The ancient sights of Rome

A quick guide to the top ruins, temples, and other ancient sites in Rome, Italy

Ancient sites near the Forum and Colosseum

The Roman Forum ★★★

Lines of chipped columns, crumbling triumphal arches, broken temple porticoes, the curve of abandoned marketplaces, armless statues patinaed with age—you can wander at will through the ghost city of an ancient Rome that, 2,000 years ago, ruled over the entire known world... » more

Colosseum ★★★

The world's greatest sports arena, where 50,000 spectators cheered bloody contests between gladiators—and between man and beasts—that could last 100 days or more and involve the slaughter of literally thousands of animals and men. Yes, ancient Rome was a cheery place... » more

Capitoline Museums ★★

Stuffed with ancient statues and mosaics and Renaissance and baroque masterpieces by Caravaggio, Rubens, Titian, Bernini, and Tintoretto, the twinned Capitoline Museums are home to such Rome icons as the archetype statue of the she-wolf suckling the twins Romulus and Remus, Lo Spinario (boy picking thorn out of foot), the Dying Gaul, and those gargantuan marble head, hands, and feet you see on all the postcards (usually with a cat posing on them)... » more

Trajan's Market ★★

The world’s first multilevel shopping mall was built by the Emperor Trajan in the AD 2nd century. It's the only bit of the Imperial Fori consistently open to the public, offering a glimpse into real daily life in Ancient Rome. You can wander a brief but evocative section of the city's most intact ancient streets, and the curving, four-story grand bazaar halls lined by former market stalls with marble porticos and barrel-vaulted ceilings... » more

San Clemente ★★

This early medieval church's mosaics, marbles, and Masolino frescoes would be worth a visit in of themselves. But the real show here is that you can head downstairs to see Rome's layer effect at work, exploring church stacked upon church stacked upon a pagan temple to Mithras surrounded by ancient Roman streets and houses deep underground... » more

The Palatine Hill ★

The legendary Romulus founded a tiny Latin village atop the Palatine Hill in the 8th century BC. After that hamlet grew to become Rome, patrician families and early emperors covered the site in stately mansions, called palatium after the hill. (This word evolved into palazzo in Italian, palais in French, and "palace" in English.) The Palatine offers a scenic escape from the crowds where you can wander across the grassy floors of ancient Imperial palaces and peer down the gated passageways once homes to the rich and famous of Rome... » more

Imperial Fori ★

The grandeur of Imperial Rome, laid out in a series of public spaces, markets, and triumphal columns by successive emperors, you can admire with a quick stroll or bike ride down Via dei Fori Imperiali: The Forum of Trajan, Forum of Augustus, Forum of Caesar, and Market of Trajan now installed with a Museum of the Imperial Forums... » more

Trajan's Forum

The Forum of Trajan is marked by the exclamation point of a triumphal column—and, as part of the Fori Imperiali Musuem in the adjacaent Markets of Trajan, is the only Imperial Forum that is consistently open to the public... » more

Forum of Augustus

The stairs and column stumps in the center once belonged to the 2nd-century BC Temple of Mars Ultor. When it’s open, you can follow a catwalk running along the forum’s edge to get a better view... » more

Forum of Caesar

The earliest of the Imperial Fori, the Forum of Caesar (i.e.: Julius), is the only one on the west side of Via dei Fori Imperiali. Those three standing Corinthian columns belonged to his self-serving Temple to Venus Genetrix, a goddess from whom Caesar claimed direct descendance through Rome's legendary founder, Aeneas... » more

Nighttime Forum views ★★

Walk up Michelangelo's sloping carriage staircase to the top of the Capitoline Hill, around the Palazzo Senatorio, to a hidden, magnificent panorama across the Roman Forum and Palatine Hill, with the Colosseum peeking out in the background... » more

Baths of Caracalla ★

The largest surviving ruins of an ancient baths complex in Rome is a crumbling complex of brick walls and broken archways sprawling over 33 acres that could once accommodate 1,600 bathers. It is also a spectacular setting for summertime opera and concert performances... » more

A sarcophagus at the Palazzo Altemps branch of the Rome National Museum

Museo Nazionale Romano: Palazzo Altemps ★

The Palazzo Altemps branch of the Rome National Museum is perhaps the prettiest of the four branches (the other three are all up near Termini), with loads of excellent ancient sculptures and other ancient Roman art installed in the frescoed rooms of a 16th-century palace just off the north end of Piazza Navona... » more

Domus Aurea ★

Nero built his "Golden House" on 200 acres of prime real estate he seized after the Great Fire of AD 64. It was one the most sumptuous palaces in history, slathered in frescoes and stuccoes, with rotating banquet tables over which would drift showers of flower petals, and entire rooms laminated in gold leaf (hence the nickname). It was a party palace par excel lance for an emperor who would go down in history as one of the most hated leaders of all time... » more

The Arch of Constantine

Standing between the Colosseum and the Roman Forum, the Arch of Constantine is one of the largest of Rome's ancient triumphal arches, celebrating Emperor Constantine the Great's AD 312 victory over Maxentius at the Milvian Bridge—which marked a seismic shift in European history, when Rome (and, eventually, Europe) started converting from pagan to Christian... » more

Teatro di Marcello

This early blueprint for the Colosseum survives even though medieval builders grafted a series of apartment buildings on top of it (don't tell me the Romans don't know how to recycle)... » more

The Foro Boario

The forgotten forum, a pair of teensy, utterly ancient temples wedged between the back side of the Capitoline Hill and the Tiber River, right across from the Mouth of Truth, in what was until modern times a cow pasture... » more

Tiber Island

Rome's only island rides the water of the Tevere like a boat laden with the echoes of ancient myths and beliefs... » more

Circus Maximus

Slung into the Murcia Valley between the Palatine and Aventine hills, the elongated grassy jogging oval known as the Circo Massimo was once the largest stadium in all of Rome, a 2,000-foot-long track where the empire threw its most extravagant chariot races to entertain crowds of up to 385,000 screaming spectators... » more

Ancient sites in the Tiber Bend heart of Rome

Museo Nazionale Romano: Palazzo Altemps ★

Column of Marcus Aurelius

The emperor's exploits and most famous victories spelled out comic-strip fashion in a spiral up this giant marble pillar along the Via del Corso... » more

Ancient sites across the Tiber: Around Trastevere & The Vatican

The Sistine Chapel ceiling in the Vatican Museums

Vatican Museums & Sistine Chapel ★★★

Sure, most people know Rome's most magnificent collection of museums for Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel ceiling and other great works of art But the Vatican is also peppered throughout with exquisite ancient Roman sculptures and houses eight full museums dedicated to antiquities—Roman, Greek, Egyptian, and global—including:

The Pio-Clementine Museum ★★ - Some of the greatest statuary to have survived from Ancient Rome, including the Laocoön group and the Apollo Belvedere... » more
The Chiaramonti Museum - Arranged in 1807 by neoclassical master sculptor Canova with busts and statues lined up as if for military inspection on either side of a corridor stretching as far as the eye can see... » more
The Braccio Nuovo- Rarely open but floored with ancient mosaics and containing some excellent Classical sculptures, including the famous AD 1st-century Augustus of Prima Porta, carrying a lance and an outstretched arm... » more
Gregorian Etruscan Museum ★ - One of the most important Etruscan collection in Rome, starting with early Iron Age objects from the 9th century BC and including highlights like the 4th-century BC Mars of Todi, a bronze warrior influenced by Greek sculpture.... » more
Gregorian Profane Museum ★★ - By "profane" they mean "pagan," a collection of antiquities from the Roman and Greek eras, including some great bits of Greek sculpture, including a couple of fragments from the Parthenon... » more
Pio Christian Museum ★, Not all ancient art was "pagan." This museum is filled with early, paleo-Christian works from the 2nd to 6th centuries—sarcophagi from the catacombs, lots of inscriptions, and the earliest representation of Christ in existence, a Good Shepherd statue from the 3rd century... » more
Gregorian Egyptian Museum ★ - A passel of Egyptian antiquities—painted mummy cases and sarcophagi, jewelry, funerary accoutrements, and statues of pharaohs, queens, and gods dating back to the 21st century BC... » more
Missionary-Ethnological Museum ★ - Basically 3,000 years worth of booty gathered from across all continents by Christian missionaries who were busily converting the "paganism" right out of Buddhist, Hindu, Islamic, African, Native American, and other cultures. Fab collection, though (especially the China stuff)... » more

» more

Castel Sant'Angelo ★

The pope's personal fortress is a giant cylinder of a castle glowering above the Tiber and hiding at its core the tomb of Hadrian and a dozen other ancient Roman emperors... » more

Santa Cecilia in Trastevere ★

You'd never know from the bland baroque interior of this convent church that, by slipping a modest bribe to the nuns, you can get inside the cloistered section to see one of Rome's last remaining medieval masterpieces of fresco by Pietro Cavallini... » more

Ancient sites near Termini train station

An ancient Roman sarcofagus in the Palazzo Massimo alle Terme branch of the Rome Naitonal Museum

Museo Nazionale Romano: Palazzo Massimo alle Terme ★★

The best of the four branches of the Rome National Museum contains excellent statuary plus exquisite ancient Roman mosaics, bronzes, frescoes, coins, and jewelry in a 19th-century villa... » more

The Baths of Diocletian branch of the Rome Naitonal Museum

Museo Nazionale Romano: Baths of Diocletian

Installed in the palazzo that was converted out of a portion of the ancient baths complex; intriguing space, but least interesting of the Rome National Museum's four collections... » more

Santa Maria degli Angeli

Michelangelo was commissioned to take a section of the ancient Baths of Diocletian and adapt it to become a church. It's a shame a later architect came along and moved the entrance over to one of the transept arms and spoiled the effect... » more

The Aula Ottagona of the Rome National Museum

Museo Nazionale Romano: Aula Ottagona

[currently closed] A single echoing chamber of the Baths of Diocletian complex (but with a completely separate entrance than the collection mentioned above, also part of the Rome National Museum) has been filled with a small but mighty bathhouse art and colossal statuary; amazingly evocative space... » more

Ancient sites on the Appian Way & in the South

The Ancient Appian Way ★★

The arrow-straight Via Appia Antica was the first of Rome's great consular roads, running 370km (222 miles) to Brindisi in Apulia, the heel of Italy's boot. Bits of the Ancient Appian Way—there is a semi-parallel modern road called Via Appia Nuova—are covered in tar now to facilitate vehicular traffic. But the original, rutted Roman flagstones still cover long swathes of this mighty ancient road, and it is lined by magnificent ancient tombs and creepy Christian catacombs... » more

The Catacombs of the Appian Way ★★

These miles of low, dimly lit tunnels carved into the soft tufa honeycomb the earth beneath the Via Appia Antica are wildly popular among tourists. The catacomb tunnels are pigeonholed with tens of thousands of niches where early Christians buried their dead and left some of the world's first Christian art... » more

Centrale Montemartini ★

The Acea Art Center is a bona fide deus ex macchina experience. They've prettied up the old Montemartini power plant to house over 400 gorgeous ancient Roman sculptures from the Capitoline Museums collections that haven't been seen by the public in decades. They’re displayed evocatively against a backdrop of the power plant's inky black iron machinery, much of it so massive and muscularly mechanical that it looks more like a metaphor of early industry than actual working devices, like it came from a Fritz Lang movie set... » more

The Tomb of Cecilia Metella

The best of the Via Appia tombs, the resting place to the daughter-in-law of Crassus, a 1st-century BC land mogul and Julius Caesar's financier, transformed into a midget medieval castle... » more

Exploring the ancient Appian Way on a Sunday

On Sunday, this catacomb-lined ancient road to Rome is closed to all traffic except for bicyclists... » more

Ostia Antica to the east

Ostia Antica ★★

The ghost town ruins of Rome's ancient seaport are like Pompeii without the crowds—and just a 14-mile subway ride west of downtown... » more

Tips & links

Ancient Rome tours

Take a tour of Ancient Rome and its most famous ruins, sights, and museums with one of our partners:

General tours of Ancient Rome

Ancient Rome: Family tours

Ancient Rome: Museum tours

Context: Capitoline Museums
Context: The Good Life (Palazzo Massimo)

Ancient Rome tours: Outside the center

How long does Rome take?

Planning your day: Rome wasn't built in a day, and you'd be hard-pressed to see it in that brief a time as well. Still, you can cram a lot into just a day or three.

To help you get the most out of your limited time in the Eternal City, here are some perfect itineraries, whether you have one, two, three, or four days to spend in Rome.

» Rome itineraries

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Walks & Day tours

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Rome tours

Walks & day tours

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General tours of Ancient Rome

Ancient Rome: Family tours

Ancient Rome: Museum tours

Context: Capitoline Museums
Context: The Good Life (Palazzo Massimo)

Ancient Rome tours: Outside the center

Useful links

SIGHTS

Tourist info
Turismoroma.it

Other useful sites
060608.it (tourism info database)
Vatican.va (Vatican)
Coopculture.it (major sights/ruins)
Archeoroma.beniculturali.it (civic archaeology department)
Museiincomuneroma.it (civic museums)
Comune.roma.it (city site)
Sovraintendenzaroma.it (city cultural department)

LODGING

TRANSPORT

Public transportation:

Agenziamobilita.roma.it (all transit and driving/parking info)
Atac.roma.it (bus & Metro/subway)

plane

Rome airports:

Adr.it

Airport transfers:

Trenitalia.com (express train: €14)
Viator.com (private car: €14–€16.50)
Terravision.eu (bus: €4)
Cotralspa.it or Sitbusshuttle.com (bus: €5)
Taxi: €45–€55

Airfares:

train

Trains:

automobile

Driving/parking:

Sabait.it (Villa Borghese garage; €18/day)
Atac.roma.it (outlying commuter parking lots; from €5 per day)
Agenziamobilita.roma.it (more on the ZTL)

Car rentals:

Car resources
Emergency service/tow: tel. 803-116
Highway agency: Autostrade.it (traffic info, serivce areas, toll calculator, weather)
Italian automotive club (~AAA): Aci.it
ZTLs: Ztl-italia.blogspot.com (lightly outdated, but handy, links to cities' traffic-free zones)