What is Christmas like in Rome?

I've spent a half-dozen Christmases and New Year's in Rome, and it's a lovely time to be there.

The oblong Piazza Navona with its splashing Bernini-sculpted fountains and sidewalk cafes spilling from baroque palaces turns into a Christmas market. There are some stalls with carnival-like games of chance, others selling hand-crafted clay figurines for presepi (Christmas crèche scenes), still others with toys for the kiddies and dolls of Befana, the Christmas witch (who, until Hollywood's Santa Claus started muscling in on her territory, traditional took Italian youngster's their presents on January 6, the Epiphany). Some vendors hawk donuts the size of dinner plates, other lay out 101 variations on the peanut brittle theme.

Halfway up the Spanish Steps and around the obelisk in the center of St. Peter's Square they build fantastically intricate, life-sized Nativity scenes, complete with background scenery of a Bethlehem that looks suspiciously like an Italian hill town (the little models of pizzerias usually give it away), and similar crèches fill the chapels of more than 900 churches across town.

And, on very rare occasions, it can even snow—in which case you'll want to drop everything and scurry off to the Pantheon, and ancient Roman temple converted into a church, to watch the flakes float down from the giant open oculus in the roof and make a tiny snowdrift in the center of the marble floor.

Beware of December 26, which is the Santo Stefano holiday in Italy. More businesses will be open on Christmas Day itself than on Santo Stefano, and you may be hard-pressed to even find a restaurant that's open as everyone else is at home eating with the family. Similarly, you'll want to book a restaurant for New Year's Eve dinner, as almost all of them so special set menus and locals tend to book well in advance for a long, celebratory dinner out.

Tips & links