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Sights Overview

Coming off the Autostrada at Roma Nord or Roma Sud, you know by the convergence of heavily trafficked routes that you are entering a grand nexus: All roads lead to Rome. And then the interminable suburbs, the railroad crossings, the intersections -- no wonder they call it the Eternal City. As you enter the city proper, features that match your expectations begin to take shape: a bridge with heroic statues along its parapets; a towering cake of frothy marble decorated with allegorical figures in extravagant poses; a piazza and an obelisk under an umbrella of pine trees. Then you spot what looks like a multistory parking lot; with a gasp, you realize it's the Colosseum. With traffic encircling the great stone arena of the Roman emperors, the broad girdle of tarmac seems to still be a racetrack, as it must have been in charioteering days. Not surprisingly, the motorists behind the wheels of their Fiats seem to display the panache of so many Ben-Hurs.

You have arrived. You're in the city's heart. You step down from your excursion bus onto a manhole cover stamped SPQR, "The Senate and Populace of Rome." This is an expression that links the citizen with his ancestor of 23 centuries ago and gives the arriving visitor the eerie feeling that the dust he stirs has been stirred by the togas of Cato, Cicero, and Seneca. In Rome, 23 centuries are just a few generations back.

When 18th-century aristocrats traveled to Rome on their Grand Tours, it was because Rome was history: an unparallelled repository of Western culture's greatest hits. To see Rome was to see our past, and revel in its greatness. Since then, a kingdom has fallen, a republic risen, and Rome has lived through three wars to a new era of Europe and a globalized world. What's most thrilling for visitors, and sometimes frustrating for residents, is how little has changed.

This is a city built -- literally -- on its own history, whose reputation has preceded it for the better part of three millennia. And its legacy is magnificent: ancient Rome rubs shoulders with the medieval, the modern runs into the Renaissance, and the result is like nothing so much as an open-air museum, a city that glories in its glories and is a monument to itself. Senators, emperors, Vandals, popes and the Borgias, Napoléon, and Mussolini all left their physical, cultural, and spiritual stamps on the city. More than Florence, more than Venice, Rome is Italy's treasure trove, packed with masterpieces from more than two millennia of artistic achievement. It's here that the ancient Romans made us heirs-in-law to what we call Western Civilization; where centuries later Michelangelo painted in the Sistine Chapel; where Gian Lorenzo Bernini's Baroque nymphs and naiads still dance in their marble fountains; and where, at Cinecittà Studios, Fellini filmed La Dolce Vita and 8 1/2.