It had been a long, long time since a city had impressed me as much as Rome did. Like Europe’s other great capitals London and Vienna, it’s a vibrant modern city with an overdose of history. Unlike Europe’s most over-rated capital Paris, its faults don’t overwhelm its charms.
Oh, look who bought a hat.
I first visited in the summer of 2021, as parts of Europe first re-opened to Americans as Covid started to subside. Unsurprisingly, I have thoughts:
First, a friend pointed me to the Pantheon area for a home base, and that was definitely the right choice for me. The Pantheon itself is a wonder: its dome is the “largest unreinforced concrete dome in the entire world” still, two thousand years after it was constructed (Walks of Italy). Enjoyed this so much, I went twice. [Seen below, multiple views of the two thousand year-old Pantheon. Yes, the hole in the ceiling is just open. Yes, it rains in.]
I recommend this area for lodging; my specific hotel and restaurant recommendations are for my clients. If you want to hire my agency to plan an amazing trip for you, shoot me an email here.
The Pantheon and my preferred hotel (pink-ish building behind the fountain) at dusk.
Tours- I used three different tour options here with great success. First, I used a private guide for an intro to the city. This is not cheap—and was 100% worth every cent. My guide educated me about the Pantheon, the city’s centuries of history, its best features and culture, and little quirks. She tailored the tour to what I wanted to see and packed a ton into our time together. It was a blast, and we stayed in touch for the rest of my trip (and since, and I’ve sent multiple clients to her).
That was an important lesson for me on this trip: I’m used to learning it all myself. It’s a bit like using a travel agent: you can do it all yourself, but it takes a LOT of mental energy to learn a new city/cities (as it does to research and book a trip). A good guide can eliminate some of that work—and help bring the destination alive in a way you might have missed on your own. [I used private guides in Athens, Rome, and Florence, and did small group tours in each of those plus Venice. All but one tour were excellent.]
The two biggies in Rome are the Colosseum and Forum and the Vatican, and I used different small group tours for these. My guide for The Roman Guy’s early-morning Vatican/St. Paul’s tour led our (very) small group to the major sights throughout the warren around Vatican, finishing at St. Paul’s with the (optional, and not recommended if you’re claustrophobic or not super-agile) dome climb. It is demanding and in a tight space—but the views at the top are amazing. She was the perfect guide for this, too, with broad knowledge and the sense to know how much was enough for her audience. [Shown below, scenes from St. Peter’s and around the Vatican.]
My guide for LivItaly’s Colosseum, underground, and Forum tour, also really knew his stuff. They’d recently opened new areas of the Colosseum’s ‘basement,’ which was super-interesting to see.Now if we can just get the Alamo to open up their basement . . .
My ‘group’ for this one was me and a family with two little kids too young for the long and hot tour their parents dragged them on. That was less than ideal, but I’d do another tour with the guide, anyway. Looking out over the Forum, seeing ancient ruin after ancient ruin is a wild, goose-bump-inducing experience for those even mildly interested in history. [Seen below: intrepid travel agent sweltering in the Roman sun to bring you this report; scenes from the Colosseum, underground, and Forum. ]
Food- It’s hard not to eat A LOT here. Lunch is not such a big event, but dinner is. It’s served much later than I’m used to eating—many restaurants don’t open until 7 or 7:30. Multi-course dinners are the standard, with essentially two entrees (between the pasta course and the main) . . . it’s a lot of food. This is more an observation than a complaint.
[Below, a fantastic meal from from one of my favorite restaurants in Rome.]
I’d always heard Rome was filthy and hot and so had avoided it until summer 2021. It was hot in July (duh)—but the lower tourism population because of Covid made up for that. I didn’t have the sights to myself, but things weren’t overrun. As for dirty, I didn’t find it nearly as much so as, say, Paris or NYC.
The people were uniformly friendly, more so than in Milan, Lake Como, Florence, Venice, or Ticino (Italian Switzerland). Things didn’t seem terribly overpriced: though dinners were not cheap, they came with A LOT. My hotel was $$ but it also sat right next to the Pantheon . . . worth it. And there was way more to see and do than I could cram into three full days there. So I’ll have to go back.
Play your cards right, I’ll plan a fabulous trip for you to see the best of Italy. HMU here to get started. [Seen below, Piazza Venezia, La Rinascente (dept. store), the Spanish Steps, and Piazza Navona x3.]
