Rome

The Colosseum stands at the eastern end of the Forum valley, across the road from the Colosseo stop on metro line B, with the Arch of Constantine beside it on the way to the Palatine. Completed in AD 80, the amphitheatre held some 50,000 spectators; a visit follows the ground-floor arcades and the tier above, looking down into the maze of walls that once lay under the wooden arena floor. Entry is by a timed booking made ahead, and the first hour of the day is the calmest. The hypogeum beneath the arena is seen on a separate ticket.

West of the Colosseum, the Roman Forum fills the hollow between the Palatine and Capitoline hills: temples, basilicas and the senate house along the Via Sacra, from the Arch of Titus at the Colosseum end to the Arch of Septimius Severus below the Capitoline. The Palatine rises from the Forum's south side, with the brick shells of the imperial palaces among umbrella pines and the terraced Farnese Gardens, and its far edge looks down on the long grassy hollow of the Circus Maximus. Neither has much shade; in summer both are morning visits.

Piazza Venezia, under the white marble bulk of the Vittoriano, is the hinge of the centre. Beside it, Michelangelo's cordonata, a ramp of broad, shallow steps, climbs the Capitoline to the piazza he designed, with a copy of the bronze Marcus Aurelius on horseback at its centre. The Capitoline Museums fill the palaces on two sides — the original horseman, the bronze She-Wolf, the marble head and hand of a colossal Constantine — and the passage between them runs through the Tabularium, whose arcade looks down the length of the Forum. Via dei Fori Imperiali leads back toward the Colosseum past the Imperial Forums, with Trajan's Column at the Piazza Venezia end and the brick hemicycle of Trajan's Markets, home to the Museum of the Imperial Forums, on the slope above.

Monti climbs from the Imperial Forums toward the Esquiline: narrow streets such as Via del Boschetto and Via Panisperna, small shops, wine bars and trattorias, and the fountain steps of Piazza della Madonna dei Monti, which fill on summer evenings. A stair under an arch off Via Cavour leads up to San Pietro in Vincoli, where Michelangelo's Moses sits on the tomb of Pope Julius II. At the quarter's upper edge, Santa Maria Maggiore, one of the four papal basilicas, keeps fifth-century mosaics along its nave under a gilded coffered ceiling and holds the tomb of Pope Francis.

A few minutes east of the Colosseum, San Clemente is three buildings deep: a twelfth-century basilica with a gold-ground apse mosaic, a fourth-century church beneath it, and at the bottom Roman rooms and a temple of Mithras, where running water can be heard behind the walls. The lower levels are a separate ticket. The same street leads on to San Giovanni in Laterano, the cathedral of Rome, with a nave remodelled by Borromini and a façade crowned by giant statues of Christ and the saints; across the square, pilgrims climb the Scala Santa, the holy stair, on their knees.

Between the Capitoline and the river lies the Jewish quarter, the area of the former ghetto. The Great Synagogue stands on the Tiber embankment, with the Jewish Museum of Rome in the same complex, and Via del Portico d'Ottavia runs past the columns of the ancient Portico of Octavia to the arches of the Theatre of Marcellus. The street is lined with restaurants of the Jewish-Roman kitchen, where carciofi alla giudia — whole artichokes fried until the leaves open — are the dish of the winter and spring season. From the embankment by the synagogue, the Roman Ponte Fabricio crosses to the Tiber Island and on toward Trastevere.

Campo de' Fiori holds a morning market of fruit, vegetables and flowers around the hooded bronze statue of Giordano Bruno, and becomes a square of bars after dark; Palazzo Farnese closes the next piazza to the south-west. Piazza Navona, a few minutes north across Corso Vittorio Emanuele II, keeps the long oval of the Stadium of Domitian it is built on, and the stadium's arches can be seen below street level at its northern end. At the centre stands Bernini's Fountain of the Four Rivers, crowned by an obelisk, facing Borromini's church of Sant'Agnese in Agone.

The Pantheon, rebuilt under the emperor Hadrian and a church since the seventh century, has stood roofed and in use for close to nineteen centuries. Its concrete dome is as wide as it is high, about 43 metres, and open to the sky at the oculus, so a disc of sunlight moves across the coffers through the day; Raphael is buried inside. Behind it, Bernini's marble elephant carries an obelisk in front of Santa Maria sopra Minerva, and to the west the Contarelli Chapel of San Luigi dei Francesi holds three Caravaggio paintings of St Matthew. East of the Pantheon, Sant'Ignazio's flat ceiling carries a painted dome by Andrea Pozzo, best seen from the disc set in the nave floor, and on Via del Corso the Doria Pamphilj gallery, still owned by the family, hangs Velázquez's portrait of Pope Innocent X.

The Trevi Fountain fills a small square against the back of Palazzo Poli: Oceanus on his shell chariot over a cascade of carved travertine rock, finished in 1762 to the design of Nicola Salvi. The square is crowded from mid-morning into the night, and early morning is the quiet hour; the coins thrown over the shoulder into the basin are collected for the charity Caritas. Uphill, the Quirinal Palace, the residence of Italy's president, faces a piazza with a view over the rooftops to St Peter's, and along Via del Quirinale two small churches stand a short walk apart: Bernini's Sant'Andrea al Quirinale and Borromini's San Carlo alle Quattro Fontane under its oval dome.

The Spanish Steps climb from Piazza di Spagna and the Barcaccia, a fountain shaped like a half-sunken boat, to the church of Trinità dei Monti; sitting on the steps is not allowed, and Via Condotti with its fashion houses runs from their foot. From the top, a road along the ridge leads to the Pincio terrace, which looks down on Piazza del Popolo, its obelisk and twin churches; by the city gate, Santa Maria del Popolo holds two Caravaggios in the Cerasi Chapel and the Chigi Chapel designed by Raphael. Behind the Pincio spread the gardens of Villa Borghese, and at their far side the Borghese Gallery shows Bernini's Apollo and Daphne and Rape of Proserpina, Canova's reclining Pauline Borghese and a run of Caravaggios, entered only on a timed booking made ahead. MAXXI, Zaha Hadid's museum of contemporary art and architecture, lies north of the park in the Flaminio quarter.

Across Ponte Sant'Angelo, lined with angels carved to Bernini's designs, Castel Sant'Angelo began as the tomb of the emperor Hadrian and became a papal fortress and prison. A Roman ramp spirals up through the drum of the mausoleum to the papal apartments and a terrace under the bronze archangel, with a view along the river to the dome of St Peter's. From the castle, Via della Conciliazione runs straight to St Peter's Square.

The Vatican Museums are the collection of the popes, grown from a sculpture courtyard into kilometres of galleries: the Laocoön and the Apollo Belvedere in the Pio-Clementino, the long painted Gallery of Maps, the Raphael Rooms with the School of Athens, and at the end the Sistine Chapel, with Michelangelo's ceiling of 1508 to 1512 and the Last Judgment he painted on the altar wall from 1536 to 1541. The route runs largely one way and takes most of a morning. The chapel is kept quiet, and photographs are not allowed in it. Entry is by a timed booking made ahead, and the first slot of the day meets the thinnest crowds.

St Peter's Square, held in the two curved arms of Bernini's colonnade, lies in Vatican City, an independent state inside Rome; the basilica is entered through a security check under the colonnade. Michelangelo's Pietà is behind glass in the first chapel on the right, and Bernini's bronze canopy rises over the papal altar, above the place venerated as St Peter's tomb, under Michelangelo's dome. The climb to the dome, 551 steps on foot or fewer with the lift to the roof, ends on a narrow, sloping stair between its two shells and a gallery around the lantern. Shoulders and knees must be covered, a rule enforced at the door. When the pope is in Rome, he holds a general audience on Wednesday mornings, for which a ticket is requested ahead, and leads the Angelus at noon on Sundays before the crowd in the square.

Trastevere, across the river from the Jewish quarter, keeps the lanes, ochre houses and small piazzas of a medieval quarter and is busiest in the evening, when its trattorias set tables outside. Santa Maria in Trastevere, on its main square, glows with twelfth-century apse mosaics. On Via della Lungara, Villa Farnesina, built for a Renaissance banker, holds Raphael's Galatea and the loggia of Cupid and Psyche painted to his design. Via Garibaldi climbs from the quarter past Bramante's round Tempietto at San Pietro in Montorio and the great Acqua Paola fountain to the Janiculum, whose terrace looks over the whole centre, best near sunset.

The Aventine, above the Circus Maximus, is a quiet hill of villas and gardens. The Orange Garden looks over the Tiber to St Peter's; Santa Sabina beside it is a fifth-century basilica with carved cypress-wood doors; and further along, a keyhole in the door of the Knights of Malta's priory frames the dome of St Peter's at the end of a garden avenue. Below the hill, Testaccio is a working quarter built around its covered market hall and Monte Testaccio, a hill of broken Roman amphorae with trattorias dug into its flanks. At its edge the Pyramid of Cestius stands in the city wall beside the Non-Catholic Cemetery, where Keats and Shelley are buried.

South of the Circus Maximus, the high brick walls of the Baths of Caracalla enclose the bath halls of an emperor's leisure complex and serve as the stage of the Rome Opera's summer season. Beyond the Aurelian Walls at Porta San Sebastiano, the Via Appia Antica runs out between tombs, pines and fields, in stretches on its original basalt paving, and walking or cycling part of it is a half-day away from the traffic. The catacombs of San Callisto and San Sebastiano open off the road, and their underground burial galleries are always visited with a guide. The paving is uneven, and good shoes matter.