This week’s dream: Rome on a summer evening

Rome at night is “simply a lovely place to stroll,” said Ian Fisher in The New York Times. The best time and place to begin exploring the city is at sunset on the Capitoline Hill, where Rome itself began. In one dramatic sweep, so much of the city’s history is visible, from ancient temples to Renaissance churches to modern monuments. The Colosseum lies to the south, and a heroic statue of the Emperor Marcus Aurelius dominates the nearby Piazza del Campidoglio, designed by Michelangelo. Its three palaces are among the Renaissance’s greatest buildings.

Most every evening, the “Eternal City” teems with activity, like an “immense theater.” From the Piazza del Popolo—where locals shop and teenagers work hard to look cool—pedestrians cruise into the Piazza di Spagna, whose famous Spanish Steps were admired by Byron, Shelley, and

Joyce. Keats died here, at No. 26, in 1821. At twilight this piazza seems like a self-enclosed universe, with its “vertical exit signaled by the illuminated Fountain of the Barcaccia.” At the Trevi Fountain, tourists “in truly unwieldy numbers” amass to admire the statue of Neptune taming the waters. But be warned—splashing in the fountain, as Anita Ekberg and Marcello Mastroianni famously did in Fellini’s La Dolce Vita, is officially discouraged.

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

Though St. Peter’s Square is packed by day, it is “quiet, empty, luminous” by night. Stroll along the cobblestones of the vast Via della Conciliazione toward Bernini’s colonnade and Michelangelo’s dome. Or take a nocturnal tour of the Sistine Chapel—usually attended by no more than a dozen people—for about $400 a person. “Many shops and restaurants close in August, but the Castel Sant’Angelo near the Tiber remains open for concerts and late-night dining. Next door is a temporary beach with real sand, from which the view of the Vatican’s dome “is stunning.”

Contact: www.Romace.it/site/english section.php