Things to do in Rome

Colosseum

Start with the Colosseum, the largest amphitheatre in the world. It held about 50,000 people for gladiator fights and animal hunts, and from its first level you look straight down into the arena and the tunnels where lifts and trapdoors raised animals and scenery into the games.

Every ticket has a time slot and your name on it, so bring ID. Slots open 30 days ahead, and it pays to book as soon as your dates are fixed. The same ticket covers the Roman Forum and the Palatine Hill next door, and on the Roma Pass the three count as a single included entry, though you still book your time on the Colosseum’s own site. There’s no weekly closing day, so it also works on a Monday.

Roman Forum and Palatine Hill

That ticket lets you into the Forum once, at any time in the 24 hours before or after your Colosseum slot. For more than a thousand years this valley was the centre of Rome’s public life, and you still walk its Via Sacra, the Sacred Way, past the Senate house, the Temple of Vesta and the Arch of Titus, named for the emperor who opened the Colosseum.

Above it rises the Palatine Hill, where the emperors built their palaces, with the Farnese Gardens looking down over the Forum. Go in by the Palatine gate on Via di San Gregorio and walk down through the Forum, so you only climb the hill once. Allow two and a half to three hours for both, and in winter remember the last entry is at 15:30.

Circus Maximus

From the edge of the Palatine you look down on the Circus Maximus, ancient Rome’s chariot-racing track, about 600 metres long between the Palatine and the Aventine. The stands are gone, but the grassy valley keeps the shape of the track, and you can walk it free at any hour, unless a concert has it fenced off.

At the south-east end, a paid area takes you among the excavated galleries and up the medieval Torre della Moletta. The Circo Maximo Experience puts the crowds back, with augmented and virtual reality visors and a day at the races. Both close on Mondays, and the Roma Pass counts them as two separate sites.

Baths of Caracalla

About 12 minutes on foot from Circo Massimo metro station are the public baths the emperor Caracalla opened in AD 216. Nobody ever built on top of them, so the brick halls still stand in a line, hot, warm and cold, with the open-air pool now a lawn and a Roman house with restored frescoes in the grounds.

There’s nothing to book, since the ticket office sells on the day. The baths close every Monday, and in winter the last entry is at 15:30. On the Roma Pass the reduced ticket here is so cheap that we’d keep the included entry for a dearer site.

Capitoline Museums

Back at the far end of the Forum, the Capitoline Hill has the square Michelangelo designed on top, and two palaces around it hold the Capitoline Museums. Inside are the bronze she-wolf of Rome’s founding legend and the original statue of the emperor Marcus Aurelius on horseback. An underground gallery joins the palaces and leads into the Tabularium, ancient Rome’s state archive, whose arches look straight out over the Forum.

The museums open every day, Mondays included, and you don’t need to book. On the first Sunday of the month entry is free for everyone. Walk up the Cordonata, the broad stepped ramp, and before you go in, walk round behind the Palazzo Senatorio for a free view of the Forum.

Pantheon

In the historic centre, where the metro doesn’t reach, the Pantheon is the temple the emperor Hadrian rebuilt between AD 118 and 125, and it’s the building you walk into today. Its dome was the largest in the world until the 15th century, the round hall under it is as wide as it is high, and its only window is the open oculus at the top, which lets the rain in.

It has been a church since 609, and the painter Raphael is buried inside. A ticket gives you a one-hour slot, and booking ahead spares you the queue at the desk. It opens every day, but Mass closes it to visitors on Sunday mornings and late on Saturday afternoons, and as in any working church you cover your shoulders. The Roma Pass doesn’t include it.

Piazza Navona

Five minutes’ walk west of the Pantheon, Piazza Navona keeps the long shape of a Roman stadium, built here in AD 86 by the emperor Domitian for athletics and horse races. The houses round the square went up where the stands were, and what’s left of the stadium lies five or six metres under the paving, in an underground site now closed for restoration. The square itself has no traffic, no ticket and no closing time, just cafés along the sides and street performers working the crowd.

In the centre is the Fountain of the Four Rivers, which the sculptor Gian Lorenzo Bernini unveiled in 1651. Its four marble figures, the Danube, the Ganges, the Nile and the Río de la Plata, stand for the four continents known at the time, and the obelisk above them was brought from the Circus of Maxentius on the Appian Way.

The Nile has his head covered, and the story goes that he can’t bear to look at Sant’Agnese in Agone, the church opposite, finished by Bernini’s great rival, the architect Francesco Borromini. The dates spoil it: the fountain was unveiled a year before work on the church began, and the veil is there because nobody then knew where the Nile rose.

Castel Sant’Angelo

Across the Tiber from Piazza Navona stands the tomb of the emperor Hadrian, which the popes made into a fortress and a home, and later a prison. You cross the Ponte Sant’Angelo, lined with angels designed by the sculptor Bernini, then climb from the spiral ramp of the Roman tomb, through the frescoed papal apartments, to a terrace under a bronze angel, with St Peter’s and the Pantheon in view.

You don’t have to book, though the castle recommends it, especially at weekends, and with the Roma Pass you skip that step: cardholders have a line of their own. The castle closes on Mondays, apart from the afternoon of the first Monday of the month, and tickets carry your name, so bring ID. From Friday to Sunday a guided walk can take you along the Passetto di Borgo, the corridor the popes used to reach safety from the Vatican.

Vatican Museums and the Sistine Chapel

At the other end of that corridor is the Vatican, and its museums are the only way into the Sistine Chapel, where Michelangelo painted the ceiling between 1508 and 1512, and later the Last Judgement on the end wall. On the way you pass the Raphael Rooms, with the School of Athens, and the Laocoön, an ancient sculpture group dug up on the Esquiline Hill in 1506.

One ticket covers the museums and the chapel, with a booked time, and in high season demand is double the number of places, so book early. The museums close on Sundays, except the last Sunday of the month, when entry is free in the morning. Cover shoulders and knees, and keep your phone away in the chapel, where photos are banned. The Roma Pass doesn’t include the museums, but the Omnia Card does.

St Peter’s Basilica

With an ordinary ticket there’s no way through from the Sistine Chapel, so you walk about 1 km round to St Peter’s Square. Entry to the basilica is free, with nothing to book, and inside are Michelangelo’s Pietà and Bernini’s bronze Baldachin over the high altar, where St Peter, the apostle and first pope, is believed to be buried.

Then there’s the climb up the dome Michelangelo designed: 551 steps to the top, or a lift that saves you the first 231. Everyone goes through the same security queue, shoulders covered. The basilica opens at 7:00, an hour before the museums, so it also works first thing, and it turns 400 on 18 November 2026, so expect ceremonies around that date.

Trastevere

Trastevere, whose name is Latin for “across the Tiber”, lies south of the Vatican on the same side of the river. It’s a neighbourhood of cobbled lanes and one of the centres of Rome’s nightlife, so it comes into its own in the evening, when the restaurants and bars fill up.

The square to head for is Piazza di Santa Maria in Trastevere, with cafés round its edges and street musicians playing. By tradition, the basilica it’s named after was the first church in Rome officially opened for worship, in the 3rd century, and its bell tower and apse mosaics come from a rebuilding in the 12th. The fountain in front of it was already on a map of the city in 1471, which makes it one of Rome’s oldest.

Tram 8 crosses the river from Largo Argentina, close to the Pantheon, though from the centre Trastevere is near enough to walk to. On Sunday mornings the Porta Portese flea market spreads through the streets towards Viale di Trastevere. Next to Piazza di Santa Maria, the Museum of Rome in Trastevere hangs watercolours by Ettore Roesler Franz, a painter who recorded the streets Rome lost when it became Italy’s capital.

Trevi Fountain

Back across the river, about 10 minutes’ walk from the Pantheon, the Trevi Fountain runs on water from the Aqua Virgo, an aqueduct the Romans built in 19 BC and still in use, though the fountain itself was only finished in 1762. It’s built against the back of the Palazzo Poli, and in its central niche the sea god Oceanus stands on a shell-shaped chariot while tritons lead his two sea horses, one wild and one calm.

From the square you can look at it for nothing, day or night. The €2 that visitors have paid since February 2026 is only for going down the steps to the basin, from 9:00 to 22:00. Outside those hours the basin is free, and that’s also when the crowd thins out.

Down at the water, the custom is to stand with your back to the fountain and throw a coin over your left shoulder with your right hand, which is meant to bring you back to Rome. The coins add up to about €3,000 a day, and they go to Caritas, the Catholic charity.

Barberini, on metro line A, is the nearest station. A few metres away, a 40-minute guided tour takes you under the street into the Vicus Caprarius, the excavated remains of a Roman house. A 90-minute guided walk links Trevi with Piazza Navona, the Pantheon and the Spanish Steps. Neither gets you down to the basin: that takes the separate €2 ticket, which the Roma Pass doesn’t cover.

Spanish Steps and Piazza di Spagna

From Trevi it’s a short walk north to Piazza di Spagna, where the Spanish Steps climb to Trinità dei Monti. The church at the top, with its twin bell towers, was founded in 1495 and is one of Rome’s five French-language Catholic churches. The steps went up in the 1720s, and the square is named after Spain’s embassy to the Vatican.

At the foot of the steps is the Barcaccia, a marble boat half sunk in its basin, which Pietro Bernini, father of the more famous Gian Lorenzo, finished in 1629. It’s set below street level for a practical reason: it runs on the Aqua Virgo, the aqueduct that feeds the Trevi Fountain, and the water reaches this spot with little pressure.

Climb to the top for the view straight down Via dei Condotti, Rome’s street of luxury shops, and come first thing in the morning, before the crowds. You can’t sit on the steps: city rules have banned it since 2019, and the police can fine you. By metro, get off at Spagna, on line A.

Borghese Gallery

The Spanish Steps lead on towards the Villa Borghese park. The villa itself belonged to Cardinal Scipione Borghese, nephew of Pope Paul V, and it keeps the marble statues Gian Lorenzo Bernini carved in the 1620s, Apollo and Daphne among them. The sculptor Canova’s statue of Napoleon’s sister Paolina is here too, along with six paintings by Caravaggio.

Everyone needs a booked time, Roma Pass holders included, and the gallery lets in 180 people at the start of each two-hour slot. It’s closed on Mondays, so settle your Borghese day before the others and plan the rest around it. From Spagna metro station it’s a walk of 15 to 20 minutes through the park.

St John Lateran

Rome’s cathedral isn’t St Peter’s but St John Lateran, because the Pope is the city’s bishop and his chair stands in the apse here. The basilica goes back to Constantine, the first Christian emperor, who gave the popes this land in the 4th century, and entry is free every day.

What you pay for are the visits around it: the 13th-century cloister, with its twisted columns inlaid with mosaic, and the Lateran Palace next door, whose papal rooms opened to visitors in 2021 and need a booked time. Both close on Sundays. The Holy Stairs, climbed only on your knees, are free, and metro line A stops at San Giovanni.

Catacombs and the Appian Way

From San Giovanni, bus 218 stops 300 metres from San Sebastiano, on the Appian Way, the road the Romans began building in 312 BC and now a UNESCO World Heritage Site, free to walk at any time. Two catacombs, the tunnels where the city’s early Christians buried their dead, stand on it a short walk apart: St Callixtus, with the Crypt of the Popes, and San Sebastiano, whose galleries go down three levels.

You only go down with a guide, and the ticket includes the tour. St Callixtus closes on Wednesdays and San Sebastiano on Mondays, so one of the two is always open, and underground it’s 16 to 17 °C, so bring a layer. The Roma Pass leaves the catacombs out, but covers the archaeological park along the road, the round tomb of Cecilia Metella included.

Ostia Antica, a day out by train

For a day out of the city, Ostia Antica, ancient Rome’s port at the mouth of the Tiber, is half an hour away by train. You walk its streets past baths with mosaic floors, a theatre, blocks of flats, a Roman bar with its counter still in place and a marble latrine with 20 seats.

Take metro line B to Piramide and change to the Metromare train next door. The Roma Pass covers the ride and can count the entry as an included one, and a single ticket opens every site in the park for eight days. It’s closed on Mondays and in winter the last entry is at 15:30, so set off in the morning, and check the line first, as it has had closures this autumn.

Planning your days by area

The sights above fit into three days on foot: ancient Rome with the Capitoline, the Vatican with Trastevere for the evening, and the centre from Piazza Navona to the Borghese, with a fourth for the Lateran and the catacombs. The three sights to book ahead, the Colosseum, the Vatican Museums and the Borghese Gallery, sit in different areas, so each can anchor a day of its own, and our 3 days in Rome itinerary orders them around the weekly closing days.

Whether a pass saves you money depends on which of these you’d pay for. Our page on Roma Pass and Rome’s other city passes puts them side by side, with a calculator that tells you if one pays off for your list.