Best Things to Do in Rome

See the Colosseum, Roman Forum, and Palatine Hill. One combined ticket covers all three, and together they take a good three to four hours to see properly. See our full Colosseum guide for booking details.

Visit Vatican City. The Vatican Museums, Sistine Chapel, and St. Peter's Basilica are technically a separate country and easily a full day on their own. Our Vatican guide covers tickets, the dress code, and how to see it without losing the whole day to queues.

Throw a coin in the Trevi Fountain. The tradition — coin over your shoulder with your back to the fountain, supposedly guaranteeing a return trip to Rome — draws crowds at almost any hour, so an early morning or late evening visit is the only realistic way to see it without a wall of phones in front of you.

Wander the Pantheon. Free to enter, remarkably well preserved for a building nearly two thousand years old, and home to the largest unreinforced concrete dome ever built — an engineering feat that still isn't fully understood by modern architects.

Explore Trastevere in the evening. Cobblestone streets, ivy-covered buildings, and a concentration of good, unpretentious restaurants make this the neighborhood most visitors wish they'd spent more time in.

Visit the Borghese Gallery. A smaller, strictly timed-entry museum housing Bernini sculptures and Caravaggio paintings, inside a villa surrounded by one of Rome's largest parks — book well ahead, since only a limited number of visitors are admitted per session.

Piazza Navona and the fountains of the historic center

Beyond the Trevi Fountain, Piazza Navona's Bernini fountain and the surrounding street artists and cafés make for one of Rome's most pleasant places to simply sit for an hour, particularly in the early evening once the day-trip crowds thin out.

A boat ride or walk along the Tiber

The river itself rarely makes anyone's must-see list, but an evening walk along its banks, particularly near Ponte Sant'Angelo with Castel Sant'Angelo lit up ahead, is a quieter, less crowded way to see the city than most daytime itineraries allow for.

Villa Borghese park

The park surrounding the Borghese Gallery is worth a visit even without a museum ticket — shaded paths, a small lake, and views over the city make it a pleasant break from the historic center's stone and crowds.

None of these need to happen in a fixed order — Rome's compact center makes it easy to fold a fountain or a park into whatever day already has a major site on the schedule.