once ruled the Mediterranean world. As such, the foundations of many monuments have revealed the structures of temples, necropolis, buildings and drainage ducts of the Classical times. And this is not considering the other underground venues of the city as in the catacombs. The best underground site in Rome is, back to the Vatican, under the church of Saint Peter. You visit the fantastically preserved (and well kept) Roman Necropolis. You will have to make a reservation well in advance. A very close second is the Church of Saint Clemente, under which you reach the streets of Rome of the times of heyday of the Colosseum, 15 yards underground, passing through the 4th century church. No reservation needed.

So, in order of importance these are most impressive ones:
1. Necropolis Vaticana: http://www.saintpetersbasilica.org/Necropolis/Scavi-map.htm
2. Church of Saint Clemente: http://www.catacombe.roma.it/
3. The Crypta Balbi (see tip 9 & 12).
4. Case Romane del Celio: http://www.caseromane.it/
5. Catacombs of Saint Calixtus http://www.basilicasanclemente.com/

9. Visit the National Museum of Palazzo Massimo, in front of the Termini train station. It holds the best examples of Roman wall paintings, mosaics, sculptures in marble and bronze in the city. While the labels and didactic efforts are not very good (as happens in the archaeological sites), it does have some interesting "stories" in the rooms that hold the sculptures of the gardens of Nero, and the Antonine Imperial portraits in the Golden Age of Rome. It is a very good deal: for 10€ you are also entitled to visit (in a 3-day period) the Baths of Diocletian (across the street), the Crypta Balbi (part of the ancient theater that houses the museum of the Middle Ages) and the Museo Altemps, which holds statues that belonged to the Ludovisi collection, of which some pieces were property of Julius Caesar.

10. Visit the rich art held in Roman churches. They are free (unlike other Italian and European cities; most probably financed by the profits of the Vatican Museums). Roman churches still hold important religious art even though the Pinacoteca in the Vatican Museums took many masterpieces from the churches in the 18th century (and about three hundred churches have been demolished in the last four centuries. Many outstanding murals have also disappeared by renovations in important churches, the case of the Giotto paintings covered by Borromini's 17th century renovation). The case for the paintings of the great Roman artist of the end of the 16th century: Michelangelo Merisi, called Caravaggio, is outstanding: seven paintings in four churches (I will be producing a note on these). There is also important murals: Pinturicchio at Santa Maria del Poppolo and at Santa Maria in Aracoeli, Lippi at Santa Maria Sopra Minerva, do not mix your Santa Marias!, and Masolino di Panicale at San Clemente). Overall, you can find in churches the evidence of the greatness and buying power reached by the "new" papacy of the 16th century as the Vatican becomes a very political state in Europe.

11. For those who can accommodate it and are flexible with dates, plan to visit Rome (or Italy for that matter) during la Settimana della Cultura (Week of Culture) during early spring (in 2009 it was from April 18 to 26; in 2008 in late March; in 2007 in late May…find out in advance). During this week all museums are free (except the Vatican and private collections) and, most importantly, some rare venues, such as underground houses or temples, are open for visits. The most outstanding one: the richly painted apartments of Ostia Antica...for which you will need a reservation.

To have an idea of the events check the page of the Ministry of Cultural Heritage and Activities
http://www.beniculturali.it/mibac/export/MiBAC/index.html.
Or the site of the Municipality of Rome http://www.museicapitolini.org/didattica/didattica_per_tutti/xi_settimana_della_cultura_musei_capitolini
In January each year the dates for the next cultural week should be set.

12. Conscientious and didactic displays with good contextual information in museum and sites are the exception rather than the rule. This situation will often depend, as I have found out, on the vision of the director or manager, who often stays in the spot long enough to create something outstanding. The Crypta Balbi, mentioned above in tips 8 and 9, is a good example of a very didactic display of the history of a particular block in the Roman city, indeed the area of town that had the third stone theater, the theater of Balbo. The Crypta has an underground visit and holds the Museum of the Medieval Ages. Until March 2009, when the exhibit of Vespasian was opened in areas of the Palatine, the Forum and in the Colosseum (where the bulk of the exhibit is), there were no scripts explaining the palaces, or the development of the civic and political area of the palaces. Since then visitors are welcome by these new bilingual panels that fill an important void. It is unknown if the displays will survive the year. The fine explanations of the restoration and reconstruction of Augustus’ rooms lasted only three weeks (get this, the guards argued that visitors were spending too much time reading them and disrupting the flow…they just disappeared. They were not even relocated).

I have prepared a short script for the visit of the Palatine hill which you can download here. They could complement the current panels, as I deal with the historical context of the development of imperial occupation of the hill and surrounding areas.
http://www.tiwanakuarcheo.net/Roma_blog/palatine_EN.doc

Caravaggio and the Palatine

My firsts posts will be on a stroll searching for the masterpieces of caravaggio in Roman churches and a script for a stroll through the Palatine.

A blog for curiosities and tips on Rome

While living in Rome for the past four years I have dedicated most of my time to welcome visitors and walk the streets and monuments, as I had planned when I settled in the city. This activity was in parallel to teaching at the American University of Rome and studying the state of heritage management policies and techniques in Rome.

Read the interview I gave to wanderingeducators.com explaining how I address my work as a docent, how I understand the relationship of monuments to the ancient history of the city, and how Rome's heritage stands in today's urban setting.

Browse also my Roman strolls page that describes the walks I enjoyed most during my Roman years.

While I can be of good help recommending a few restaurants (once I found the places I liked I stopped looking for more), Carol Malzone has a a good list of recommendations for enjoying Roman food. For restaurants and good eateries visit Carol's website, Flavors of Rome.