As I promised, this post will help you group together the attractions in what we found to be the best way. We managed to do this by walking most of the day, if you have difficulty walking, you might want to use sightseeing buses or public transport.
I decided to group the sights together into half days because then you can mix and match those.
Half-day 1: Vatican, Ponte and Castel Sant’Angelo
Our first day started with us going to see the Vatican. I’d recommend visiting the Vatican on a Wednesday or Saturday, since you can see the pope on those days.
We spent about half an hour to an hour on St. Peter’s square and then we made our way to the Vatican museums because we wanted to see the Sistine chapel. Be aware of fake tour guides on the street–don’t trust them, you can get a tour guide for a much better price inside the museum. It depends on how long you want to spend inside the museum, we spent maybe an hour and a half but we didn’t really want to see much except the Sistine chapel so we didn’t really spend so much time looking around.
After this I’d recommend going to see Castel and Ponte Sant’Angelo which are located very close.
If you don’t want to go inside the museums or see the Pope, this can all be seen in the evening as well. It looks very beautiful with all the lights 🙂
Half-day 2: Piazza Venezia, Colosseum, Roman Forum & Teatro di Marcello
Many buses stop at Piazza Venezia and there’s a metro station right across the Colosseum. I’d recommend going to the Roman Forum as your first stop, since you can pick up your tickets to the Colosseum, Roman Forum and Palatine Hill without waiting in long lines. I think that an hour to an hour and a half is sufficient time for the Forum. After the Forum I’d recommend you go see the Colosseum which takes about another hour without a guide (and since you have a ticket you can skip the lines!)
If you feel like walking the Palatine hill, it should have beautiful views of the Roman Forum… but those can also be seen if you walk up towards Campidoglio, you’ll get a beautiful view and also see Campidoglio, from there you could go down towards Piazza Venezia but I’d recommend taking the longer way and walking around Teatro di Marcello, as well. It looks like a smaller Colosseum but I think it’s even a bit prettier! It’s actually older than the Colosseum and only a semi-circle.
Half-day 3: Walking tour
I highly recommend you try the New Rome Free Walking Tour or something of the like. Try and do it a soon as you get to Rome because they have great tips that you can use during your whole trip and they also help you find your way around the center so it will be easier for you.
Here you’ll see the Pantheon, Trevi Fountain, Spanish Steps, Galleria, Bernini’s Angels and much more.
After your tour, you’re in the Area to go see Piazza Navone and the Fontana dei Quattro Fiumi (located on one side of the Piazza), and Campo de Fiori is just a 5 minute walk from the Piazza, from there you can go to Largo di Torre Argentina, there are a few ruins there but the interesting thing is that it’s a cat sanctuary! We played a short game of spot-the-cat as we waited for our bus (quite a few buses stop at the Argentina stop!)
Half-day 4: Villa/Galleria Borghese & Piazza del Popolo
We didn’t do this one, because we decided to go to Trastevere twice and since we walked there we didn’t have the time/energy to go here… plus we didn’t really want to go see the Galleria so we decided to scratch this from our schedule but if you’re an art fan then this is definitely one half day trip for you! Don’t forget to buy your tickets to the galleria in advance because they sell out!
Half-day 6: Circo Massimo, Bocca della Verita and Testaccio
We left out Bocca della
Verita, because it was late in the evening but Circo Massimo is very beautiful. It was actually the first thing we saw when we got to Rome! We were struck by how big these ruins are!
We read online that Testaccio is the place for night clubs and bars… now, we don’t know if this was because we just went to the wrong streets or because we went there too soon or if it was just because we were there in the winter, but we didn’t really say any bars or clubs that would make us think “wow this really si the place to go” we only got an ice cream there (thought not the one on the photo, that one’s plastic :P)
We left this for a Friday night, so… I guess better luck in summer?
Half-day 7: Trastevere
This might not really fill a whole half day, but it will definitely fill an evening. This is, in my opinion, the most authentically Italian part of Rome.
The receptionist at our hotel told us that this is where the locals go to hang out and you can tell.
This is the place where you can find fairly priced authentic italian food in the nicest little restaurants. Apart from the amazing food, the narrow streets are really what you imagine when you think of Italy.
If you need to have a reason, other than just looking around and taking in the atmosphere, to go see some place you can check out Porta Portese (an ancient city gate) 🙂
Anyway, this is just what I think are ‘bite sized pieces’ of Rome, you may need more time for something or may not want to see something else so my ‘half-days’ might not work for you, but I think it’s a good place to start and at least you know that you can walk these distances. 🙂
Your Travel Buddy 