Tips about Rome

How to visit the Ethernal city and having fun without feeling too much tourists

From the Airport to the city
Fiumicino: with a train ticket of 5 € is possible to reach the central railway station of Tiburtina (time required: 45 min), or other stops before and after the main one; if you are in hurry you can buy the Leonardo ticket for 10 € to arrive in Termini in 30 min (with no other stops).
Ciampino: there are buses that goes directly to the city center or cheaper buses that goes to Anagnina Metro Station.
Important: from both the airports a taxi ride is NO MORE then 30 € to reach the city center, delimited by the “Mura Aureliane”.

Some information about Transportation.

The company in charge for public transportation in Rome is Atac.
On the web site www.atac.roma.it is possible to find the list of buses and metros to take to go from a place to another.

There are only two metro line in the city: Lina A (orange) and Line B (blue) they pass across the city from Nord-West to South-East (Line A) and from Nord-East to South-West (Line B) and they meet only in one station: the central railway station of the city, Termini.
On Fridays and on Saturdays the Metro closes at 1.30 am.
From the machines in the Metro and at the newsagent you find on the streets you can buy for about 4 euros a daily ticket that allows you to use all buses and metros in Rome until midnight.

Eating (in the center)

Near Piazza Navona:

1) “Lo Zozzone”,
Don’t be scared by the name (it’s up to you to discover the meaning). It is a very small place where for 3 euros (or 3.50 euros) you can buy a “Pizza Romana” and put inside up to three different ingredients (mushrooms, mozzarella, porchetta etc).
Maybe only one piece is not enough for a lunch, but it is a good way if you don’t want to invest too much time for eating at noon.

2) “Caffe’ Sant Eustacchio”
In Piazza dei Caprettari, 65.
It is a very famous place in Rome where  you can drink a very good coffee. It is near the Phanteon. Ask for the Caffe’ Eustacchio of course!

3) Pasticceria “Giolitti”
In via Uffici Vicario, 40. (near the Pantheon)
Here you can find very good pastries and ice creams

4) “La Palma”,
via degli Orfani, (near the Pantheon)
Maybe quite commercial and touristic, but here you can find every kind of ice cream.

5) “Baffetto”
Piazza del teatro di pompeo, 18 (near Piazza Navona).
Tel. +39 0668210807
One of the most famous place in Rome for eating pizza! I have never been there because is quite impossible to enter… but you could try. Who knows!!

6) “Caffe’ Greco”
Via CondottiGo inside, order a coffee and then enjoy the paintings all over the caffe’!
So chic!

Eating (in the rest of the city)

1)“Pompi”

Metro Stop: Re di Roma. (Line A)

Via Albalonga 7B
It’s the king of the Tiramisu!! For 3 Euros you can have a very good single, big portion of this dessert (with different variants, classical, with fruit etc) that you can eat outside.

It is always full of people outside coming from all part of the city just to eat the tiramisu and chatting on the street.
The neighborhood is not the best one, but on the same street of Pompi you can find some nice place:
- “Shanti”
For smoking a Narguile’ and see some nice bally dance
- “Latte+”
Nice, original and a bit expensive place for cocktails. It reproduces the “A Clockwork Orange” movie style.

2) “Al Grottino”
Metro Stop: San Giovanni (Line A)Via Orvieto, 6
Tel: +39 06 7024440

You can find Pizza everywhere in Rome but you have to know that none of them is the Original one. A good and cheap place where you can find a good version of it is this restaurant.

It is open only in the evenings.

You need to book it in advance because it is always full of people!!

3) “Mizzica”

Metro Stop: Bologna (Line B)

Via Catanzaro, 30
If you want to try Sicilian food and ice creams and granita and cannoli and so on you just need to come here! Not in the center of the city, but I really suggest it.

4) “Gallo Brillo”

Metro Stop: Ottaviano (Lina A)
Via delle Milizie, 116
Tel: +39 063724088

If you go to visit Saint Peter Church and you want to avoid the expensive touristic restaurants, I suggest this place. I went only once, but I enjoyed it.

Outside the city

Rome is big, but the near cities can offer a lot of interesting attraction as well.
The most famous of them is ARICCIA!

If you want to have fun with tens of friends, to eat a lot in one of the restaurants, get drunk, play guitar and singing on the street to wait the end of the hangover you just need to come here.

And “L’aricciarola” is the best place where to eat.

But you need a car.

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Nightlife

Well, in Rome for sure you can’t get bored in the night. There are so many place where to go that it is impossible to list them. I should better suggest some area where to go, than it is up to you to choose the pub that fit with your taste.

1)Trastevere.

It is of course the most famous area in Rome. You can go there for an after work in Piazza Trilussa, go to some restaurant in the evening, or go to the pubs and bars in the night. Of course you can’t miss a walk along the river Tevere and you HAVE TO get lost in the small streets of this ancient, ex poor and now really expensive neighborhood!

2)Campo de’ Fiori.

It’s a square surrounded by pubs, bars, people and drunken people! In the middle of the square there is the statue dedicated to Giordano Bruno, a pantheistic philosopher burned by the Church in this square because of his revolutionary ideas!

3)Testaccio

Metro Stop: Piramide (Line B)
It is an old Neighborhood (like Trastevere), now become attraction for night life! You can come here to dance, drinking or listening live music.
I’m particularly attached to “Contestaccio”, it’s a disco pub where I celebrated my Laurea degree J

From the metro station you should pass near the Piramid, put inside the graveyard of non catholic persons. Here Giolitti, Shelley and Keats are buried!

4)Rione Monti

Metro Stop: Cavour (Line B)

It is a neighborhood near the Colosseo, the San Pietro in Vincoli Church and one of the Engineer Facoulties.

Here there is also a pub made with ice!! But I have never been there so I don’t have information.
In Via Cavour there is a gay friendly Chinese good restaurant, and near the Colosseo there is the gay street of the city.

5)San Lorenzo

Metro Stop: Vittorio Emanuele (Line A)

The metro stop is not so close to this neighborhood, you should need a bus to reach it. Here is full of students for two main reasons:

- full of extremely cheap bars and pubs

- possibility of finding any kind of drug

Maybe it is not a romantic place where to go.

Some Touristic Secret

A very good Italian journalist, Corrado Augias, wrote a nice book about this city: “I segreti di Roma” (The secrets of Rome). In one chapter he speaks about one of the Italian painter I love the most: Michelangelo Merisi, better known as Caravaggio.

His paintings are wonderful, so full of bright colours, life, passion and (sometimes) violence, they are spread all over Europe and Italy, some of them are in the Louvre, some other in the National Gallery in London, some other in Museums in Rome, BUT you can find some of them just walking around the city, FOR FREE!
Corrado Augias wrote in his book that this 5 paintings you can see for free in Rome, would make famous and important any other city in the world, but they are in Rome, where is so common to have monuments around you that they pass quite unnoticed!

In “Piazza del Popolo”, in the church of “Santa Maria del Popolo” you can see “la Conversione di San Paolo” and “la Crocifissione di San Pietro” while in “San Luigi dei Francesi” church, in Piazza San Luigi dei Francesi it self (Near Piazza Navona) you can learn about the story of San Matteo from three very nice paintings:, “La vocazione di san Matteo”, “S. Matteo e L’Angelo” and “Il Martirio di san Matteo”.

On the web site you can see all these works, and much more!

Regarding the Pantheon, in Piazza della Rotonda (near Piazza Navona): its name comes from ancient Greek, Pan = All, Theo = God. The monument was in fact a Roman temple dedicated to all the gods. Then it became a Church, and now it is a mausoleum where Rafaello and some Italian King are buried.

The original monument had in the front some very nice sculpture in bronze; when the Church had the power, it fused the bronze and used it to build the famous Baldacchino by Bernni in Saint Peter church.
After this episode, people from Rome used to say (referring to the havoc made by the Vatican to the Pantheon): “Quod non fecerunt barberi, fecerunt Barberini” (What Barbarians didn’t, Barberini did). Barberini is an old family from Rome that gave many popes to the Vatican.

For a romantic view of Rome, you should good on the Pincio (above Piazza del Popolo) in the evening and from there you could walk up to Trinitia’ dei Monti and then go down in Piazza di Spagna using its famous and fashionable stairs.