Rome advice please!

[LapdanceShoeshine]

5 days in October (well, 4 nights, plus bits either side). Best guidebook/map? Favourite places to visit? Don't-miss things?

We'll be staying in an airbnb just N of the Borghese gardens.

Villa Borghese, of course!

Palazzo Doria Pamphili

Piazza Navona - lots of fab restaurants on the side streets around it.

Wine bars on the campo de Fiori

Obika is a cool chain of mozzarella bars - if you spot one, go! Really great buffalo mozzarella dishes.

The ruins at Ostia are good, with fewer queues and more shade than the Forum. It's a bit out of the city but that's not a bad thing if you get fed up with the crowds.

When booking things look for the official sites and don't be fooled by the many fee charging tours. E.g. the coliseum is quite cheap to get into if you do it yourself. (Think the website might be co op) st peters is free.

Also recommended the fridgedarium for fantastic ice cream!

There is a little cat sanctuary hidden in the middle of the city which my daughters loved.

I did find a lot of pestering on the streets for either tours or buying things (products varied depending on the weather that day!). I really did get fed up of it.

Piazza Navona, the Trevi fountain, pantheon (and the pizza place next door!), and Vatican (especially the tomb of former Popes, St Peters Basilica and Cistene chapel). And Gregory's jazz bar!! I blooming love Rome. So jealous!

The Pantheon is the most beautiful place there. Trevi, Spanish steps etc are busy and very touristy. Prebook the colosseum before you go, even several weeks in advance (you can get a museums ticket for about 4 places I think for not too much) Head over the river for food in the Jewish quarters which is amazing and much cheaper than the very expensive places in the main part of the city. Take water bottles because there are water fountains to drink from all round, you’ll save a fortune!

Yes to the cat sanctuary, we found 2 or three while we were there.

Rome is the most amazing place, I am very jealous. We haven’t been for 5 years and I’m keen to go back.

Thank you all, some great tips

I’ll look into pre-booking over the weekend.

I have been to Rome before, but nearly 50 years ago so I remember very little, but I do remember a woman feeding the stray cats in the Forum - she walked in with armfuls of bags and dozens of cats came running! I’ll look out for the sanctuaries

Villa borghese & gardens are wonderful. My favourite museum is the capitoline. Beautifully curated with some stunning artefacts.

Picnic in the forum.
Touristy bits like the colosseum/trevi fountain/pantheon are wonderful and touristy for a reason.

Will you have DC with you? If they’re small, Rome Zoo is very near you and worth an afternoon.

Very jealous. Have fun.

No children! (Might try the zoo anyway though )

I’m thinking we will probably walk through the gardens in the mornings, so can go a different way every day & see as much as possible. (Prob get bus back in the evenings.) I will check out the capitoline museum, thanks for that suggestion

Ooh! There’s a discount at the zoo for seniors (that’s us 😄) on a Wednesday - only €6!

The zoo has elephants!
Capitoline is wonderful. The inscriptions on the gravestones are heart rending and strangely modern. They really speak to you across the millennia.

The Cap’s rooftop cafe at sunset is a treat too.

Elephants!!! ❤️

How long would you recommend for the Cap museums, Sleight? Maybe a whole afternoon?

Sunset is around 6.45 in early Oct, & they’re open until 7.30, so I wondered about having dinner there - unless it’s more snacky?

Flubqueen, another friend has recommended Ostia too so that’s definitely on the list. Piazza Navona, Jewish quarter, Pantheon & Vatican also sounding very interesting

Pantheon is a must. There’s a restaurant called Gruppo di Rienzo on the side of the square; it’s a lovely place to enjoy a glass of wine and watch the world go by. Just up the road (via torre Argentina) there’s a shop that sells leather handbags at a reasonable price - Nobile. They don’t have a website, just a woman who designs one off handbags and sells them from her shop.

I didn’t enjoy the Vatican Museum, it was so busy that it was impossible to enjoy or appreciate what we were seeing. We left as quickly as we could. It was very claustrophobic.

We paid for Omni Cards which had skip the line tickets, not sure it was worth the £100+ cost. The open top bus tours are the best way to see the city.

If it’s your thing.........This is a link to a page on the Vatican website where you can apply to see the necropolis under St. Peter’s Basilica, they only allow about 200 people every day are admitted. I’ve never been lucky enough yet -
www.vatican.va/roman_curia/institutions_connected/uffscavi/documents/rc_ic_uffscavi_doc_gen-information_20090216_en.html

DD and I went there three years ago and loved it.
I was a little underwhelmed by the Sistine Chapel. By the time you have shuffled through miles of ornately decorated and brightly painted galleries the chapel itself is dull, very crowded and just a little disappointing in comparison.

I say shuffled because the crowds are unbelievable.

Practical considerations:

Take comfortable walking shoes. You will walk for miles
Have a cross body bag that you can keep your hand over. Pick pocketing is rife. Although we felt perfecty safe. Perhaps because we looked alert and on the ball.
All the churches are free, and there are loads worth visiting. The result is that we never got to look in St Peters as the queue was two hours long.

IMO the Pantheon and Palatine Hill were the best sights that we saw.

Try and visit some of the other beautiful churches. There are so many with beautiful art work.

Don't buy ice-cream anywhere near the Vatican - you will be ripped off. We still talk about the price of a Roman ice-cream (72€ for 3 ice-creams and a coffee)

Marking as we're going to Rome next summer - went 12 years ago but good to refresh the memory. Thanks

The Baths of Caracalla are awesome and much less crowded than the Forum. They're right by the Circus Maximus. The Baths are open during the week but thr Circus is only open at weekends, if you want to do both. Ostia is also amazing, definitely worth the trip out. The Appian Way is closed to traffic on Sundays, you can hire bikes and go for a ride (we didn't manage to this time but want to next time we go).

Have fun! We are just back and I am plotting about our next trip already...

If you're into Romans generally, I recommend watching Meet the Romans with Mary Beard on YouTube. Gave me ideas on places to go and gave some context when we got there too.

There's a lift at the back of the victor Emmanuel building that takes you to the roof and you get amazing views across the city. I can't remember the price but it wasn't expensive.

Fantastic views too from Castel Sant Angelo (just down from the vatican).

If you go into the basement in the Capitoline museum there is a lookout point over the forum. Again, brilliant views.

Get tickets for the colisseum as part of a queue jump multi ticket you can buy at other attractions. I can't remember off hand what others are included apart from the Palestine hill which is where we got ours. The others are always quieter than the colisseum.

If you want to do audio tours anywhere make sure you have your passport or some form of Id.

Go to the trevi fountain at night, buy an ice cream from one of the nearby gelaterias and just sit and people watch as everyone throws their coins into the fountain.

Definitely Villa Borghese. We have been a couple of times to gaze at the Berninis.
We opted for a guided tour of the Vatican, which meant we didn’t miss anything, such as the Raphael room.
We also went to the Domus Aurea, Nero’s golden palace, which not many people seem to know about. I think it is by the Colisseum.
I believe you can get a tour of the Colisseum which includes all the underground areas.
Also, Trevi fountain, before the crowds, Capitoline Museum, and as many churches as you can manage, as they all have treasures. St Maria soprano Minerva, for example, has Fra Angelica’s tomb, and a Michelangelo. Bernini’s little elephant sculpture is outside.
So many things to see, it really depends what you like.

If you do go to St Peters (we got there very early and was uncrowded) you can go right up to the roof, fantastic views and a small cafe which seemed to be mainly used by staff so cheap. We booked tickets for Vatican (sorry can't remember the name of them) paid a bit more and got in straight away as it opened, had some of the rooms to ourselves as we looked round though entry system a bit weird as we had vouchers not tickets and had to swap them for tickets which delayed /confused us. Agree Sistine chapel underwhelming but the rest stunning. There is Vatican website so look at that for tickets as well as all the others. We did an under the Colosseum tour, very interesting. We did pay more for tickets for most of the places we went to but were happy to do this as either it gave us quick access or more access. Villa Borghese a must.

Also as others have said we had a policy that we peaked into any church we walked past and saw some beautiful ones yes to St Maria.

I'd second a lot of the above but would give the Vatican a miss unless you get crack of dawn tickets. When we went it was heaving like those Japanese train pictures. Hardly saw a thing as we were carried along on a tide of humanity. They're obviously trying to get as much cash as possible.

Trasteverre. Especially in the evening. Great food and street atmosphere

You can definitely do the Capitoline in one afternoon. It’s a total contrast to the Vatican

Maybe drinks at the rooftop bar then dinner elsewhere so you’re not rushed?

Have a lovely time.

Blimey, loads more tips, thank you all so much

I can see I'm going to have to write all these down & look at a map & see what we can fit in...!

Would any of you advise paying (a lot! £60 a head) for a 3-hour afternoon tour of the Vatican, with an art historian guide, in a group of no more than 13? Would it still mean being swept along on the tide of humanity ( whiterose ) & not seeing much more than them? Or do the organised tours have better access to everything?