Explorar Roma

The Quirinal Palace on the Quirinal Hill is the official residence of the President of the Italian Republic. Pope Gregory XIII began it in 1583 as a papal summer residence, and it later housed the kings of Italy; parts of the palace, including the state rooms and the Pauline Chapel, are shown on booked guided visits.

The Trevi Fountain is an 18th-century Baroque fountain built against the side of Palazzo Poli, designed by Nicola Salvi and completed by Giuseppe Pannini in 1762. It is 26 metres high and 49 metres wide, with Oceanus on a shell-shaped chariot drawn by sea horses and tritons; since 2026 the area by the basin has a ticketed entrance.

The Museo di Roma occupies Palazzo Braschi, a Neoclassical palace between Piazza Navona and Corso Vittorio Emanuele II, built from 1790 by Cosimo Morelli for Luigi Braschi Onesti, nephew of Pope Pius VI. Its rooms show paintings, drawings, prints, sculpture and furniture on the history and daily life of Rome from the Middle Ages to the 19th century.

Piazza Navona is a long oval square that keeps the outline of the Stadium of Domitian, built in the 1st century AD. Its Baroque form dates from the 17th century: Bernini's Fountain of the Four Rivers stands in the centre, with a fountain at each end, and Borromini's church of Sant'Agnese in Agone faces it from the west side.

The Leonardo da Vinci Museum occupies rooms of the Renaissance Palazzo della Cancelleria, next to Campo de' Fiori. It shows large wooden models of machines reconstructed from Leonardo's notebooks, several of which visitors can operate, along with holograms and themed showcases; the basement reveals the tomb of Aulus Hirtius, who died in 43 BC.

The Domus Aurea is the palace complex that Emperor Nero built on the Oppian Hill after the great fire of 64 AD. Its surviving halls lie buried beneath the later Baths of Trajan, and visitors go underground through frescoed corridors to the domed Octagonal Room. Their rediscovery in the 15th century inspired the grotesque decoration of Renaissance painters.

Sant'Agnese in Agone is a Baroque church on Piazza Navona, begun in 1652 on the site where, by tradition, Saint Agnes was martyred in the ancient Stadium of Domitian. Started by Girolamo and Carlo Rainaldi and continued by Francesco Borromini, who designed the concave facade, it has a dome between two bell towers and a crypt shown on guided visits.

The Case Romane del Celio are Roman houses beneath the Basilica of Santi Giovanni e Paolo on the Caelian Hill, opened to visitors in 2002. Built as two blocks of flats with shops in the 2nd and 3rd centuries and later joined into one house, they comprise more than 20 rooms, 13 of them with wall paintings, and a small antiquarium.

Palazzo Altemps is a 15th-century palace north of Piazza Navona, begun for Girolamo Riario and bought in 1568 by Cardinal Marco Sittico Altemps. Since 1997 it has been a branch of the Museo Nazionale Romano, showing ancient sculpture from noble collections such as the Boncompagni Ludovisi and Mattei, an Egyptian section and frescoed rooms.

Palazzo Barberini is a Baroque palace begun in 1625 for the family of Pope Urban VIII, designed by Carlo Maderno and continued by Gian Lorenzo Bernini and Francesco Borromini. It houses part of the Gallerie Nazionali di Arte Antica, with Raphael's La Fornarina and Caravaggio's Judith Beheading Holofernes, and a great hall with a ceiling fresco by Pietro da Cortona.

The Capuchin Crypt lies beneath the church of Santa Maria della Concezione dei Cappuccini on Via Veneto. Along a corridor of about 30 metres, six small chapels are decorated with the bones of some 3,700 people, mostly Capuchin friars, arranged into arches, rosettes and chandeliers. The visit starts in the friars' museum of art and history.

Santa Maria Maggiore is one of the four papal basilicas of Rome and the city's largest church dedicated to the Virgin Mary, built under Pope Sixtus III in the 5th century. Its nave and triumphal arch keep 5th-century mosaics, the 14th-century bell tower rises about 75 m, and Pope Francis was buried in a side aisle in 2025.

The Spanish Steps are a stairway of 135 steps, built in the 1720s to designs by Francesco de Sanctis, that climbs from Piazza di Spagna to the church of Trinità dei Monti. At their foot stands the Fontana della Barcaccia, a boat-shaped fountain of 1627–1629; since 2019 a city rule forbids sitting on the steps.

The Baths of Caracalla are the ruins of a public bath complex built between AD 212 and 216 under the emperors Septimius Severus and Caracalla and used until the 530s. Visitors walk among the high brick walls of the caldarium, the gymnasiums and the bathing halls, see sections of mosaic floor, and the frescoes of an earlier Roman house, the Domus of Vigna Guidi.

The Museum of the Ara Pacis is a glass and travertine pavilion by Richard Meier, opened in 2006 beside the Mausoleum of Augustus on the Tiber embankment. It houses the Ara Pacis Augustae, the marble altar of the Augustan peace dedicated in 9 BC, whose reliefs show the imperial family in procession, and also stages temporary exhibitions.

Castel Sant'Angelo was built on the bank of the Tiber in the 130s as the mausoleum of Emperor Hadrian and his family. The popes later turned it into a fortress, linked to the Vatican by the raised Passetto di Borgo, and fitted out papal apartments inside. It is now a national museum, with halls, ramparts and a terrace beneath the bronze statue of the Archangel Michael.

The Lateran Palace stands beside the Archbasilica of St John Lateran and was the main residence of the popes for about a thousand years, until they moved to the Vatican. The present building was designed by Domenico Fontana in the 1580s; visitors see the papal apartment and a sequence of frescoed halls, among them the Hall of Constantine and the Hall of the Apostles.

Piazza del Popolo is a large oval square just inside the Porta del Popolo, the northern gate in Rome's Aurelian Walls where the Via Flaminia entered the city. Giuseppe Valadier gave it its present form in 1811–1822; an Egyptian obelisk stands at the centre, and the twin churches of Santa Maria dei Miracoli and Santa Maria in Montesanto face it from the south.

The Leonardo da Vinci Museum is a privately run exhibition in the underground vaults of the Basilica of Santa Maria del Popolo, on Piazza del Popolo. It presents Leonardo's life, inventions, anatomical drawings and scientific studies through models and reproductions rather than original works, and includes a virtual-reality flight in his flying machine.

The Archbasilica of Saint John Lateran is the cathedral of the Diocese of Rome and the seat of the pope as its bishop. Founded in 324, it is the oldest of Rome's four major papal basilicas; Francesco Borromini remodelled the interior in the 1640s, and Alessandro Galilei completed the main facade with its colossal statues in 1735. A cloister and a baptistery adjoin it.