Vansome

I have been to Rome twice and have visited the most popular sites. I will be there again for 2 days in early October and would appreciate advice on some lesser known places to visit in or around Rome. I will be staying near the Campo dei Fiori.

ellenem

What are your interests?

sandralist

What constitutes a lesser known place of interest to someone else depends on what your interests are. Many people would find it interesting to go to Cinecitta just outside Rome (the famous film studio) while others would find the Coppede Quarter fascinating, while still others would head for a bike ride along the Appian Way, or a byzantine church with spectacular mosaics. Food tours, nearby vinyeards, musical instrument museums, a marble carving shop, a perfume factory, the great converted electricity plant that it now a sculpture museum, or where Keats died would appeal to different people.

Also, a lot of people would assume that your question eliminates such sights like the Baths of Caracalla or the Museo Doria Pamphilj or the Mausoleum of Augusts, because while they are not as crowded as the Vatican, they are still known to a great many people. So how "lesser known" are you seeking out?

jnewton7

I loved the Jewish ghetto. We were there a week ago.

worldinabag

Hi

Have you visited Rome's fascinating underworld - http://www.rometravels.com/subterranean_rome.html.

What about Ostia Antica?

denisea

We loved Doria Pamphiliji...I haven't made it to Galleria Colonna yet...only open on Saturday, outside the city...Villa d'Este in Tivoli.

Dayle

Another vote for Tivoli, Villa d'Este and Hadrian's Villa were both very enjoyable. The fountains at Villa d'Este are really amazing. As I walked around I noticed everyone was smiling.

Blueeyedcod

Try the Ara Pacis if you're into ancient Roman history (n.b. Sandralist - the Mausoleum of Augustus has been closed for many years)
Palazzo Valentini has a pretty dazzling multimedia exhibit on Ancient Rome (and you don't even have to like Ancient Rome to appreciate it) - you have to book ahead for timeslots.

http://www.palazzovalentini.it/scavi.php?lang=eng

There is also Palazzo Farnese (aka the French Embassy - bookings also required and very few tours in English)

http://www.turismoroma.it/cosa-fare/...arnese?lang=en


The rooftop of Castel Sant Angelo has magnificent views and a great cafe. Palazzo Barberini has an amazing collection of art and is seldom visited. There are excavations of the ancient Roman amphitheatre at Piazza Navona - a very small area is excavated but worth a quick look if you're passing by.

sandralist

Oh sorry -- I wasn't thinking.

flanneruk

The web, the extraordinary range of Roman survivals and the past quarter century's explosion in archaeology and ways of presenting its results, means you might not really need to preplan.

We recently spent a weekend in Rome principally to look at the Raphaels in the Villa Farnesina. We'd never really twigged till we went round it that the Tiber has only very recently been canalised, so that led us to google what had been discovered during the canalisation.

That led us to spend the afternoon at the Palazzo Massimo, which has a rich stock of bits of disinterred villa (as museums have had for the past 400 years) but also more modern computer simulations of the early Imperial villa that the (16th century) Villa Farnesina was partly built on top of.

Researching posh villas erected by Imperial families meant we spent the following morning going round the Palatine Hill excavations in the Foro Romano - again, with remarkable new displays in its museum.

The ticket for the Palazzo Massimo gives entry to several other museums, so that afternoon was spent investigating the history of classical Roman writing in the newly (by my standards) opened museum at the Baths of Diocletian. This is now the best set of data-based insights into classical Roman social life anywhere in Europe, even if too many of the commentaries were written by unreconstructed Marxists (written in the 1990s, you'd have thought they'd haved noticed...) It also includes Rome's major museum of classical numismatics. I'm normally allergic to Roman coins (by definition, ten a penny in most of once-Roman Europe) - but these were staggeringly beautiful.

After two days' intense classics, we needed diversion - and Cinecitta beckoned. We expected a kind of Italianised Universal Studios: instead we got an account of Italian social history from 1935 to the 1970s -and possibly the worst lunch we've ever been served in Italy. Just (apart from the lunch) what we wanted. Restored, we were able to appreciate the sculptures (again: usually one of my bugbears) in the Palazzo Altemps, to which the Palazzo Massimo ticket also offered entrance.

Leaving the following morning to scoot round the churches we'd decided over the previous few months we needed to catch up on. Ending, of course, with Raphael's tomb - which neither of us had ever bothered with before.

And that's the other point. Practically everything in Rome bears revisiting several times. We've now lost track of how often one or other of us has been to Santa Maria Maggiore in the past 50 years. We're still finding new stuff there.

indyhiker

We were in Rome in May and, being somewhat crowd adverse, we specifically went to a few places not known for their crowds, including the Palazzo Doria Pamphilj, the National Gallery of Modern and Contemporary Art, and the Museo Monte Martini (the power plant turned museum mentioned above). We enjoyed each of them immensely. Monte Martini especially appealed to my engineer husband. We were essentially the only people there during our visit (which saddens me as I think the juxtaposition of the ancient sculpture and the more modern machinery is quite striking and well done). We combined that museum with a food tour of Testacchio through Eating Italy, which was also very enjoyable. But for the Monte Martini, I don't know how off the beaten path these attractions are, but I thought them worth mentioning.