A Week in Rome to Wine, Dine, and Tour

Rome is one of the great cities of the world. It is the capital of the Italian Republic with over 3.8 million inhabitants. The city traditionally is considered to have been built on seven hills: Palatino, Aventino, Campidoglio, Quirinale, Viminale, Esquilino, and Celio. For a visitor, this means bustling crowds and rarely walking on a level street.

For a North American, Rome puts you in awe of its long history, and wealth of arts, and architecture. It surrounds you. Evidence of ancient Rome can be found in the Colosseo, the arch of Constantine, and the Pantheon. When walking the streets of Rome, you encounter many churches filled with beautiful works of art and many museums especially those with art of the Renaissance and Baroque periods.

Absolutely not to be missed are the Basilica of Saint Peter and the museums of the Vatican, which are not, strictly speaking, in Rome but in the Vatican, an independent State.

We found each day in Rome was an adventure with exciting and unexpected discoveries.

Highlights for history and art were the tour of ancient Rome, the Vatican museums, Galleria Borghese and Palazzo Barberini.

If you are into Italian fashion, Rome is a shopper's delight.

If you love food, finding a bad meal was almost impossible and the wine was so good and so cheap.

Quick Tips:

Whenever you find a bathroom, use it. We found public bathrooms were rare and usually without toilet paper. Ladies, keep a packet of tissues in your purse. If no public washroom is available, you can often go into a restaurant and use the facilities there.

A lot of beggars are on the street, some are very aggressive. Watch for tricks like asking you to hold a baby while someone behind you lifts your wallet.

Avoid eating in restaurants near the major tourist sites. They have the least authentic food, especially anything called a tourist menu. Walk as little as a block away to find good and often cheap food.

Bars are usually coffee bars. For alcohol, look for enotecas where you can get a drink and snacks. At cafés and entotecas, you are charged less if you stand at the bar. If you sit at a table, table service is an included charge so the same items will cost more.

Romans eat late. Lunch doesn't begin until 12:30pm and dinner at 8:30pm. If you don't have reservations at popular restaurants, try arriving early.

Many restaurants include a service charge (called coperto or pane e coperto). Check your bill because the practice is not consistent. If there is a service charge, a few additional euros can be left for a tip. If there is no service charge, you may want to leave a larger tip.

Admission to museums and tourist sites, like the Colosseum, requires cash. So do many of the small shops. But there are lots of ATM, called bancomats, which are safer to use than carrying a lot of cash around.

Be aware that shops, restaurants, and some tourist sites are not open every day and many stores and churches close for a long lunch break. Some for as many as 3 hours. Check so that your plans aren't disappointed.

Learn a little Italian if you don't know any. Not everyone speaks English, and those that do, appreciate your efforts to speak their language.

Best Way To Get Around:

Walking, walking, and walking.

The metro in Rome is not extensive within the old historic center because it would run afoul of archaelogical excavations.

Taxis are not easy to find on the street and beware of gypsy taxis, where drivers offer you a ride but you may end up paying way too much. Official taxis are white.

The buses are supposed to be good, but by walking, we saw so much more and could stop to explore the unexpected ruins we found as we were heading elsewhere and could stop to shop in the stores with interesting items.

Be sure to buy a good street map. In central Rome, none of the streets are straight and the names change every time you cross the street.

And make sure you have good walking shoes. The cobblestones tend to make you wobble, so you will want good support for your feet.

We picked this hotel because of its fairly central location. It is next to the Spanish Steps, which is in the northern area of the center of Rome and within walking distance of everything we wanted to do. We made reservations through the hotel website at: www.hotelscalinata.com.

We also liked that it is a boutique hotel with only 16 rooms; and they offered what they call a family suite. We wanted this because we expected to be in Rome with our son and his girlfriend. Turned out it was only our son, but the family suite gave us privacy when we needed it but it was easy to get together. The family suite is two rooms connected both by a door and a small private terrace. The larger room has an additional private terrace with a table and chairs, which we made use of during the fine weather. This arrangement was ideal.

For an extra charge, the hotel will arrange for a driver to pick you up at the airport. This was €75, about the same cost as a regular taxi.

The rooms are not large but were very convenient and clean. Decor was rather old fashioned Victorian type of patterned wallpaper, brocade upholstery and carved trim on the wood furnishings. In addition to the bed, there was a desk, storage shelves, large armoire, safe, and television. The beds were roomy and comfortable.

The bathrooms were small but cleaned every day and we were given fresh towels. There was a retractable clothes drying line which was used more than once.

Breakfast at the hotel is included. The breakfast room and terrace were just outside our rooms. It has a fairly substantial buffet of cereals, breads, eggs, fruits, yoghurt, cheeses, cakes, juices, and coffee, even espresso if you ask. Because it was close to our room, we could bring cups of coffee into our room before were ready to go out and eat. This was a real convenience.

The terrace provided some nice views of Rome and across the river to St. Peter's. From some of the rooms, you can peer down towards the bottom of the Spanish Steps.

Three free hours of Internet use on the computer room and library next to the reception is included. This also was convenient since my cellular phone would not work for telephone calls, although the text messaging function was fine.

Italian hotels like you to leave your key at the desk when you go out. We found it handy not to carry your key around, especially because it was a big heavy one.

The staff were friendly and helpful in answering questions about Rome. This was a very good place to stay for those of us who do not like cookie cutter chain hotels.

We booked this hotel for our last night in Italy as a treat to compensate for seeing the end of our vacation. Information about the hotel can be found and reservations can made at their website at: www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/questex/hoteleden/index.php.


Hotel Eden (pronounced Ed-in) is the most over the top luxury hotel where we have stayed. Tons of little extras in the room, like an overnight bag with toothbrush, comb and razor, and lots of attention from the staff, like when I ask to use the Internet, I get walked through the entire process of logging on. Yet it costs less than some Manhattan hotels we've stayed at.


However, everything else is an additional cost: Internet use, telephone calls. The room we booked was a deluxe king, but this one had a separate sitting room. I don’t know if that was standard or an upgrade.

The windows opened and provided a great view especially since we had a corner room. The bed was very comfortable and both rooms were impeccably clean. I would have liked to import the bathroom, all in marble, to my home. It was spacious and beautiful. It had heated towel racks, lots of light, spacious counters and thicks towels and bathrobes.

At night, turn down service not only included chocolates, but also slippers and a mat beside the bed.

The public areas were very luxurious and the hotel bar and restaurant, La Terrazza, were top notch. (My review of them is a separate entry.)

Lots of staff around to help with anything and everything. Great central location close to the Spanish Steps and high end shopping.

An unbelievable luxury experience.

The look of Gina is very different from other Italian restaurants where we’ve been. Very white, clean lines, abstract paintings, and pale blue cushions on the seats. It is located barely a block away from the Spanish Steps.

We went at lunch time, early, and got in without a reservation. We started with a bottle of vino rosso and an antipasti misti, which was very tasty. It included the palest orange smoke salmon I've ever seen.

We followed with a mozzarella and fresh tomato pasta and a tuna, corn and fresh tomato pasta. They came without sauce but we see others taking the olive oil, salt, and pepper and dressing the pasta themselves. We tried it and because the olive oil is good, it makes a nice light tasting pasta dish, but deceptively filling.

The lunch menu is mostly salads, pasta, and panini. What we can see, all looks good. One young woman had a plate of rare roast beef thinly sliced atop a bed of rucola, nothing else. She just dressed it with olive oil and salt and dug in.

By 1pm, the place was packed and we were the only people not speaking Italian. When we left at 2pm, there was a line waiting to go in. It seems very popular with locals despite the fact that it is close to the Spanish Steps, yet this street has no tourists wandering along it. There's an expensive private school down the street and a number of the diners were teenagers in their uniforms sitting with middle-aged people, presumably their parents. There are a good number of men in suits, so definitely, they were not tourists.

We enjoyed the ambience of hearing nothing but excited Italian chatter and watching the very well dressed older women, many of whom are dining inside with their sunglasses on.

This was our one evening of rain the entire trip so we took a taxi. Instead of dropping us at the restaurant, the driver stopped on a major road and pointed us to a small parallel street barely wide enough for a scooter. That wasn’t even the street, the restaurant is on an equally narrow alley which isn’t even named on the huge map of Rome I had.

We had made reservations through the restaurants website at: www.ilconviviotroiani.com because it receives very high ratings for its food.

This was described as having typical Roman recipes reinvented in a contemporary style and presented in an elegant setting. The more modern but formal decor is matched by impeccable, equally formal service. There are three vaulted dining rooms filled with a large number of older men in suits. The wine list, with bottles from all over the world, is a pleasure.

We were brought an amuse of a mozzarella stuffed mussel. It was amazing. We had sole and crispy artichoke with a curry spice in the sauce, rigatoni with quail meatballs, roast pigeon with fried noodles and tangerines; duck carpaccio with rucola and pineapple foam, baccala with artichokes; bufalo mozzarella wrapped in strings of potato and deep fried accompanied with anchovy and a sweet and sour red pepper sorbet; lamb four ways – a chop, stuffed outside of a chop, tripe and sweetbreads.

We manage two bottles of Brunello da Montalcino that evening and saw for the first time, the sommelier "curing" the wine glasses. He took the small amount of wine after the initial tasting, swirled it over the inside of the glass, then transfered the wine to each of the other glasses and swirled it in those glasses, then he served the wine from the decanter.

We also managed dolci: cake with apple, raspberry coulis and champagne sorbet; fresh fruit with pineapple, lemon, and strawberry sorbet and bucccello, a traditional Tuscan cake.

An incredible meal. So delicious and inventive. As to be expected, it was expensive, €286 (about C$450) not including the wine, but for three courses of food for three of us, that is less than we’ve paid at many restaurants in Canada and the United States, particularly Manhattan. And vastly unlike our usual experiences in North America, the bar bill was less than the food despite having two bottles of Brunello and post-prandial drinks.

We made dinner reservations at the Hotel Eden rooftop restaurant, La Terrazza. Before we went to dine, we visited the bar for a pre-dinner libation. Like the hotel, the bar and restaurant are luxurious in an old fashioned way. Many of the patrons were likely staying at the hotel. A number looked wealthy but one group looked like some very trendy rich rock band.

Both the bar and restaurant are on the top floor of Hotel Eden so we had a great view of Villa Borghese, St. Peter's, Vittorio Emanuele monument, and the Quirinale. As we sat, we watched the sunset and sipped on sparkling Italian white and a martini. These came with a tray of nibbles including some delicious huge green olives. We ate them all and they gave us another tray.

In warmer weather, there is also an outdoor terrace to sit on. The dining room is spacious and feels very airy because of the huge windows allowing for views out three sides of the room.

For dinner, we had a waiter who indulged us by speaking Italian throughout the meal. When we hesitated or look confused, he translated into English.

The menu is very French-influenced Italian dishes. Not as innovative as some restaurants we tried in Italy, but very good. Service is impeccable and very personal.

We ordered a bottle of Brunello. For an amuse, we got a tuna sushi. We started with a pumpkin risotto, which was divine, and large shrimps on a “chitarra” spaghetti, a thicker spaghetti. For secondi, we have fillet of beef which is very good and comes with a great layered eggplant dish, and duck breast which is very flavourful but mild. For dessert, we had a raspberry torte and chocolate flan with a basil chocolate center. The desserts come with sweet wines to accompany them. The wines chosen perfectly match the desserts.

Excellent meal but, of course, expensive. The setting and the food made a great last night in Italy.

This is a Michelin starred restaurant which describes its cuisine as Italian Mediterranean, but it has a very French feel to it. Roccoco old fashioned-style decor and very formal service like North American restaurants, rather than the more casual Italian style.

The restaurant is located on the seventh floor of Hotel Splendide Royal near the Parco Borghese. Thus there is an enjoyable view from the windows.

As we perused our menus, we were brought glasses of prosecco, a three tiered tray of amuse bouches and a basket of crispy cold crudites to nibble. For antipasti, we had eggplant and zucchini stuffed with ricotta and basil; onion soup and tuna tartare. Secondi: lamb two ways -- loin and lamb leg stuffed with sweetbreads and peas, spinach, onion, potato and artichoke; pigeon with spinach and carrot wrapped in pastry; rack of lamb. I think we had a bottle of Brunello, definitely a vino rosso in any case. Dolci: Seventh heaven which is a slice of alcohol-soaked chocolate cake topped with chocolate mousse and covered with chocolate, gold leaf and chocolate wafers; apple crumble with vanilla ice cream, chocolate sauce and chocolate wafers; chocolate ice cream with berries. Each of us had a different grappa as recommended by the sommelier.

We really liked our food here, much more formal ambience than most places, but very friendly staff. Gorgeous washrooms spoiled when I went to them by someone sneaking a cigarette. Expensive, as you would expect but wonderful for a special occasion.

This restaurant, located near the Pantheon, is relatively new, five years old, and popular. Their website is at: www.ristorantetrattoria.it but reservations need to be made by telephone or email at: info@ristorantetrattoria.it.

Our reservation was at 8pm and when we arrived, no one else was there; in fact, the staff seemed slightly surprised by our arrival. The place started to fill up around 9pm with a number of young diners who look as they would stay all night. The chef seems to be a bit of a celebrity. The restaurant website has photos of him with a number of famous people.

The restaurant describes itself as modern Sicilian. Its look is very modern with contemporary furniture and an open kitchen in the back which all compliments the modern Sicilian cuisine.

Like more formal high-end dining places in North America, they brought us a plate of amuse bouche and an extensive array of breads. The grissini was particularly thin and crispy. I could have eaten them like popcorn. We started to order wine, but the waiter told us to order our food and then he’d help select the wine. The staff were very efficient and professional.

I ordered the chef’s mixed hors d’oeuvres which consisted of bean soup, fried rice ball with cheese, fried legumes, caponata, and Sicilian ham and cheese sandwich. My two dinner companions ordered pasta norma and pasta with tuna. For secondi, filet of beef with stuffed pumpkin flowers, meatballs and Sicilian roast beef. None of the dishes were quite what you would expect from the names. The food all has a unique twist.

The wine list is almost entirely Italian and heavily Sicilian. We selected a Sicilian red wine, Nero D’Avola, which is somewhat lighter in body than Tuscan reds but darker in taste.

For dolci, we had cannoli, almond parfait and lemon gelato with strawberries and blackberries.

This is the only place among 20 plus restaurants we went to in Italy where I managed to eat every bite of three courses. It was great food, great atmosphere – very lively once other diners arrived – and the cost was quite reasonable especially because the Sicilian wines are inexpensive.

We took a private 8-hour tour which began on the Palatine Hill, where, according to legend, Romulus founded the city in 753 B.C. (on April 21, to be exact). After covering the founding myths and anthropological record of the Palatine, we explored the imperial palaces that eventually covered the hill, stopping in the Palatine museum for a lecture on Roman statuary. We lingered among the ruins for a while on the Palatine, looked at Circus Maximus and got a very good introduction to archaeological technique, Roman architecture, and construction technologies, and Roman political and social structure. We explored the remnants of the aqueduct of Claudius, the mosaics left from Nero's so-called "Golden House," and took in vistas of the Roman Forum that illustrate the palimpsest nature of the city.

We then descended into the Forum for a series of lectures and seminar-style discussions that carried us down the Via Sacra (the main street of ancient Rome), past the major sites that crowded the city center, including the Curia (senate house) and the temples, triumphal arches, and basilicas around the Forum Square.

We stopped for lunch at the Musei Capitolini, where we ate on the outdoor terrace with a view of St. Peter's. The museums house Roman and Italian treasures ranging from antique bronzes and marble busts to Renaissance paintings and frescoes.

We began in the Michelangelo-designed Piazza Campidoglio, with its famous reproduction of Marcus Aurelius' bronze equestrian statue. After a discussion of the history of the museum and its location on Capitoline Hill, we examined the collection focusing on the pieces most important to understanding the art and architecture of antiquity. Treasures such as the newly restored equestrian statue of Marcus Aurelius, the colossal statue of the Emperor Constantine, marble busts of noblemen and patricians, and bas-reliefs with scenes from Roman history allowed us to view the wide range of materials and forms used in ancient art.

We then returned to the forum area and looked at the House of the Vestal Virgins, the Basilica of Maxentius, and the game boards etched into the steps of the Basilica Giulia. There are tens of thousands of fascinating details to focus upon.

From the Roman Forum, we exited by the Mammertine Prison and took in the Imperial Fora, a series of interlocking public spaces constructed during Rome's "Imperial Era," perhaps as a way of remaking the old, republican city into a new Emperor-ruled theocratic state. Finally, we strolled down the Fascist-era Via Fori Imperiali to the Colosseum where, inside, we finished our seminar with a discussion of Roman public spectacle and decadence.

Context Rome is an excellent tour company whose docents all have masters or PhDs in areas relevant to the tour subject. We found our docent, Oliva, very informative, friendly and helpful. This tour was private but the group tours are no more than 6 or 8 people. They are more expensive than other tour companies, but worth it. We highly recommend them. Their website is http://rome.contexttravel.com.

This is an extremely popular art museum and reservations are required. We reserved and bought our tickets through Tickitaly (www.tickitaly.com) before we left on vacation. Three tickets, reservation fee, and the fee from the company was €42 or €14 each. It was a good thing we reserved because when we arrived on Sunday for our reservation, they had a sign indicating no more tickets were available until Tuesday. Tickets for the Galleria Borghese have to be reserved for a specific two hour time slot. They are very rigid about entry and sweep you out at the end of the two hours.

The Villa Borghese is located in a huge park near the Spanish Steps. If you go, plan to include some time to wander in the park, have a picnic or rent a bicycle to ride along the many pathways. It's a beautiful large area of green in a crowded city.

Like the art gallery at Palazzo Barberini, the Galleria Borghese is also in a former home (palace) of a rich and powerful family with popes and art collectors in their history. They make you check all bags and coats in a locked box. This was the only place that made me turn over my purse, usually a woman's borsa was fine but backpacks were not. Again, no photos allowed.

Highlights in the collection were Caravaggio's Young Sick Bacchus, Boy with a Basket of Fruit, Portrait of Pope Paul V, Still Life with Fruit on a Stone Ledge, Madonna and Child with St. Anne (M. de Palafrenieri), David with the Head of Goliath, John the Baptist; Bernini's amazing statues Aeneas and Anchises, Rape of Proserpine, Apollo and Daphne, David, Bust of Cardinal Scipione Borghese; Raphael's Deposition, Lady with Unicorn, Portrait of a Man, Julius II; and Titian's Sacred and Profane Love. If you aren't familiar with these works, especially the Berninis, find an art history book. Simon Schama's book, the Power of Art has some good illustrations of these works. The sculptures are unbelievable. Bernini has managed to make marble look like pliable flesh.

There is also a cafeteria and cafe in the basement and a bookshop with souvenirs, posters, and art books.

Outside, there are beautiful gardens surrounding the palazzo. So many flowers were already in bloom.

The gallery is open Tuesday-Saturday, 8:30am - 7:30pm and Sunday, 9am - 1pm, admission is €5. When we went, there were no crowds and it was easy to get in. Be aware that you have to check your baggage, including cameras.

This gallery is in the former palatial home of a rich, powerful, and famous family which had a member become pope during the counter reformation era when Saint Peter's (San Pietro) was being built and he also had a very good eye for art and thus, art patronage, and collecting. The decorations and furnishing which are in the gallery provide a glimpse into the lives of such a family.

The Palazzo Barberini houses part of the Galleria Nazionale D'Arte Antica, a rather deceptive name since the art is largely baroque, not ancient (antica).

None of the photos we have include the art since photographs are not allowed. Also unfortunately, the official website at www.galleriaborghese.it (which includes other Rome art galleries) is short on photos of the art. To see the works, a good art history book would be the best place to look.

The two most famous of the paintings there are Caravaggio's Judith Beheading Holofernes, and Raphael's Fornarina. There are a number of El Greco paintings, Titian's Venus, and Adonis, which I admire. There are also a number of busts by Bernini of members of the Barberini family and a few of his paintings including his David, and in the central salon, the ceiling is decorated by Pietro da Cortona with the visual panegyric of the Allegory of Divine Providence and Barberini Power to glorify the Barberini family. Kindly, they provide a large divan to lie back upon and view the ceiling at leisure.

Only a small number of works are on display as there is some restoration going on but what is displayed is very impressive. The gallery provides its visitors plasticized pages in numerous languages which describe most of the works in each room.

Final warning, if you need to use the washrooms, it requires climbing the stairs to the fourth floor.

We had a private tour through Context Rome for this tour. This was the smartest thing we did before going to the Vatican museums.

As we went meet our docent, we saw the line to the museums was probably a kilometer long. Our docent was in line for the tickets and saved us an hour and a half wait.

To get to the ticket booths, we ascended a very long escalator. The ticket area is quite new, built for the 2000 jubilee celebrations of the Catholic Church. (Entry ticket is €13; €8 with student ID. Closed on Mondays.)

We began our tour of the Vatican Museums in the courtyard where our docent explained the basic origin of the museums and discussed the Sistine Chapel because it would be hard to do once we are in there. We looked at the two most significant ancient sculptures in the museums' collection, the Apollo Belvedere and the Laocoön. From there, we went to the chronologically-arranged-picture gallery known as the Pinacoteca, where there are paintings from the late medieval to high Renaissance periods. This took us through the halls of the Vatican palaces, visiting the most important rooms of the museums, including the ancient statuary collection of Julius II and the papal apartments decorated by Raphael.

The hallways are amazing too. One has maps of Italy done in frescos, another tapestries including some designed by Raphael. The Raphael ones were woven in Belgium and have gold thread which sparkles as we looked at them because someone had accidentally pulled back the draperies over the window and allowed the sunlight in. The Stanza della Segnatura has one of my favourites, Raphael's School of Athens.

From the Raphael rooms, we went to the Sistine Chapel, where many people ignored the signs and announcement saying no flash. A guard somewhere kept asking us to be quiet, but to no avail. The photos we took are very blurry because we did't use our flashes. It is all so impressive and also oppressive because of the crowd.

We left the Sistine Chapel to go to St. Peter's Basilica, and looked at Bernini's Constantine statue which is at the end of a staircase just next to the entrance to St. Peter's. When we stopped to snap a photo, a guard told us not to stop. It seems silly that you can't look at this great piece. The area is very wide and we weren't blocking the flow of lines into St. Peter's nor the long lines to the dome or the crypts.

In St. Peter's, we visited the major works by Michelangelo, the dome, La Pietá, and Bernini's Baldocchino (the canopy) and a statue for the tomb of Pope Alexander VII hanging over a doorway.

Finally, we went out to look at St. Peter's Piazza, designed by Bernini. There were chairs being set up in the square and inside the church, all to prepare for Easter service.

This is a place not to be missed despite the crush of people.

The Pantheon is the best preserved ancient Roman building in Rome. It is open Monday to Saturday from 8:30am to 7:30pm and Sunday from 9am to 6pm. There is no admission charge.

Inside, there are helpful signs explaining the buildings origins, history, and some of its features.

The building was built around 125 A.D. under the Emperor Hadrian (the guy with the wall named after him in Britain). The name means "Temple of all the Gods" and was originally built as a temple to the seven deities of the seven planets in the state religion of Ancient Rome.

In medieval times, it was given to the pope who reconsecrated it as a Christian church titled Santa Maria ad Martyres (or in English the Church of Mary and all the Martyr Saints) but no one calls it by that name.

In the Renaissance and after, it was used as a tomb. The tombs of the painter, Raphael, and two kings of Italy can be found inside.

Although parts of the building were stripped away to be used for other building projects or for cannons, what remains is the amazing structure, which is round with a huge dome which is thought to have inspired Il Duomo in Florence.

The interior of the roof was probably intended to symbolize the arched vault of the heavens. The Great Eye or occulus at the dome's apex is the source of all light and is symbolic of the sun. Nothing covers the open hole of the occulus and rain falls inside.

The interior features sunken panels (coffers), which originally contained bronze star ornaments. This coffering was not only decorative, but also reduced the weight of the roof. The coffering became a decorative feature frequently found in Renaissance buildings.

A visit here is well worth the time as you consider this amazing structure was built almost two centuries ago.

Piazza Navona is located in the historic center of Rome, near the Pantheon. It is a great place to view some art and architecture, have a drink or a bite to eat, check out the shops, and generally people-watch.

The piazza follows the plan of an ancient Roman circus, essentially a race track. In this case, like the first-century Stadium of Domitian, where the Romans came to watch the agones ("games"). The name, Navona, stems from the corruption of the word agones into agone, then nagone and then, navona, which actually means "big ship" in Italian.

We went about noon hour, so stopped at a bar or enoteca with tables outside directly in front of Bernini's Fontana dei Quattro Fiumi. The fountain, unfortunately, is undergoing restoration, so had scaffolding and boards all around it and you could only see parts and not the whole. It is intended to represent the four great rivers of the world.

Where we sat was an excellent spot to view the Borromini designed church, Sant'Agnese in Agone as well as the della Porta fountains, Fontana del Nettuno, and Fontana del Moro.

The little food spot is called Tucci where we had caprese salad and pasta. Food was not great but okay for a big tourist site area and the bottle of Chianti washed it all down nicely.

As we ate lunch, the piazza grew steadily busier and guys selling illegal knockoffs of sunglasses, purses, and watches started setting up their tables or blankets. People began hanging around near our table waiting for us to leave.

We finally left our table to wander around the piazza, look at the sculptures close up and window shop in the various shops.

It was a fun place to spend time and soak up some atmosphere.

This church is in the historic center of Rome near the Pantheon and a number of other popular sites. It is open Friday - Wednesday, 8am - 12:30pm and 3:30 - 7pm and Thursday, 8am - 12:30pm. Admission is free.

We went to a lot of churches often to look at only one masterpiece inside. If you are not as interested in touring churches, this would be one I would recommend because it has more than one masterpiece by more than one artist and the interior marble work is as beautiful as a work of art as well.

The interior has Caravaggio's three paintings of St. Matthew in the Contarelli Chapel. These were the paintings which made Caravaggio's reputation in Rome. Our photos don't do them justice. Over the altar, there is Raphael's painting of the Virgin.

There were considerably more tourists here than in some other churches. Here, we also encountered the box requiring a feeding of coins to keep the lights shining on the paintings.

The church is well laid out for tourists, with information pamphlets and explanations of the works.

We were headed to Santa Maria del Popolo (Piazza del Popolo 12, open Monday - Sunday, 8am - 1:30pm, and 4:30pm - 7pm), where I wanted to look at two Caravaggio paintings in a chapel near the head altar. This was on Palm Sunday, so I did not want to be one of those unbelievably disrespectful tourists who sightsee during mass. I could not find the mass times, so the only solution seemed to go there.

Of course, when we got there, we saw mass was every hour until 2pm. However, assuming there would be a bit of time between each mass, we went to a nearby exhibit of Leonardo da Vinci's machines and then went back into the church when mass was ending, about 15 minutes before the next one begins.

Fortunately or unfortunately, the interior has a number of interesting works, including a Raphael painting and Bernini statues in the Chigi Chapel, which we stopped to look at, so by the time we were approaching the Cerasi Chapel, where the Caravaggios are, we were barred from going near the high altar.

Later that afternoon, we returned to Santa Maria del Popolo so I could take a closer look at Caravaggio's paintings in Cerasi Chapel, The Crucifixion of St. Peter and The Calling of St. Paul. The works are intended to be viewed from a specific spot to get the best dramatic effects. The photos we took don't do them justice. They have to be seen in situ.