Explore Rome

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 Mamertine Prison, the Tullianum of antiquity, is an ancient Roman prison on the slope of the Capitoline Hill facing the Roman Forum. Visitors go down into two superimposed rooms, the lower one an archaic chamber cut into the rock; Christian tradition holds that Saints Peter and Paul were held here. The church of San Giuseppe dei Falegnami stands above it.

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.

The Roman Forum is the rectangular square in the valley between the Palatine and Capitoline hills that was the centre of public life in ancient Rome. Visitors walk among the ruins of temples, basilicas and triumphal arches, among them the Temple of Saturn, the Arch of Septimius Severus and the House of the Vestal Virgins.

Trajan's Column is a marble column completed in AD 113 to mark the emperor Trajan's victory in the Dacian Wars, about 35 metres tall with its pedestal. A carved frieze some 190 metres long winds 23 times around the shaft, and a bronze statue of Saint Peter has stood on top since 1587. It rises in Trajan's Forum, seen from the surrounding streets.

Palazzo Valentini is a palace beside Trajan's Column that has housed Rome's provincial administration since 1873. Excavations beneath it since 2005 have uncovered two large houses of the imperial period and remains of a temple, which visitors see on a guided route where projections and Piero Angela's narration reconstruct the missing parts.

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.

Palazzo Colonna is the palace of the Colonna family at the foot of the Quirinal Hill, owned by the family for more than twenty generations. Its Baroque Great Hall, the Galleria Colonna commissioned in the mid-17th century by Cardinal Girolamo I Colonna, holds the family's collection of paintings, frescoes and sculpture, and the palace garden climbs the Quirinal.

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.

Sant'Ignazio is the Jesuit church of Saint Ignatius of Loyola in the Campo Marzio, built between 1626 and 1650 as the church of the Roman College. Its nave ceiling, painted by Andrea Pozzo around 1685, shows the saint received into heaven in steep illusionistic perspective, and a flat painted canvas by Pozzo over the crossing imitates a dome.

The Arch of Constantine is a triumphal arch between the Colosseum and the Palatine Hill, dedicated in AD 315 to mark Constantine's victory over Maxentius at the Milvian Bridge. It is 21 metres high, the largest Roman triumphal arch, and much of its sculpture was taken from earlier monuments to Trajan, Hadrian and Marcus Aurelius.

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.

Vicus Caprarius is an underground archaeological site a few steps from the Trevi Fountain, about nine metres below street level. Excavated in 1999–2001 during the conversion of the former Cinema Trevi, it shows a Roman apartment block turned into a 4th-century house and a water reservoir of the Aqua Virgo aqueduct.

The Circus Maximus is the site of ancient Rome's largest chariot-racing stadium, in the valley between the Palatine and Aventine hills. About 621 metres long, it held more than 150,000 spectators; today the track is a long grassy park, with excavated seating and a medieval tower at its curved eastern end and the Palatine ruins above.

The Colosseum is the elliptical amphitheatre of ancient Rome, begun under Emperor Vespasian around AD 72 and completed under Titus in AD 80. It held tens of thousands of spectators for gladiator fights and animal hunts. Visitors walk its travertine arcades and seating tiers, and some tickets include the arena floor and the underground chambers.

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.