Rome Itinerary help
 

I've seen some great advice here so would love your help.We will be traveling to Rome in May 2016. Here is the itinerary I was thinking. Have i taken on too much each day or is this doable?

Day 1 arrive
o Spanish steps
o Trevi Fountain

Day 2
o Colosseum
o Palatine Hill
o Borghese Gallery
o Pincio Gardens

Day 3
o Trastevere
o Piazza del popolo
o Castel Sant’Angelo

Day 4
o Day trip to Florence and Pisa

Day 5
o Panthenon
o Vittorio Emmanuel II Monument
o Piazza Navona-

Day 6
o Vatican
o Sistine Chapel

Day 7
o Day trip to Venice or Tuscany

Day 8
o St. Peter’s Basilica
o Roman Forum

Day 9
o Campo de’ Fioro

Day 10 Return Home

I am hardly an expert, having just made my first trip to Rome. Your itinerary seems a bit ambitious to me in places - I would not have the stamina to combine the Borghese Gallery with the Colosseum, let alone two other stops. You will want to allow the full two hours at the Galleria Borghese (my trip report there: https://polloplayer.wordpress.com/20...eria-borghese/)

You show the Vatican and Sistine Chapel for Day 6 and St. Peter's Basilica on Day 8 - St. Peter's Basilica is part of the Vatican so you would visit it at the same time as the Vatican Museums and the Sistine Chapel.

Campo di Fiore is a marketplace - we looked around for fifteen minutes and then moved on but maybe we missed something.

We combined seeing the Forum and the Colosseum which seemed to work well. A highlight of the Forum area was visiting the church of Santi Cosma e Damiano, which we would have missed if we hadn't been with a guide who knew about it (https://polloplayer.wordpress.com/20...-look-at-rome/)

You could easily combine the Trevi Fountain (still under scaffolding as of a few weeks ago) with the Pantheon. It is a seven minute walk from one to the other.

I think it's a two-hour drive each way from Rome to Florence. That doesn't give you much time to see anything there unless you are just going to dash into the Duomo and see the David.

Maybe spend some time with a map: Venice is not exactly a day trip from Rome. You really need at least two days in Venice to experience it, imho.

You are all over the place -- have you looked at maps of Rome/the Vatican and Italy in general?

Florence and Pisa re <i>in</i> Tuscany. And no, Venice is not a day trip from Rome.

Your groupings make no sense - as listed you will be bouncing around the city like a ping pong ball. And while you have practically nothing on some days you have too much - and in far distant places - on others.

You need to group together the following:

Colosseum and Forum are right next to each other and have a single ticket for admittance so you should do them together for a full day

Vatican Museum, St Peter's and Castel sant Angelo are adjacent to each other for another full day

Get a good map of Rome with the sights shown and put on the same day items near each other.

Get a copy of the Michelin green guide, which will provide info on what you want to see and how long it will take to do so.

Forget the day trip to Venice - it is just too far. You can do Florence (but not on a Monday when things are closed and only with advance reservations for Uffizi and Accademia). Or you can visit Orvieto - or oe Tuscan hill town.

And do group together a lot of places that are "wall bys" - fountains, piazzas, etc. Some will take 15/20 minutes - some might take an hour to explore if you search every corner - but they are not a day.

Depending on what you want to see in Florence and Pisa and how much time you want to devote to lunch and dinner, I'm not sure you'd have time to go to Pisa. However, there is a no-connection train Pisa to Rome at 8:51p that takes just 2 hours. If you want to climb the Leaning Tower, you should make timed reservations and plan to arrive well before. Personally, I wouldn't climb the Tower if it was raining. They may even close it if it's slippery.

A day trip from Rome to Venice isn't realistic. It's 4 hours each way on the train, and the Venice train station isn't adjacent to the main tourist sights. In contrast, a day trip to Orvieto (technically in Umbria) is easy and the town is interesting. The train takes 1:15 each way, and the train station and town are connected by a funicular.