Viator Rome

Rome is a city of museums, ancient monuments, churches, and piazzas. But it’s not all a concrete and stone jungle out there – Rome also has some gorgeous green spaces worth exploring, especially if you need a break from the city. One lovely garden to visit is the Rome Rose Garden.

Shoppers headed to Rome may find something interesting in just about any boutique in the city – the ability to say, “I bought this in Rome!” is always appealing – but serious fashionistas should make a beeline for Via Veneto. Of course, you’ll need to be prepared for the designer prices to go along with the designer goods, but if you’re unwilling to part with that kind of money you can always enjoy the window shopping, which is completely free.

For all the justifiable reasons that people love Rome, there’s one thing that surprises many visitors – this is a city that wears you out. There are large and sprawling cities in other parts of Italy (Naples, anyone?) as well as Europe, but in other places either you can focus on just one small part of the city so as not to get overwhelmed, or public transportation is convenient and easy to use. In Rome, the major sights are spread out all over the city, so you’ll need to get well-acquainted with the public transit options in Rome before you walk yourself to exhaustion.

When visiting a new city for the first time, one of the best things to do is take a relatively quick city-wide guided tour. This helps give you a lay of the land, an understanding of local history, and a better idea of what you’ll want to spend more time on and what you feel comfortable skipping. In Rome, there are a few hop on/hop off tours to choose from that will help accomplish all three of these goals. What’s more, you can – just as the name suggests – hop on and off as you like, spending more time on certain sights so you don’t need to backtrack later if you’d prefer not to.

Rome might be at its most popular in the summer months when the weather is conducive to spending long hours outside, but savvy travelers know that visiting touristy cities in the off season has major benefits. During the winter months, Rome’s weather is certainly colder, but those months also offer seasonal attractions and treats that aren’t around in the summer. Not only that, you’ll find that things like airfare and hotel rates are cheaper in the winter, often by quite a bit.

Rome is a busy city that one often thinks of in terms of its historic and culinary values to the traveler. But can it also be romantic? The answer depends almost entirely on what you consider to be “romantic,” but assuming you go in for the same things sold by Hallmark cards, then yes – there are plenty of romantic things to do in Rome.

One of Rome‘s most recognizable monuments goes by many names – some official, some less so. Its official moniker is the Vittorio Emanuele II Monument, it’s more commonly known simply as the “Vittoriano.” Many Romans dislike the monument’s design, however, so you may also hear it referred to as “The Typewriter,” “The Wedding Cake” or even “The False Teeth.” Like it or hate it, the Vittoriano is hard to miss.

Every decent travel guidebook or website on earth will have its own opinions about what to do in Rome (this one included). There will, as can be expected with these types of lists, be a significant amount of overlap between them, with must-sees like the Colosseum, Pantheon, and Vatican Museums always making the cut. Sometimes the key to a good vacation, however, isn’t just in figuring out what to do, but also what not to do.

2012 marks the 500th anniversary of the completion of Michelangelo’s famous frescoed ceiling in the Sistine Chapel. The cherry that serves as the end of any visit to the Vatican Museums, the Sistine Chapel is a top attraction in Italy—let alone in Rome—and is worth a stop no matter what year it is. Contemplating the master at work, lying flat on his back for years on wooden scaffolding, precisely 500 years after the frescoes were completed? That’s a bonus.

The art and history of Rome may keep you entertained, but if you’re traveling with small kids for whom a three-hour car ride is an eternity it’ll be a challenge to impress them with attractions spanning thousands of years. Not only do you need to approach Rome’s sights a little differently when you’re traveling as a family, you need to make sure you’re planning adequate down-time between sights, too. While you’ll be seeing Rome at a slower pace, and might have to skip a museum or two, you may just enjoy the city more thanks to the experiences you include for your kids’ benefit.