Explorar Roma

The Capitoline Museums occupy the Palazzo dei Conservatori and the Palazzo Nuovo on Piazza del Campidoglio, the square Michelangelo designed on the Capitoline Hill. The collection began with ancient bronzes Pope Sixtus IV gave to the people of Rome in 1471 and includes the Capitoline Wolf, the Dying Gaul and the bronze equestrian statue of Marcus Aurelius.

The Vittoriano is the white marble monument to Victor Emmanuel II, the first king of unified Italy, built between 1885 and 1935 to designs by Giuseppe Sacconi on Piazza Venezia. It holds the Altar of the Fatherland with the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, and lifts climb to a terrace beneath the bronze quadrigae, about 70 metres up.

Palazzo Venezia is an early Renaissance palace on Piazza Venezia, built in the 1450s by Cardinal Pietro Barbo, later Pope Paul II, and used by Mussolini as his headquarters in the 20th century. It houses the National Museum of Palazzo Venezia, with paintings, sculpture, ceramics, bronzes and decorative arts, and encloses a large garden.

The Church of the Gesù on Piazza del Gesù is the mother church of the Jesuit order, begun in 1568 to designs by Vignola, with a façade by Giacomo della Porta, and consecrated in 1584. Its wide single nave and Giovanni Battista Gaulli's ceiling fresco, the Triumph of the Name of Jesus, became a model for Jesuit churches; it holds the tomb of Saint Ignatius of Loyola.

Trajan's Market is a complex of brick buildings set into the slope of the Quirinal Hill, probably built between AD 100 and 110 by Apollodorus of Damascus as part of Trajan's Forum. Visitors walk through its multi-storey halls and arcades and along the ancient Via Biberatica, and the Museum of the Imperial Fora inside shows finds from the forums.

The Sacred Area of Largo Argentina is a sunken square in central Rome with four temples from the Roman Republic, uncovered by demolitions in 1926 and known by the letters A to D. Remains of the Curia of Pompey, where Julius Caesar was killed in 44 BC, lie at its western edge. Since June 2023 a walkway leads visitors among the ruins.

The Galleria Doria Pamphilj is a private art collection on the first floor of the Palazzo Doria Pamphilj on Via del Corso, still owned by the Doria Pamphilj family. Its rooms hang mainly 16th- and 17th-century paintings, among them Velázquez's Portrait of Innocent X, shown beside Bernini's bust of the same pope, and two works by Caravaggio.

The Palatine Hill is the central one of Rome's seven hills, between the Roman Forum and the Circus Maximus. From Augustus onwards the emperors built their palaces here, and the ruins of the Domus Flavia, the Domus Augustana and the House of Augustus remain, alongside the Palatine Museum with finds from the excavations. It forms one archaeological area with the Roman Forum.

The Pantheon is a Roman temple on Piazza della Rotonda, rebuilt under Hadrian around AD 126 on the site of Agrippa's earlier temple, whose inscription it still carries. Its unreinforced concrete dome, 43 metres across, opens to the sky through a central oculus. Consecrated as the church of Santa Maria ad Martyres in 609, it holds the tombs of Raphael and two Italian kings.

San Pietro in Vincoli is a basilica on the Oppian Hill near the Colosseum, rebuilt in 432–440 to house the chains said to have bound Saint Peter, which are kept in a reliquary below the high altar. It also holds Michelangelo's statue of Moses, the central figure of the tomb of Pope Julius II.

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 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

St. Peter's Basilica in Vatican City was built between 1506 and 1626 over the traditional burial place of Saint Peter. Bramante, Michelangelo and Carlo Maderno shaped the design; Michelangelo's dome rises over the papal altar and Bernini's bronze baldachin, and Bernini also framed the square with its colonnades. Michelangelo's Pietà stands in the first chapel on the right.