Gladiators, emperors and the birth of a city: the Colosseum, the Roman Forum and the Palatine Hill are the ruins that made Rome the Eternal City - and the ticket system that gets you into all three without the queues.
Last updated August 23, 2026
In a nutshell: the monumental heart of imperial Rome, squeezed between the Capitoline and Palatine hills. The Colosseum is the most thrilling survivor of the ancient world, the Roman Forum is its ruined nerve centre, and the Palatine Hill is where the city was born and emperors lived. Above them, the Vittoriano and the Capitoline Museums complete the picture. It is touristy by day and quiet at night - plan around the crowds and the ticket system and you will have the ancient world almost to yourself.
Just south of the city centre, this monumental district holds Rome's most celebrated ruins and showstopping landmarks: the Colosseum, the Palatino, the Roman Forum and the Vittoriano. Unsurprisingly, it draws sightseers all day long, but once the buses leave it is remarkably quiet after dark, with little after-hours action. Look past the tourists and you will still catch glimpses of local life: joggers doing laps on the Circo Massimo, students hurrying to lectures on the Oppian Hill, journalists waiting outside city hall on the Capitoline Hill.
Walking is the way to go: all the main sights sit close together and traffic is limited in the area, so your own two feet are usually the fastest option between the Colosseum, the Forum and the Palatino.
Metro: take line B to Colosseo (for the Colosseum) or Circo Massimo (for the Palatino's southern side), then continue on foot.
Bus: routes 40, 64, 170, 916 and H stop on or near Piazza Venezia, an easy walk from the big sights. Bus 87 runs along Via dei Fori Imperiali between the Colosseum and the Vittoriano.
An electrifying, spine-tingling sight, the Colosseum is the most thrilling of Rome's ancient monuments. This is where gladiators met in mortal combat and prisoners fought off wild beasts in front of baying, bloodthirsty crowds. Two thousand years on, it remains the city's most popular attraction, drawing up to 12 million visitors a year.
The amphitheatre was commissioned by the emperor Vespasian in 72 CE and inaugurated by his son and successor Titus in 80 CE. On completion it was named the Anfiteatro Flavio (Flavian Amphitheatre), after Vespasian's family name, Flavio. For some five centuries the 50,000-seat stadium staged gladiatorial games and lavish, crowd-pleasing spectacles, often to celebrate anniversaries and military victories. Gladiatorial combat was eventually outlawed in the 5th century, but animal shows continued until the mid-6th century.
After the fall of the Roman Empire the Colosseum was largely abandoned. It served as a fortress in the 12th century and was later plundered of its precious building materials. More recently it received a major clean-up between 2014 and 2016, and in July 2023 several newly restored underground areas were opened to the public for the first time.
Even without entering, you can get a good look at the structure from outside. The outer walls, which top off at 48.5m (159ft), have three levels of arches framed by columns topped with Ionic, Doric and Corinthian capitals. They were originally clad in travertine, and marble statues filled the niches on the second and third storeys. The upper level, punctuated by square window openings and slender Corinthian pilasters, carried the supports for 240 masts that held a giant awning over the arena. At ground level, 80 entrance arches - known as vomitoria - let spectators enter and be seated in a matter of minutes.
Demand for tickets is always high, so book well in advance - even a month ahead for peak periods. There are several tickets available, including a standard 24-hour ticket (€18) and a Full Experience ticket (€24); check colosseo.it for details and booking. Same-day tickets (subject to availability) can be bought at the ticket offices on Piazza del Colosseo (credit or debit cards only) and at Largo della Salara Vecchia.
| Ticket | Price | What it covers |
|---|---|---|
| 24-hour ticket | €18 | Standard entry to the Colosseum, Roman Forum and Palatino, valid 24 hours |
| Full Experience | €24 | The 24-hour ticket plus the arena floor, the underground hypogeum, and access to the 'super' sites of the Forum and Palatino |
| Full Experience Attic | €24 | As the Full Experience, plus the glass lift up to the third floor and the fourth and fifth tiers (the Attic); limited numbers each day |
| Forum Pass Super | €18 | The Forum and Palatino including the super sites: Santa Maria Antiqua, the Curia, Casa di Augusto, Domus Tiberiana, Museo Palatino, Aula Isiaca and Loggia Mattei |
Once inside, steep steps lead to the first and second tiers, from where you can look over the partially rebuilt arena floor and down into the underground areas. On the second floor you will also find the small Museo del Colosseo, illustrating the Colosseum's history, and a viewing balcony overlooking the Arco di Costantino. To go any higher you will need a Full Experience Attic ticket (€24): a glass lift rises to the third floor, from where you can continue up to the fourth and fifth tiers, known collectively as the Attic - the cheapest sections at the top, where women spectators would have sat.
The cavea, the spectator seating, was divided along social lines: senior officials sat in the lowest tiers, wealthy citizens in the middle and plebs in the highest sectors. The podium, a broad terrace in front of the tiers, was reserved for the emperor, senators and VIPs.
With a Full Experience ticket you can walk on the arena floor and explore the subterranean sections that once served as the stadium's backstage. The arena originally had a wooden floor covered in sand - harena in Latin, hence the word 'arena' - to stop combatants from slipping and to soak up spilled blood. Beneath it extended a half-hectare network of underground chambers and passageways, the hypogeum, where stage sets were prepared and performers gathered before showtime. To hoist people, animals and equipment up to the arena, stage hands used a sophisticated network of 80 winch-operated lifts, all controlled by a single pulley system.
The Roman Forum was ancient Rome's showpiece centre, a teeming district of temples, basilicas, narrow lanes and busy public spaces. Its ruins are today among the city's most impressive, but they can be confusing - fire up your imagination, or get a good guide, to picture them in their pomp.
The site, originally a marshy burial ground, was first developed in the 7th century BCE and grew to become the political, religious and commercial hub of the Roman Empire. Like many of ancient Rome's urban developments, it fell into disrepair after the empire collapsed and was eventually reduced to pastureland. In the Middle Ages it was known as the Campo Vaccino ('Cow Field') and plundered for its stone and marble. The area was systematically excavated in the 18th and 19th centuries, and work continues to this day.
There are three main entrances: at Largo della Salara Vecchia, near the Arco di Settimio Severo, and at the Arco di Tito (nearest the Colosseum and therefore the busiest). You can also enter from the Palatino, which is part of the same archaeological park, or from the Colonna di Traiano in the neighbouring Imperial Forums.
Entering at the Arco di Tito, the triumphal arch is right in front of you. Supposedly the inspiration for Paris' Arc de Triomphe, this martial landmark was built by Domitian in 81 CE to celebrate his brother Titus' victories in Judea and the 70 CE sack of Jerusalem. To the right of the arch, the light-filled Museo del Foro showcases finds from early-20th-century excavations and gives access to part of the Tempio di Venere di Roma, the largest Roman temple ever built.
Similarly epic in scale is the Basilica di Massenzio. Started by the emperor Maxentius and finished by Constantine in 315, this colossal structure originally measured 100m by 65m - roughly three times what it covers now.
The Forum's main drag, the Via Sacra, was the principal route of the Roman Triumph. This official victory parade, originally awarded by the Senate to victorious generals but later reserved for emperors, was a huge spectacle: a procession from the Porta Triumphalis (Triumphal Gate) through the Forum to the Temple of Jupiter Capitolinus on the Capitoline Hill.
From the basilica, the Via Sacra leads to the heart of the site, passing some key temples. You will pass the circular Tempio di Romolo and, beyond that, the columned Tempio di Antonino e Faustina, a 2nd-century-CE temple later converted into a church. Opposite, the Tempio di Giulio Cesare (also known as the Tempio del Divo Giulio) stands where Julius Caesar was cremated in 44 BCE. Nearby, three white columns are all that remain of the 5th-century-BCE Tempio di Castore e Polluce. Next to the columns are the remnants of the revered Tempio di Vesta, whose sacred flame was kept alight by the Vestal Virgins from the adjacent Casa delle Vestali - the building with the central grassy atrium.
Tucked away on the far side of the Forum is the 6th-century Chiesa di Santa Maria Antiqua, the oldest and most important church on the site. Its cavernous interior is lined with exquisite 6th- to 9th-century frescoes, including an image showing Christ with the founding fathers of the Christian Church. Also striking is a hanging depiction of the Virgin Mary with child, one of the oldest icons in existence. From inside the church you can also access the Rampa di Domiziano, an underground passageway through which the emperors entered the Forum from their Palatine palaces.
In the far northwest corner of the Forum, the Curia Iulia was the original seat of the Roman Senate. A big, barn-like brick building accessible with a Full Experience ticket or a Forum Pass Super, it was rebuilt on various occasions; the version you see now is a 1937 reconstruction of how it looked in the reign of Diocletian (r 284-305). From the Curia, a path leads through sections of the Imperial Forums, continuing under Via dei Fori Imperiali to near the Colonna Traiana. This landmark column features an incredible spiral frieze depicting Rome's victories against the Dacians (from modern-day Romania).
Back in the Forum, the 23m-high Arco di Settimio Severo was built in 203 CE to commemorate Emperor Septimius Severus' victories over the Parthians (in modern-day Iran). It was originally dedicated to the emperor and his two sons, Caracalla and Geta, but all mention of Geta was erased after Caracalla had his brother killed. To the left of the arch, eight granite columns remain from the Tempio di Saturno, an important temple that doubled as the state treasury. Behind it are the ruins of the Tempio della Concordia, the 1st-century-CE Tempio di Vespasiano, and the 12-columned Portico degli Dei Consenti, which belonged to one of ancient Rome's last pagan shrines, dating from the 4th century CE.
In front of the arch, the free-standing Colonna di Foca (Column of Phocus) rises above what was once the Forum's main square, the Piazza del Foro. Nearby are the remains of the Rostri, an elaborate podium from which politicians harangued the market crowds. Flanking the piazza are the remains of two major basilicas: on the Via Sacra side, the Basilica Fulvia Aemilia, and on the Palatino side, the Basilica Giulia, commissioned by Julius Caesar and later completed by Augustus.
Every year, six physically perfect patrician girls aged between six and ten were chosen by lottery to serve Vesta, goddess of hearth and household. Once selected, they faced 30 years of chaste servitude, tending the sacred fire in the Tempio di Vesta. The fire had to burn continuously - and if it ever went out, the priestess responsible would be flogged.
In a city of ancient wonders, few sites can rival the Palatino, Rome's mythical birthplace. This is where Romulus supposedly founded the city in 753 BCE and where Rome's all-powerful emperors lived in palatial luxury. Nowadays it is a truly haunting spot: a gorgeous green expanse of majestic ruins, towering pine trees and unforgettable views.
The Palatino is central to Rome's creation story. Hard-nosed realists point to the establishment of a hut village on the hill in around the 9th century BCE - for which there is ample archaeological evidence. Romantics claim that Romulus killed his twin Remus and established Rome here in 753 BCE. Whichever version you prefer, by the 1st century BCE the Palatino had become Rome's most exclusive neighbourhood. Augustus lived here, and successive emperors built increasingly opulent palaces - in fact, the word 'palace' derives from the hill's Latin name, Palatium. After the fall of the Roman Empire the area was abandoned, until rich Renaissance families started building villas in the ruins and laying out gardens and vineyards.
According to legend, Rome's founders were brought up on the Palatino by a shepherd, Faustulus, after a wolf had saved them from death. The twins later fell out, and Romulus killed Remus before founding the city in 753 BCE. Among a series of Iron Age huts in the northwestern part of the hill, the Casa Romuli is where Romulus reputedly lived.
The hilltop site can be reached from two sides - from Via di San Gregorio or through the Roman Forum. Once up top, look out for a tall, white-ish building: the Museo Palatino, a small museum illustrating the development of the surrounding area.
To the north and west of the museum lie the remains of the Domus Flavia, the public part of the imperial palace. It was centred on a grand peristilio (peristyle, or porticoed courtyard) - the grassy area with the base of an octagonal fountain - off which the main halls led. Signposted from near the Domus Flavia are the Casa di Livia, home of Augustus' wife Livia, and the Casa di Augusto, Augustus' private residence. The latter features some superb frescoes but can only be visited at set times, with a Full Experience ticket or a Forum Pass Super. Near the Casa di Augusto, but closed to visitors, is the Villaggio di Capanne (Hut Village), where Romulus and Remus supposedly lived.
Continuing towards the Forum you will come to the 16th-century Orti Farnesiani, one of Europe's earliest botanical gardens. This lovely, shady spot has a monumental balcony commanding breathtaking views over the Roman Forum. Further down the hill is the Domus Tiberiana: recently opened to visitors after years of restoration work, it was the first palace built on the Palatino, in the 1st century CE. A path runs through the vast superstructure to vaulted rooms displaying archaeological artefacts.
The ruins extending behind and to the east of the Museo Palatino are what is left of the Domus Augustana, the emperor's private part of the palace. Built on two levels, with rooms leading off a peristyle on each floor, it cannot be explored at the lower level - but from above you can see a square water feature and sweeping views over the Circo Massimo. Also here are the Aula Isiaca, a frescoed room from an ancient Republican-era house, and the Loggia Mattei, a Renaissance loggia decorated by Baldassarre Peruzzi. Nearby is one of the few recognisable structures on the site, the Stadio: this sunken area, part of the main imperial palace, was probably used by the emperors for private games and events.
Dating to 1471, the Capitoline Museums are the world's oldest public museums. Their collection of classical sculpture, housed in two stately palazzi on Piazza del Campidoglio, is one of Italy's finest and brilliantly complements the archaeological treasures on show in the nearby forums. There is also a formidable picture gallery with works by many big-name Italian artists.
The entrance is in Palazzo dei Conservatori, where you will find the original core of the sculptural collection on the first floor and the Pinacoteca (picture gallery) on the second floor. Before heading upstairs, take a moment to admire the ancient masonry in the courtyard - notably a mammoth head, hand and foot, all from a 13m-high statue of Constantine that stood in the Basilica di Massenzio in the Roman Forum. To see what the statue would have originally looked like, check out the life-size reconstruction of the Colosseo di Costantino in the gardens of the adjacent Villa Caffarelli.
Of the sculpture, the most famous piece is undoubtedly the Etruscan Lupa Capitolina (Capitoline Wolf). Depicting a she-wolf standing over her suckling wards, Romulus and Remus, it is one of several celebrated bronzes currently in the Esedra di Marco Aurelio. Other important works include the Spinario, a delicate 1st-century-BCE portrayal of a boy removing a thorn, and the original equestrian statue of Marcus Aurelius - the version in the piazza outside is a copy. In the Esedra you can also see the foundations of the Temple of Jupiter, one of the ancient city's most important temples. Elsewhere, look out for Alessandro Algardi's depiction of Pope Innocent X and two sculptural works by Gian Lorenzo Bernini: Medusa in the Sala delle Oche and a statue of Pope Urban VIII in the Sala degli Orazi e Curiazi.
Up on the second floor, the Pinacoteca displays works from the Middle Ages through to the 18th century. Every room harbours masterpieces, but two stand out: the Sala Pietro da Cortona, featuring the artist's famous depiction of the Ratto delle Sabine (Rape of the Sabine Women; 1630), and the Sala di Santa Petronilla, named after Guercino's huge canvas Seppellimento di Santa Petronilla (The Burial of St Petronilla; 1621-23). This airy hall also boasts a 1649 portrait by Velázquez and two important works by Caravaggio: La buona ventura (The Fortune Teller; 1595) and San Giovanni Battista (John the Baptist; 1602).
Palazzo Nuovo is crammed to its elegant 17th-century rafters with classical Roman sculpture. From the lobby, where the curly-bearded Mars glares ferociously at passersby, stairs lead up to the main galleries. Here you will find real showstoppers such as the Galata morente (Dying Gaul) in the Sala del Galata. One of the museum's greatest works - actually a Roman copy of a 3rd-century-BCE Greek work - it movingly captures the quiet, resigned anguish of a dying Gaul warrior. Next door, the Sala del Fauno takes its name from a red marble statue of a faun. Another superb figurative piece, and another Roman copy of an earlier Greek sculpture (4th century BCE), is the sensual yet demure Venere Capitolina (Capitoline Venus) in the Gabinetto della Venere.
A tunnel links Palazzo dei Conservatori to Palazzo Nuovo on the other side of the piazza. The underground gallery, lined with panels and inscriptions from ancient tombs, passes by the Tabularium - ancient Rome's central archive - which has some fantastic views over the Roman Forum.
The Sala degli Orazi e Curiazi, with its papal statues and frescoes illustrating Roman history, provided the grand setting for one of modern Europe's key events. On 25 March 1957 the leaders of Italy, France, West Germany, Belgium, Holland and Luxembourg met here to sign the Treaty of Rome and establish the European Economic Community, the precursor of the European Union.
Follow in the footsteps of an ancient Roman on this whistle-stop tour of the city's most famous ruins: 2km and about five hours from the Colosseum to the Vittoriano.
At some point you will almost certainly find yourself walking up Via dei Fori Imperiali, the largely traffic-free road that connects the Colosseum with Piazza Venezia. Much of the Colosseum end is currently flanked by construction work, but the upper end provides a wonderful platform for admiring the forums - the Roman Forum to the left, the Imperial Forums to the right. The Imperial Forums, which can be accessed through the Mercati di Traiano or the Roman Forum, comprise the forums of Trajan, Augustus, Nerva and Caesar. Landmark sights include the Mercati di Traiano and the Colonna Traiana, but you can also see three temple columns in the Foro di Augusto and a 30m-high wall that protected the forums from the fires sweeping down from the nearby Suburra slums.
Unlike the monuments that surround it, Via dei Fori Imperiali never formed part of the ancient city. It was built by Mussolini and inaugurated on 28 October 1932. The road, which cleaves straight through the forums, formed part of an urban development project to modernise Rome's infrastructure and improve links with the city's outlying districts. It also served a propagandistic purpose, giving Mussolini a symbolic connection between his fascist regime (as represented by Piazza Venezia) and the Roman Empire (as represented by the Colosseum). To build the 900m-long road, his bulldozers razed an entire Renaissance quarter, known as Alessandrino, and tarmacked over much of the ancient forums.
To make sense of the sprawling Imperial Forums, search out this striking museum (mercatiditraiano.it). It showcases the Mercati di Traiano (Trajan's Markets), Trajan's towering 2nd-century complex, while providing a fascinating introduction to the forums with multimedia displays, explanatory panels and archaeological artefacts. Sculptures, friezes and the occasional bust are set out in rooms opening onto what was once the Great Hall. But more than the exhibits, the real highlight is exploring the vast structure itself, which historians believe housed the forums' administrative offices. Rising above the markets is the Torre delle Milizie, a 13th-century red-brick tower.
Tip: Look out from the museum over the Imperial Forums, the Vittoriano and the Capitoline Hill - it is one of the area's best free vantage points.
Official site →Love it or loathe it (as many Romans do), there is no denying the Vittoriano (vive.cultura.gov.it/en/vittoriano), also known as the Altare della Patria or Altar of the Fatherland, is a breathtaking sight. Soaring above Piazza Venezia, the colossal white monument was inaugurated in 1911 to honour Italy's first king, Vittorio Emanuele II. You can enjoy stunning views from its marble balconies, most of which are free to access; for €17 you can also visit the Museo Centrale del Risorgimento inside (dedicated to Italian unification) and reach the Panoramic Terrace, which admittedly boasts Rome's most spectacular 360-degree views.
Tip: The Panoramic Terrace is the classic reward at the end of the Forum-to-Vittoriano walk - go up in the late afternoon for golden light.
Official site →The oldest of Rome's great Renaissance palaces, the 15th-century Palazzo Venezia (vive.cultura.gov.it/en/palazzo-venezia) is a top spot to escape the crowds. Its free-to-enter courtyard is a verdant oasis of peace, and its museum, the Museo Nazionale del Palazzo Venezia, remains off the main tourist radar despite a fascinating collection of Byzantine and early Renaissance paintings, ceramics, weaponry and armour.
Tip: For centuries the palazzo housed the Venetian embassy - hence its name - but it is most readily associated with Mussolini, who famously made speeches from the balcony of the Sala del Mappamondo (Globe Room).
Official site →As is common in Rome, the area's churches harbour wonderful treasures. Chief among them is a fabulous 6th-century mosaic in the apse of this tranquil medieval church, which boasts a picturesque 17th-century cloister and an elaborate Neapolitan presepe (nativity scene). It backs onto the Roman Forum and incorporates parts of the Foro di Vespasiano and the Tempio di Romolo.
Tip: Step straight from the Forum crowds into a cool, silent medieval interior - the mosaic in the apse alone is worth the detour.
A short walk from the Forum, at the top of the 124-step Aracoeli staircase, this 6th-century church boasts a richly decorated interior and a wooden baby Jesus thought to have healing powers. In fact, the doll is a copy: the original, supposedly made of wood from the garden of Gethsemane, was stolen in 1994 and has never been recovered.
Tip: The climb up the 124 steps is worth it - and there is an alternative entrance with steps from behind the Vittoriano that avoids the long staircase.
For a uniquely Roman snap, strike a pose at the Bocca della Verità. As a monument this ancient curiosity is fairly low-key: a bearded face carved into a giant marble disc, possibly from an ancient fountain or manhole cover. What makes it special is the legend surrounding it - if you tell a lie with your hand in the bocca (mouth), it will slam shut and bite your paw off. The challenge, then, is to place your hand in the mouth, smile gingerly and tell a lie. You will find the mythical mouth in the portico of the medieval Chiesa di Santa Maria in Cosmedin, usually at the end of a long line of waiting snappers.
Tip: Go early to beat the queue for the photo - the line forms even before the church opens.
For a slice of local life, join the joggers on the Circo Massimo, once ancient Rome's largest chariot racetrack: a 600m circuit inside a 250,000-seat stadium. Little remains of the vast structure apart from a small segment at the southern end, which can now be visited either independently or with VR goggles (circomaximoexperience.it). The huge dusty basin retains its rectangular shape, and there is something undeniably uplifting about exercising in the shadow of the Palatino. Serious athletes take to Rome's streets in late March or April for the Rome Marathon, which starts and finishes on Via dei Fori Imperiali.
Tip: Sunset is the magic hour here - joggers, families and the Palatino glowing gold behind you.
Official site →Immerse yourself in the sights, smells and tastes of the Mercato Campagna Amica al Circo Massimo (mercatocircomassimo.campagnamica.it). This farmers market, held every Saturday and Sunday morning near the Circo Massimo, showcases producers from Lazio and central Italy. Stalls sell all manner of seasonal produce, including potential take-home gifts: cheese, conserves, jars of honey, ready-made sauces, olive oils and wines.
A workaday food store, ideal for made-to-order sandwiches.
A warm-hearted osteria near the Circo Massimo with traditional Italian fare and hearty Roman pastas.
A romantic rooftop restaurant with memorable views, Mediterranean cuisine and sunset aperitivi.
A smart restaurant in a 16th-century palazzo on the Circo Massimo with Italian cuisine and national wines.
The guide's picks in the area are the Inn at the Roman Forum, Nerva Boutique Hotel, Residenza Maritti and Rhinoceros Roma. All sit within easy reach of the archaeological sites - the area is quiet at night even though it is packed by day.
Yes - demand is always high, and in peak periods you should book a month ahead. The standard 24-hour ticket is €18; a Full Experience ticket is €24. Book on colosseo.it. Same-day tickets are sometimes available at the offices on Piazza del Colosseo (cards only) and Largo della Salara Vecchia.
The €18 24-hour ticket covers the Colosseum, Forum and Palatino. Add the €24 Full Experience for the arena floor, the underground hypogeum and the Forum's super sites (Santa Maria Antiqua, the Curia). The €18 Forum Pass Super covers the Forum and Palatino with the super sites but not the Colosseum's extras. All tickets are nominative, so bring photo ID.
Yes - the Roman Forum and the Palatino are a single archaeological site covered by the same ticket. You can move freely between the two, entering from Largo della Salara Vecchia, near the Arco di Settimio Severo, at the Arco di Tito, or from the Palatino itself.
About an hour inside the Colosseum, and roughly three hours for the Palatino and Forum together. If you walk the full Colosseum-to-Vittoriano route with the museums, plan on five hours and 2km of walking.
First thing in the morning or late afternoon. Between 11am and 2pm the crowds are at their worst and in summer the ruins offer little shade - bring a hat and water, and book the Attic or underground tickets well ahead since only a limited number sell each day.
The Colosseum is visited along a fixed, one-way loop, so getting lost is impossible: just let the crowd carry you. The sequence is easy to follow. Begin outside on the west flank, in the open space between the Forum, the Arch of Constantine and the Metro. File through security, show your ticket at the turnstile, and use the WC straight after, since it is the only one. With a Full Experience ticket you first step out onto the rebuilt arena floor. Then comes the climb to the upper-level exhibition, a clockwise lap of roughly three-quarters of the interior, and finally the bookshop, where a doorway leads to a terrace facing the Arch of Constantine.
This is the Flavian Amphitheater, completed in AD 80, and it shows imperial Rome at the height of its confidence. The design trick was simple: take two semicircular theatres, push them together, and you get a freestanding arena - the largest the empire ever built - for a public that had turned killing into entertainment. The north side, closest to the Colosseo Metro station, survives in the best condition and offers the finest view: four stacked storeys, 160 feet high, a circumference of close to a third of a mile, all resting on an oval of six acres.
Try to picture the original: a gleaming white shell with painted trim, statues of Zeus, Venus and Hercules - gods Greek and Roman - filling the middle tiers' arches in full color, and wooden masts poking up from the top storey to support a canvas awning for the crowd below. Out front, where the cypress trees now grow between the arena and the Metro, a bronze Nero 100 feet tall caught the sun and greeted arriving spectators.
For all its bulk, the building feels weightless. The lower three storeys are open arcades framed by half-columns, each arch stacked directly above the one below so that every column lines up and pulls the eye skyward, while each floor runs as a horizontal band around the whole oval. The push and pull of verticals and horizontals makes the Colosseum look planted in the earth and reaching for the heavens at once.
None of this was possible before Rome mastered concrete and the arch. The outer shell alone consumed 3.5 million cubic feet of travertine, with five-ton pillars flanking each ground-floor opening. Moving that stone from Tivoli required 200 ox-drawn carts working daily for four years. The blocks were laid dry, without mortar, into the curve of an arch, propped on timber until a keystone was hammered into the crown - a wedge that both held the span together and absorbed even greater loads above. Big stones were joined with iron pins, and the small pits that riddle the walls mark where medieval scavengers wrenched the pins out. Of the original structure, only a third stands today: earthquakes brought down part of it, and the rest was removed in the medieval and Renaissance eras as convenient ready-cut stone.
The facade also reveals the Roman character: practical engineers first, artists second, who borrowed ornament from the Greeks they admired. The half-columns that frame the arches serve no structural purpose at all. At street level they are stout, with plain capitals; on the next floor they slim down and the capitals curl into scrolls; the third storey sprouts leafy carving; and the top band mixes all three styles. They are the classic Greek orders - Doric, Ionic and Corinthian - a layer of refinement laid over Roman engineering for this theatre of blood.
Put yourself in the sandals of an ancient ticket holder. The crowd streamed in through ground-floor gates - 76 numbered ones, plus a private entrance for the emperor on the north side, and Roman numerals still survive above some of the doorways facing the Metro. Your seat was assigned on a clay shard, your ticket, marked with gate, section, row and seat. Past the vendors hawking snacks and souvenir wine cups printed with star gladiators' names, a corridor called the vomitorium led you to your place; when the show ended the arena 'vomited' the crowd back out, which is where English gets the word. At full capacity, the entire stadium could fill and empty in about a quarter of an hour.
The top floor holds a permanent exhibition of objects dug up on site, drawings of the original architecture and wonderfully detailed scale models, all explained in English. It covers the hoists and pulleys, the entertainments and the seating rules, and the giant cutaway model of the whole arena deserves a long look.
The fighting surface is an oval 280 feet long and 165 feet wide, whose length-to-width ratio comes close to the golden ratio - the 1.6-to-1 proportion considered ideal, almost magical, by artists since Pythagoras. Perhaps the designers meant the stadium to mirror the ideal mathematical harmony they saw in nature.
Below what you see from the walkway lie the service tunnels, open only to those on a private tour. Originally a wooden floor, sprinkled with sand - harena, in Latin - covered that warren where beasts and prisoners waited; the rebuilt patch of flooring shows exactly where that level sat. The spectators ringed the action in bleachers that sloped up from the sand, carried on the massive brick piers you can see around you. Travertine supplied the frame, while the seating supports were brick shells poured full of concrete, faced with marble columns and ornament so the interior shone white - except for the cheap seats above, finished in plain plaster.
Who sat where was a matter of law and custom. Nearest the sand, the emperor, the senators, the Vestals and other grandees occupied marble benches inscribed with their names - some of these, restored, survive at the eastern end. The tier above belonged to the nobility. The level where tourists now stand was for the ordinary freeborn crowd, the plebeians. And in the uppermost rows, a full hundred yards from the sand, the poorest spectators - foreigners, slaves and women - had wooden seats. Not one of those survives, but you can easily imagine them.
The uppermost storey, mostly gone today except on the north, came later than the original three-tier plan, added around AD 230 after a fire. Sailors by the hundreds once worked the awning, but it shaded only roughly a third of the stadium - the cheap seats stayed cool while many a noble roasted below.
Down in the labyrinth beneath the sand, the show was produced. Fighters walked the central passage from the training yard at the eastern end to the west entrance. Some crews looked after the animals; others built scenery - forests, temple facades - so the arena could pass from African jungle to Greek shrine between events. Everything rose to the surface through 80 lift shafts worked by ropes and pulleys; look for the little rectangular openings near the middle of the floor. That means 80 hatches from which fighters, beasts or scenery could suddenly appear.
The card pitted man against man, man against beast and beast against beast. Mornings belonged to the warm-ups: dogs set on porcupines, hunters stalking prey through planted forests. The animal cast alone was a wonder - lions, tigers, bears, crocodiles, elephants, rhinos and hippos, gathered from every corner of the empire. Caged beneath the sand, the beasts were hoisted through trap doors at unpredictable moments, so the hunter never knew where the attack would come from - to the delighted howls of the cheap seats. Nets protected the crowd.
The midday slot was for executions, often staged with flair: criminals and prisoners of war flung to the lions without clothes or weapons, or costumed as legendary heroes and forced to die in a play of their own killing, mauled by beasts or by gladiators dressed as the myth's villain. Between bouts came comic relief - clowns, jugglers and acrobats, and even a dwarf matched against a one-legged man.
The headliners appeared in the afternoon. Trumpets and drums announced the gladiators as they marched in from the west, circled to the music, and stopped before the Vestal Virgins, who watched from their box on the 50-yard line - season tickets earned by their chastity. The fighters then turned toward the imperial box, where, as legend and cinema have it, they raised their arms and saluted the ruler as men condemned to die.
Each fighter had his style: the swordsman with nothing but shield and heavy helmet, the javelin man, and the net-and-trident 'fisherman.' Most came from the ranks of slaves, convicts and paupers gambling on fame and fortune; they learned their trade in training schools and climbed the ladder of the arena, and the champions were idolized like today's athletes, complete with fan clubs, riches and sponsorship deals. When a man fell and could not rise, his opponent looked toward the imperial box: mercy or death? Often the ruler - or his master of ceremonies - handed the verdict to the crowd, who weighed the fallen fighter's courage and signaled with thumbs, though scholars still argue which direction meant what. Nobody objected to a coward getting the death he deserved, and the body was dragged off by an attendant dressed as Charon, the ferryman of the dead.
The stadium opened in AD 80 with a 100-day festival that killed 2,000 men and 9,000 animals - a death roughly every five minutes - while staff sprayed perfume through the stands to cover the smell of blood.
Bloodshed kept the masses manageable. With no film or television, an ordinary Roman could not imagine the empire's far-off victories; the Colosseum imported the conquered world - its scenery, its wildlife, its people - and put them on stage. A man who had never seen a lion in his life could watch one chase a prisoner across the sand. A gladiator felling the king of beasts showed the crowd humanity's mastery of nature, and handing those spectators the power of life and death gave even the lowliest a taste of authority. Admission was always free, paid for by the state to buy the people's goodwill and keep the city's swelling unemployed out of mischief. And the Christians? Yes, they were thrown to lions, set against gladiators, crucified and burned - but probably not here. Maybe, but probably not.
As Christianity spread, the games came to look barbaric. Gladiatorial combat, staged sporadically at first, was outlawed outright in AD 435; the animal hunts lingered a few more decades. Around AD 523, after almost 500 years of shows, the last beast was killed and the gates closed. The next millennium saw squatters - apartments and workshops, a church and graveyard, a refuge in times of invasion and riot - while weather and gravity took their toll. The earthquake of 1349 brought down the south side, which is why the outer wall stands only on the north. Most of all, the Romans cannibalized their own monument: cut stone went to build palaces and churches, St. Peter's among them, the marble facing was ground into mortar, and 300 tons of iron clamps were pried loose and melted down, leaving the pitted walls we see today.
In the 1500s a succession of popes softened toward the pagan ruin. As a memorial to the Christians perhaps martyred on this spot, they braced the southern and western flanks with brickwork and raised the great cross on the north. Nowadays the Colosseum binds Rome's past to its present: protest marches start or finish here, using the arena as a backdrop for the cameras, and each Good Friday the pope leads the Stations of the Cross among the faithful. There is an old belief that Rome will stand while the Colosseum stands - and for two millennia it has been the emblem of the Eternal City.
After about three-quarters of your circuit you hit the bookshop at the west end; step onto the outside terrace and begin with the great white arch. The Arch of Constantine records one of history's decisive moments - the coup that carried Christianity into the mainstream. In AD 312, on the eve of the Battle of the Milvian Bridge against his rival Maxentius, Constantine saw a cross in the heavens and took it as a promise of victory. He won, ruled alone, and legalized the faith: an obscure Jewish sect became the religion of the entire West. In AD 300 you could die for being Christian; a century later, for not being one. The churches filled overnight.
The restored arch reads like a gallery of recycled art, its panels stripped from older buildings; by layering on first-rate reliefs celebrating earlier emperors, Constantine claimed their glory as his own: Hadrian fills the round medallions, Marcus Aurelius the square friezes above, and the emperors once drove a chariot like the one that crowns the modern Victor Emmanuel Monument. Rome of the fourth century was fading, yet Constantine reached for its brilliant past.
To the southwest, beyond the arch, the Palatine rises, its umbrella pines scattered. To the arch's right the Via Sacra climbs toward the white peak of the Arch of Titus, which marks the head of the Forum. The amphitheater itself stands between three of the legendary seven hills - Palatine, Esquiline and Caelian - on ground where Nero built his lavish Golden House, running from Titus's arch across the valley floor and onto the Esquiline. When the house gave way to the arena, Nero's own colossal statue stayed on as a 100-foot doorman.
On the long, flat-topped hill to the west - you can spot it by the door-shaped openings cut into its retaining wall - a brick niche with a church bell tower behind it is all that survives of the great Temple of Venus and Rome. Standing 100 feet high on its podium, this was Rome's biggest temple and one of its most visible: it covered the entire hilltop, roughly the footprint of a football pitch. The architecture was Greek - white columns around the sides, a triangular pediment over the door - and colossal white columns six feet across still mark the outline. At its heart, a soaring brick arch, its vault cross-hatched, marks the cella, the holy chamber, holding two statues set back-to-back: Venus facing the Colosseum and Roma Aeterna facing the Forum, together symbolizing the birth and the eternal destiny of the Roman people.
The goddesses' names were carved in the twin chambers - 'Roma' on one side, 'Amor' on the other - a palindrome that neatly couples Rome with love. Newlyweds once climbed the stairway from the Colosseum, fragments of which remain, to ask the goddesses for luck in marriage; couples today marry instead in the bell-towered church next door. Hadrian, the emperor-architect who designed the Pantheon, drew up the plans. Rome's most celebrated architect of the day objected that the statues were so large they would knock their heads together, and Hadrian heard him out... then had him executed. To see the ruins close up, enter through the Roman Forum.
Given the crowds and the need to reserve long ahead, many visitors choose to enjoy the Colosseum from the pavement - free, quick and arguably half the experience - and save their energy for the Forum, the Palatine and, for unstuffy Roman engineering, the Baths of Caracalla. Circle the building clockwise from the entrance, which shows you the best-preserved walls first; everything described above works from outside, and for the final stretch simply stand by the Arch of Constantine.
Comfort stops are scarce around here: the Colosseum sells no food - walk 10 minutes behind it into Monti for that - but drinking fountains exist inside the Colosseum, in the Forum and on the Palatine, by the Colosseo Metro exit, and in a little 'water house' right across from the Colosseum's exit. Across from the Forum's entrance on Via dei Fori Imperiali, an information center offers a café, snacks and a WC (daily 9:30-19:00). The Colosseo Metro station sits directly opposite, buses 85 and 87 ply Via dei Fori Imperiali, and the Pantheon is a relaxing 20-minute walk away in the centro-storico.
The Forum was the beating heart of the city - religion, politics and commerce all lived here. Its temples and law courts were the most important in Rome, and its open spaces hosted processions, elections, speeches and the victory parades of conquering generals. As the empire swelled, these few acres grew into the pivot of Western civilization. The classic walk below follows the usual 17 stops, starting at the Arch of Titus, heading west; budget about 1.5 hours, or cut the tour short at the arch raised for Septimius Severus if time is tight.
A word on logistics: the same ticket covers the Forum, the Palatine and the Imperial Forums, and all must be seen in one go - leave any of them and you cannot re-enter. The busiest gate is the one from the Colosseum, right by the Arch of Titus; calmer options are the gate on Via dei Fori Imperiali, the seasonal gate near Severus's arch approached from the Capitoline, the Palatine's own Via di San Gregorio entrance, and the little-known Imperial Forums gate by Trajan's Column, which also issues the Super Forum Pass. To visit both Forum and Palatine, start on the Palatine - the lines are shorter and the route runs downhill into the Forum; the two are joined by a passage beside Titus's arch.
The white arch rising above the ruins at the Forum's eastern end celebrates the crushing of Judaea in AD 70. Rome usually governed with a light touch, letting conquered peoples keep their customs and rulers as long as they acknowledged the emperor as divine - which most had no trouble doing, having half a pantheon already. The Jews, however, worshipped one god alone, and it was not the emperor, so they rose in revolt. The war was short and savage: Jerusalem fell, the Temple was razed - one stretch of its foundation wall survives, the revered Wailing Wall - and 50,000 Jewish captives were marched home, where they were set to work on this arch and the arena.
The arch's inner panels are pure propaganda: on one side Titus rides his chariot while the goddess Victory crowns him (acid rain has left both of them looking battered); on the other, soldiers haul away the Temple's treasures, including the menorah. The pair of unfinished plaques on their poles would have named the cities he took, and the ceiling, carved after Titus died, shows him borne to heaven on an eagle to take his place among the gods. The revolt of AD 70, and another six decades later, broke the Jewish nation: with the Temple gone, the people scattered across the world in the Diaspora, and no Jewish state would exist again for nearly 2,000 years.
Stand at the railing beside the arch and take in the valley: a rectangle running east to west, from the Colosseum end to the Capitoline and its bell tower. Underfoot, the worn stones of the Via Sacra lead off among the trees, past the big brick Senate building, under the far triumphal arch and up the Capitoline slope. The wooded hill on your left is the Palatine.
Now imagine a general coming home with wagons of plunder. The valley glittered with white marble buildings roofed in bronze. Citizens lined the Via Sacra, waving branches, carrying torches. The trumpets blew and the column moved: porters with chests of gold and jewels first, then the strange beasts from conquered lands - elephants, giraffes, hippos - for the crowd to gape at, then the chained prisoners with their captured king aboard a wheeled platform, jeered and spat upon, and at last the hero himself, driving his chariot and four over a carpet of rose petals. The whole parade swept across the Forum and up the Capitoline's slope, halting at Saturn's temple, whose eight great columns stand partway up the slope, where the treasure was locked into the state treasury; the column then climbed to Jupiter's temple on the summit, where the gods received their share of the glory. And so, conquest upon conquest, the tribes of this valley became masters of an empire that reached across Europe and beyond, its riches flowing home to Rome.
The three giant arches you can climb are just one-third of the Basilica of Constantine's original bulk, an enormous hall of justice. A matching row of arches faced the Via Sacra - only low brick stubs of it remain - and between the two ran the central nave, roofed at 130 feet, some 55 feet higher than the arches before you. The nave stretched the length of a football pitch, dressed in marble of many colors, gilded bronze overhead and statuary, full of Romans out for a stroll; at the far, western end sat a colossal marble Constantine enthroned; pieces of it, including a hand as big as a man, are now in the Capitoline Museums. This was never a church but a courtroom, built for a people as litigious as modern Americans: here citizens settled inheritances, obtained building permits or sued their neighbors. Maxentius began the project; Constantine finished it after defeating him in battle. The Romans, plainly, built on a grander scale than any Europeans before them, amazing their 'barbarian' neighbors.
Follow the main street of the ancient city through the trees. Imagine a provincial visitor from Gaul or Roman London, with a smattering of Latin: nothing could have prepared him for this - a metropolis of a million souls - easily the largest in Europe. The street thronged with tribunes, slaves and courtesans, while chariots rattled past; wooden stalls lined the way, merchants crying their wares. The basalt blocks under your shoes were walked on by Augustus himself 2,000 years ago; they are part of a road network of some 50,000 miles. Traders moved on foot or by cart, the mail rode a relay system like the Pony Express, and officials in chariots kept the distant provinces in order.
On your right you will pass a green door that still swings on its original fourth-century hinges - a bronze temple door that survived because the building became a church soon after the empire fell. The ancient building remains in use and sometimes hosts modern exhibitions. Eternal City indeed.
The Senate raised this temple to honor Antoninus Pius (AD 138-161) and Faustina, his deified wife; the lintel names them 'divo' and 'divae.' To provincials raised in thatched huts, the 50-foot Corinthian columns must have been stupefying. A church now occupies the building, but the plan is easy to read: a staircase up to a shaded portico, and through it the main hall where the cult statue stood. Add gilded capitals, painted statues in the pediment and a bronze roof, and the gray wreck before you becomes a Technicolor original. Today's stately rubble is only a faded snapshot of that glory.
The temple also tells the tale of Rome's collapse. Medieval looters stripped it; the slanting cuts high on the columns show where they tried to slice the shafts with vinegar and rope - but vinegar dissolves rope too, so they gave up. In 1550 a church moved in. The green door marks the ground level of Michelangelo's day, when the Forum lay buried beneath the Cow Field, its long staircase staying underground until the 1800s.
This may be the most sacred ground in Rome. The curved remains show the temple was round, shaped like a glorified farm hut - the kind of home Rome's first families knew. Rome thought of itself as one great family, and here a fire burned as it did in every Roman household. The Romans, despite their reputation, were proud of their family values: they honored parents and grandparents and kept little statues of ancestors in home shrines. This temple blew those values up to city scale, its flame standing for the hearth of the great Roman family. So long as the fire stayed alight, so would Rome - and six priestesses, the Vestal Virgins, were its keepers.
A little way behind the temple, steps climb to a walled yard with two rectangular pools of brick, tucked under the Palatine: the courtyard of the Vestals' two-storey residence, lined with statues of distinguished former priestesses. This compound set the pattern for the convents and monasteries of the Middle Ages, in architecture and in morals. The six Vestals were selected from noble families before their tenth birthday and served 30 years, honored and revered, with box seats of their own in the Colosseum opposite the emperor. Their job was sacred housekeeping for the goddess: drawing water from a holy spring, preparing sacred meals, polishing ritual vessels and, above all, never letting the hearth fire die.
The vow of chastity was the price of the office. Complete the 30 years faithfully and you received a large dowry and were free to marry. But a Vestal caught breaking her vow was bound to a funeral cart, paraded through the Forum, locked in a crypt with bread and a lamp, and entombed alive. Many suffered that fate.
Palatine Hill looms above, and much of the cliff facing the Forum belonged to the Palace of Tiberius (r. AD 14-37), which sprawled down into the valley and contains the finest interiors in the Forum. The path named for it passes a good viewpoint, then runs between high walls beneath soaring vaults and past first-century chambers, with a second-century extension by Hadrian. The displays show lamps, coins and storage jars found on the spot, well labelled; they need the pricier tickets - Full Experience or a Super Forum Pass. The walk is a masterclass in Roman building: brick and concrete, rounded arches, the marble veneer long gone but flecks of painted stucco still clinging.
The route ends with a zigzag ramp down to the Forum, past one more lovely viewpoint and a treasure of the Forum: Santa Maria Antiqua, a sixth-century church carved out of an imperial palace (pricier tickets - Full Experience or Super Forum Pass - required). Buried by a landslide in the ninth century and rediscovered in 1900, it is the oldest Christian building in the Forum. For art historians that landslide was a gift: the splendid frescoes of the sixth to eighth centuries were sealed away from later rebuilding, preserved like a time capsule of the early church.
Re-entering the Forum you face the Temple of Castor and Pollux, whose nickname, 'the three fingers,' needs no explanation - three columns are all that stand of a once-important temple, and they are the Forum's most photographed ruin. Among the city's oldest sanctuaries, built in the 400s BC, it celebrated the defeat of the Tarquin, the Etruscan king who had oppressed Rome; after the battle, so the story goes, the divine twins watered their horses at the Sacred Spring of Juturna, excavated nearby. As a badge of the Republic, senators often convened in the temple, and its front steps were a platform for free speech. The surviving columns, Corinthian with leafy capitals and fluting, belong to the first-century rebuilding.
The path opens into a flat space roughly the area of a football pitch, running to the foot of the Capitoline: the original Forum, ringed in its heyday by temples, courts, government offices and triumphal arches. So why is it so empty? Because the city recycled its own monuments - dragged away or literally melted down. Try to see the place as it was: an ancient Manhattan, packed with mighty buildings, thousands of statues, paint and marble veneers everywhere. After the fall, scavengers carried off whatever they could move. The huge stones were pinned together with iron, and anyone who knew where to dig could recover the metal - hence the holes bored into pillars and walls. And all through the Middle Ages, kilns burned marble to lime for mortar: a civilization indifferent to the buried city enjoyed a free quarry of raw materials.
Rome began right here. Legend says the orphaned twins Romulus and Remus, nursed by a she-wolf atop the Palatine, had trouble finding wives, so they and their gang raided the neighboring Sabines and carried off their women. When peace was made, the swampy valley turned into the tribes' meeting ground and later their market. In most eras the square was the city's liveliest and roughest quarter: senators, politicians and moneychangers shared it with pickpockets, soothsayers, gamblers and slave dealers, drunks, prostitutes, lawyers and tour guides. Rome's million-plus inhabitants - outnumbering any city until 19th-century London and Paris - slept in cramped apartments like campers in tents; they lived their real lives in public, in their Forum, their piazza. That is why the piazza remains the heart of every Italian town to this day.
The Forum is rubble now, but rebuild it in your mind: dazzling marble halls with 40-foot columns, gleaming metal roofs, painted statues in rows, chariots clattering down the Via Sacra. Swap the T-shirts for togas, and if it still looks like a pile of rocks, remember that Julius Caesar once rested a hand on these very stones.
At the square's end nearest the Colosseum stands a modest ruin under a small peaked roof of wood and metal. Here, on March 15, 44 BC, Julius Caesar fell to 23 dagger strokes; his body was burned right here, beneath this shelter, and the temple rose to commemorate him. Behind the wall, in the little apse, you can still see a mound of earth, usually topped with fresh flowers, left for the man who above all others embodied Rome's greatness.
Caesar (100-44 BC) reshaped the Forum, sweeping away the wooden stalls and surrounding the square with grander buildings. His house stood behind the temple, near the clump of trees, and he passed this way on the day he died, despite a soothsayer's warning on the street corner. He took dictatorial powers; a conspiracy of senators, among them his friend Brutus, cut him down - 'Et tu, Brute?' - after which the funeral took place in front of the square, where the crowd heard Mark Antony deliver the eulogy Shakespeare would later lend him, opening with 'Friends, Romans, countrymen.' As the pyre burned, the grieving mob threw whatever they could grab onto the flames, and the fire brigade had to be called. Augustus would dedicate the temple to him, and Caesar became the first Roman raised to godhood.
Beyond the temple, the Basilica Aemilia can be viewed from the ramp beside the Antoninus Pius temple - or walked through when the path is open. Note the plan: a long rectangle, a single great hall with an aisle on each side, marked by the rows of squat columns. When medieval Christians needed bigger meeting spaces than pagan temples offered, they copied the Roman basilica wholesale: churches from Britain to Spain and France, Romanesque, Gothic and Renaissance alike, all descend from this layout.
The brick hall with the triangular roof, just right of the great arch at the foot of the Capitoline hill, is the Curia - the Forum's most important political structure and the seat of government since the Republic began. Three hundred senators, chosen by the people, wrapped themselves in togas, scrolls tucked under their elbows, and climbed the steps to debate, legislate and make the laws of Rome. They lined the walls in three tiers, backs to the masonry, surrounding the hall on three sides, while the Senate president - later the emperor - presided from the head of the room. The room still seems to echo with speeches and arguments. Rome was proud of its Republic: the people had thrown out the king and chosen rule by elected representatives, and even under the emperors the Senate stayed formidable. (Caesar's assassination, for the record, did not happen here - the Senate was meeting elsewhere that day.)
The present building, from AD 283, replaced an earlier Senate house; it survives in such good shape because it served as a church from early Christian times, and in the 1930s it was given a historic-site restoration. With your ticket, enter from the back: a statue plus two reliefs bring the old Forum to life. The statue, carved of porphyry about AD 100, head, arms and feet now lost, honoured one of the emperors - likely Hadrian or Trajan. The left panel shows citizens with stone tablets queuing to burn their debt records after an amnesty; the other depicts the grain dole, Rome's welfare system, with architecture in the distance and up-to-the-minute toga styles. The marble floor is the original one. You need one of the pricier tickets - Full Experience or Super Forum Pass - to go in.
Thirty paces before the Curia, beside the great arch, stands a brown brick wall ten feet tall: the Rostrum, Rome's Speakers' Corner. The platform rose ten feet and stretched eighty, adorned with statues, columns and ships' bronze beaks. From here the city's speechmakers, great and small, worked the crowd and shaped opinion, with the marble cliff of the Capitoline rising behind them. Mark Antony stood here to hand Caesar the laurel crown of kingship - which Caesar theatrically refused while quietly becoming a dictator. Cicero, a contemporary of Caesar, thundered against the corruption and luxury of the new wealth; he paid with his life, and his head and hands ended up nailed to the platform. Under the emperors, speaking truth to power grew dangerous, the Republic's spirit was crushed, and in the end the army and the emperor - rather than the senators and the people - held ultimate power in an empire rotting from within.
The trees before the Rostrum still bear the fruits the Romans held sacred: olives, for food, lamp oil and preserving; figs, for eating; and wine grapes, a prized export.
The great arch beside the Rostrum, six storeys high, dates from AD 203. Its reliefs tell of the emperor born in Africa and his campaigns in Mesopotamia; near the ground, soldiers march captured barbarians home for the victory parade. Rome's economy by then leaned ever more on slave labor and foreign plunder than on its own production, and despite capable rulers like Severus, the empire was buckling under corruption, disease and crumbling infrastructure.
The eight great columns partway up the Capitoline slope front the Forum's most ancient temple, built in 497 BC. Inside stood a modest, ancient wooden statue of Saturn, and beneath it, on the pedestal, lay the gold, silver and jewels of the state treasury - the spoils brought home by conquering generals. Older still is the Umbilicus Urbis beside Septimius Severus's arch: a plain brick stump, the 'Navel of the City,' long regarded as the navel of the universe, from which every road in the empire was measured.
Turn from the Forum's oldest building to its newest: a single fluted column surmounted by a leafy Corinthian capital, standing alone before the Rostrum. The Column of Phocas is the Forum's final monument, a gift of the Byzantine Empire to a Rome already fallen, set up in AD 608 to mark the Pantheon's conversion into a church - a last nail in the coffin of the ancient world. After a millennium of rule, the city was sacked by vandals, its million-plus population shrank to perhaps 10,000, and the great Forum was left to be buried in silt and rubble. In the 1700s the historian Edward Gibbon stood on the Capitoline, looked out at this scene, heard monks chanting among the pagan ruins, pondered the collapse of Rome - and thought: that would make a good book title.
When the walk ends and the Palatine is still unseen, do not leave the complex - your ticket will not get you back in. Head back to Titus's arch and climb the hill. If the Palatine is done and you want still more, the ticket covers the Imperial Forums: take the walkway that runs behind the Curia and into Caesar's Forum, then pass beneath the busy boulevard of Via dei Fori Imperiali to Trajan's, Augustus' and Nerva's forums. To reach the Capitoline, leave by the west side, behind the Column of Phocas.
Most visitors treat the Palatine as an afterthought to the Forum, but this hill reveals the grandeur of Rome better than almost anything else - and since it shares a ticket with the Colosseum and Forum, you have paid for it anyway. It is almost deserted by sightseers yet packed with history: Romulus's huts, the vast imperial palace, a grandstand view of the Circus Maximus - though only the barest skeletons of the buildings remain. This walk, basically a tour through the shell of one enormous palace, lets a thoughtful visitor bring the ruins back to life. It is the place to escape the crowds and feel the melancholy of ancient stones: play the Grand Tour poet or painter for an hour, musing on fallen civilizations amid palaces the wilderness has reclaimed.
The main entrance sits on Via di San Gregorio, 150 yards from the Colosseum; many people instead walk up from the Forum, by the path climbing from the Arch of Titus. Either way, the tour starts at the summit, at the one building that still stands whole: the Palatine Museum, the tall white structure at the heart of the palace complex - the single modern building among the ruins. From Via di San Gregorio, follow the long path curling upward; from the Forum, keep pushing through the rubble toward the museum. Park yourself on a stone, back to the museum's walls, facing roughly north toward the Forum, and get your bearings. Allow 1-1.5 hours, and do not skip the stadium or the Circus Maximus view. Sections of the hill are frequently roped off for excavations.
You are looking at what seems a vacant lot, but it is the heart of a vast palace. Built by Domitian around AD 81, it housed the emperors for 300 years: banquets, weddings, murders, concerts, plots, births and funerals all played out within these walls - along with, one imagines, the occasional Tupperware party. What walls, you ask? The line of umbrella pines about 200 yards to either side marks one boundary of the complex; the rebuilt brick tower at about 11 o'clock was its northwest corner; and the palace ran on behind the museum, ending at a cliff over the Circus Maximus. The wing before you was the official side; the private apartments lay behind. The complex came to be called the Domus Augustana - not for Augustus himself, but for 'august' emperors in general. A contemporary poet said it was so magnificent it made Jupiter jealous.
From the museum, go left to a large rectangular yard with an octagonal brick pattern in its center: the palace's main courtyard. The octagon formed a sunken fountain at the heart of an open-air court. Like so many grand Roman homes, the palace turned inward to an oasis of calm, catching the sun and the precious rainwater and the sound of splashing. Columns - their fragments still lie about - once lined the court beneath a shaded arcade, and the floors and walls were faced in colorful marble.
A hundred yards behind you, beyond the museum to the east and the long row of pines, lies the stadium. Lean on the railing and study this sunken, cigar-shaped space, 500 feet long - the palace's playroom. Scholars cannot agree whether it was a hippodrome, a stadium or a garden; it resembles a racecourse, but may only have held walks and plantings for quiet contemplation. The oval course at the southern end came later. The emperor perhaps watched from a raised box in the tall, curved apse across from you; the north end may have held changing rooms; the marble scraps on the ground once supported an arcade.
Between the arena garden and the museum sprawls a great brick complex: the private wing, home of the emperor and his household. All that remains is brick ruin and a mound, crowned by three olive trees, that was once a courtyard. Pick your way through the labyrinth of rooms, many rebuilt. The standard Roman recipe was a brick shell filled with concrete, finished in plaster - watch for a faded fresco here and there - or sheathed in marble; the little round pits in the walls reveal where marble slabs were pinned. The square holes held the beams of scaffolding, shelving and upper floors. Above the doorways, the brickwork arches - 'blind arches' - strengthened the walls and let them rise higher; the iron clamps are modern, holding the crumbling masonry together. The niches and apses once cradled statues: every family had its household gods and images of honored ancestors. The fallen column fragments, reliefs and sculpture hint at the palace's wealth, and some inlaid marble floors survive. The ground plan was a fantasy of small, intimate, even curving rooms.
Behind the museum, in the palace's southern part, you can look down into the ruins of a lower storey: an open court with the curving remains of a grand fountain. Rebuild the palace in your head. From the upper level, where you stand, the emperors could gaze down into it, or watch from the rooms that ring it at ground level, where the imperial family dined in private. That lower storey was cut into the hillside; the palace's southern half extended the slope, carried on the great arches beneath your feet.
Walk to the hill's far edge, right behind the museum, and look out over a long green basin: the Circus Maximus. When the Colosseum's show sold out, there was always a place at Circus Max - the ancestor of the demolition derby, where Ben-Hur and his rivals tore around this oblong course. The slope opposite once held the bleachers; the flat, dusty ground at their foot was the track, stretching away on both sides, with the starting gates on the right. Down the middle runs a long, raised strip of grass - the barrier the chariots rounded - ending in a lone cypress on the right. The track measured 1,300 feet, and the stadium seated a mind-boggling 250,000; the timber stands gave way during a race once, with thousands of deaths.
The starting gates stood at the west end, on your right; the spectators came in at the far end. A race was seven laps, about 3.5 miles, and in that tight space crashes and spills were routine. The drivers were usually poor men risking everything for fame and fortune - a few made it; most died. The crowd was addicted: 12 races a day, 240 days a year. Four stables dominated - Reds, Whites, Blues and Greens - every citizen cheering his favourite with fanatical loyalty, much as modern Romans divide between Roma and Lazio. The emperor, naturally, had the best seat: a box set into the palace's curving face above the track, from which he could even have the racing surface decorated with patterns of colored powder. Imagine the scene: roaring crowds, heavy drinking, champions strutting before their fans - to say nothing of the Rolling Stones playing here in 2014 - while the emperor watched from his intact palace and a quarter-million spectators cheered, jeered and bet wildly. The course was in use for roughly a millennium: laid out in 300 BC, it kept staging shows into Christian times, until AD 549, against the Church's wishes.
Left of the viewpoint, the Baths of Caracalla poke above the trees half a mile away; a mile further, the Appian Way left the city through a great gate, ran past the catacombs and on to Brindisi. Directly opposite rises the Aventine, one of the seven hills, now a quiet residential quarter.
The museum keeps a compact trove of statues and frescoes evoking the splendor of the imperial hill (it needs a Full Experience ticket). It is pleasant but skippable if the Capitoline Museums are on your list. Inside, start on the lower floor and follow the story from the beginning: the first room has a model of the Iron Age village of Germalus from the eighth century BC, including the Huts of Romulus you will see later. The remainder of the lower floor employs video and models to rebuild the palaces in their glory, and the final room maps the empire at its height, showing where each marble fragment came from. Upstairs, go left; at the hall's far end stands the seated Magna Mater. This goddess, the Great Mother, gave the Romans life and fertility and was adored at the neighboring Temple of Cybele. Time has destroyed her arms and foot, and a hollow was always left where her head belonged - a standard Roman trick permitting interchangeable heads; in her case the 'head' was a hallowed black meteorite, cone-shaped, that amazed the faithful when it came down from the heavens.
The Augustus room follows, with frescoes, terracotta panels and statues from the emperor's residence - snap a selfie with the surviving wings of a Victory statue - and watch for traces of the paint that once colored these figures. Another room shows frescoes and marble décor from Nero's house; then come a pair of torsos, one a tiger's, one a river god's. A gallery of portrait busts includes the infamous Nero ('Nerone') and Trajan, the last great emperor. Finally, near the entrance again, a big Muse, headless and bare-breasted, with the label 'Dresden-Zagreb type,' once adorned the Hippodrome.
From the museum, circle the main courtyard counterclockwise. You have entered the throne room, identifiable by a squat brick wall topped with a stubby, grimy white column base. This was the command center of an empire of some 50 million souls, from Britain to Africa. The curved apse, now bearing a plaque, is where the emperor sat for state business. Imagine a citizen summoned before him: you would enter through the main doorway, today a gap, at the end facing the Forum, climbing three storeys of a grand stair. Marble blazed across the floor and walls; twelve towering effigies of the gods lined the room; the barrel-vaulted ceiling soared seven storeys overhead, resting on columns as high as that distant brick tower; doors on either side opened into a law court and the emperor's own chapel. You would approach the throne in the apse, where the emperor sat in purple with a laurel crown and scepter, braziers flickering on either side, and raise your arm in salute - 'Ave, Caesar!' - the cry echoing in the great hall. Now play the emperor yourself: step onto the little white stone that marks the throne's position, just before the plaque, and survey your palace.
Past the throne, keep circling the courtyard counterclockwise until the path stops at a big field of pebbles: the imperial dining hall. The emperor dined at the far right, on a platform with a curved apse, looking down over his guests. The dining room floor, a fine inlaid marble, was warmed by fires in a cavity beneath it - look across to the two-foot space separating the two surviving floor levels - stoked by slaves from underground furnaces that pushed hot air through. Here the richest men of Rome enjoyed the plunder of the empire. Guests could glance into the next room, ten paces behind you, where an oval fountain played for the diners' amusement. Reclining on couches, served by slaves, they ordered platters of larks' tongues or roast pork stuffed with live songbirds, washed down with wine; when appetite flagged, a feather did the job of emptying the stomach so the feast could begin again. Dark-skinned dancers from Egypt or Greek flute players entertained, and guests with an appetite could take one to bed - the bedrooms lay just along the corridor. Or so the stories say: in truth many emperors were plain, hard-working men of traditional tastes - though just as many were monsters of indulgence.
Retrace a few steps from the dining room and turn west through the low brick wall's gaps, leaving the palace; a few dozen paces later you reach the gateway of the Archaeological Zone, the oldest part of Rome. Here, legend says, the twins Romulus and Remus drank at the wolf's breast; here the first settlers built their huts, the first city wall rose, and the first and holiest shrines were founded. Because Rome was born here, the emperors later built their palaces here. Walk down the paved path to see the uncovered houses of the city's original first couple - Augustus on the left, Livia on the right; whatever is open can be entered with the pricier tickets, Full Experience or Super Forum Pass. Among the ruins, mostly brick, you will notice chips of colored marble scattered everywhere: exotic stone was a boast of imperial reach. Romans knew that yellow Numidian marble came from Tunisia, the onion-swirl veined Cipollino from the Greek island of Euboea, and pink granite from Aswan in Egypt - all sliced into fine floors and wall panels for those lucky enough to be on the winning side.
Augustus - Octavian to history - lived here: the first of the emperors, and the first to live on the Palatine, setting the fashion. He saw himself as a second Romulus, so he built modestly, beside the house of the city's mythical founder and the oldest sanctuaries, rather than on Domitian's later scale. He was a frugal man of old-fashioned virtue: the clothes he wore were woven by his wife and daughter, for forty years he used the same modest bedchamber, and he worked late in his study writing his memoirs. His example kept emperors honest - until his death. The house itself, built before Octavian was emperor, is genuinely unpretentious, a world away from the later palace: a few plain rooms with superb painted frescoes. Enjoy the bright colors, the painted columns and arches, the fake windows opening onto imaginary landscapes, and the perspective effects that would inspire the Renaissance 15 centuries later. None of the marble extravagance of rich men's houses here.
Uphill from Augustus' house, on the right, stands the House of Livia. Scholars believe these fairly complete ruins, visible from outside but usually closed, were the home of Augustus' wife - because a lead pipe bearing her honorific name, 'Julia Augusta,' was found inside and is now on display.
Go to the zone's lowest corner, where a big metal roof protects a section of ruins, and press against the railing to look down into a pit of massive stones: the spot where legend places the home of Romulus and Remus - and where historians of every stripe agree Rome began. In the stony ground you can trace elliptical and rectangular outlines - the footprints of huts from about 750 BC, some with holes that held the posts of round thatched houses. The stone is tufo, soft volcanic rock, easy to cut into foundations. Think: when Augustus honored this ground and built beside it, the site was already 800 years old. Here lies the village of Germalus, whose model you saw in the museum: some forty villagers with their goats, dogs and rough implements, scratching out a living.
The legend makes Romulus and Remus sons of the very first Vestal Virgin; for reasons too tangled to repeat she was put to death and the infants cast adrift on the swollen Tiber, washing up at the foot of the Palatine. A shepherd found them in a cave just below this spot, suckled by a she-wolf; he brought them up as his children, perhaps right here. Grown, Romulus killed his brother and laid out the square-walled Roma Quadrata on the hilltop - the founding of Rome. The Romans believed this tale for centuries, honoring the wolves' cave, the Lupercale, where on every February 15 men in animal skins whipped women, and the site of Romulus' dwelling. And then, in the 1940s, the huts were dug up and the myth became archaeology; the diggers are still at work, and every season seems to confirm more of the legend. A cave found in 2007, decorated with shells, coloured stone and a wolf mosaic, could be the real Lupercale - though it is not open to visitors. Standing at Rome's cradle, trace the arc of the culture: from thatched huts to Augustus' plain house to Domitian's immense palace with its stadium and its view of the Circus Maximus. Small wonder the hill's name became our word 'palace.'
Leave the zone by the stairway marked for the Orti Farnesiani; at the top, the city opens out before you. Cross the Farnese Gardens - Renaissance grounds and pavilions built over the ruins of Tiberius' palace - past the orange grove, the aviaries, the exotic plantings, fountains and the underground grotto, to the glorious terrace at the far left. There, at a railing on what may have been the rooftop of Caligula's palace, you get the classic view down over the Forum - and you see at once why the Palatine was the city's top address. When you are done, follow the crowds winding back down into the Forum.
The Capitoline Museums make a fair claim to be the oldest public museum in the world: founded in 1471, when a pope gave the people of Rome a gift of ancient statues. Many of its pieces have become cultural icons. Perched on the Capitoline, the museum's two palaces, the Palazzo dei Conservatori and the Palazzo Nuovo, are joined by an underground passage running to the Tabularium and its panorama over the Forum. Seeing this collection matters as much as anything else you will do to grasp the scale of the Roman Empire - yet it is usually uncrowded.
Tickets are €15 (booking online is possible but rarely necessary - lines are short). Open daily 9:30-19:30, last entry one hour before closing; plan two hours. A multimedia guide costs €7, a children's audio version €5. Baggage must be checked free of charge if larger than a purse. Get your tickets at the Palazzo dei Conservatori - the palace on the right when you look at the equestrian statue - and enter there. Beware: although the hill adjoins the Victor Emmanuel Monument and the Aracoeli church alike, there is no direct route between them - you must go down to street level and climb back up. Temporary exhibitions can move objects around; consult the map or a guard.
Piazza del Campidoglio, the square atop the Capitoline, started out as a religious center, site of the temple of Jupiter, Juno and Minerva. A century and a half later, in the 1500s the pope asked Michelangelo to remake it as a setting worthy of Rome's power; his design - facades and pavement alike - became a harmonious Renaissance whole, centered on the great ancient bronze of Marcus Aurelius on horseback. He meant visitors to arrive by his grand staircase from Piazza Venezia, so that from its top they would discover the fresh Renaissance cityscape, its back deliberately turned to the Forum. Michelangelo used the 'giant order': oversized pilasters make the two-storey palaces read as one harmonious storey, and the statues on the rooflines welcome you in. Behind the statue's copy stands the mayoral palace, the Palazzo Senatorio; the square, ancient Rome's religious and political heart, still houses the city government. Below the mayoral palace, terraces offer fine Forum views; a she-wolf copy stands on its column to the left, and lower down, the drinking fountain il nasone - 'the big nose' - shoots water upward when you cover the spout. Locals joke that a stingy boyfriend treats his girl to a drink at il nasone. The piazza sits at the edge of the centro-storico, with the Tridente and Trevi district just beyond the enormous Piazza Venezia below.
Past the ticket check, the courtyard of the Palazzo dei Conservatori displays the colossal fragments of Constantine: a head, a hand, feet, a bicep and more. Whole, this 30-foot seated emperor ruled the hall of the Basilica of Constantine. Imagine the year AD 330 and stare up at him - an abstract emblem of power, his face unearthly, impossible to connect with. You are a subject, not a citizen; the idea of divine-right monarchy begins here. Only the extremities survive because a statue this size was not solid marble - the core was cheaper material, like brick. Study the vein on the bicep and the mortise-and-tenon joinery, and wonder at the engineering of this colossus. The courtyard also holds reliefs of conquered peoples - shown not in chains but as new members of a vast commonwealth: provinces like Gaul, Britannia and Thracia, dating to Hadrian's reign in the second century, who preferred to run the empire as a shared enterprise rather than a plundered one.
On the staircase landing, four fine panels depict the working day of a good emperor. Rome communicated through public images, using art as propaganda, so the reliefs show the duties expected of a ruler: conquest, oratory, sacrifice. Three of the four feature Marcus Aurelius, the philosopher-emperor who fought so hard to keep the barbarians out. In one he arrives on horseback, striking the pose of the bronze in the piazza, hand extended to spare his defeated enemies - the faces are expressive, the banners blow in the wind. In another he enters Rome in triumph on a chariot; a second figure once rode beside him, Commodus - the bad seed, and Russell Crowe's movie foe in Gladiator. After his murder, Commodus' memory was damned and his images were chiseled away - though, as we shall see, one survived. In the last panel, the good emperor receives priests preparing to offer a bull to the gods in gratitude, the bull himself looking on with curiosity.
Rooms 4 through 15 are themselves works of art: Murano chandeliers, painted coffered ceilings, fabric-covered walls, marble floors inlaid, medallions honouring papal gifts, and playful grotesque frescoes. In Room 8, look up at a fresco that has decorated the room since the 16th century, when this was a municipal palace: a triumph of ancient Rome. Spot the wagon of captured enemy armor and turn a full circle as if marching in the parade - another victory, the troops hauling home bronze and marble statues, the emperor in his quadriga, prisoners bound for your contempt, then the sacrificial bulls, the trumpets and the grateful crowd. Room 10 holds a Michelangelo bust, black, cast from his death mask, on the left; Bernini's anguished Medusa, snakes writhing on her head - far worse than a bad hair day; watch Bernini turn a carved strand of hair into a writhing serpent, with the city and St. Peter's dome in the window as a bonus. Room 12 shows the Artemis of Ephesus, draped in a remarkable cascade of bull testicles, breasts or, possibly, puka shells - nobody knows. Room 13 displays Greek red-figure vases and the lift to the café on the second floor - coffee break? Room 15 holds a fourth-century chariot plus a startlingly lifelike bronze horse.
Climb the seven stairs to meet an imperial brat who dashed about the palace wearing animal skins, convinced he was Hercules - or at least played the part. He presents himself in a lion's scalp, the paws draped across his chest. As a ruler, this lion-king proved a disaster (r. AD 180-192). A gifted athlete and a thug, he mixed with common gladiators and stepped into the ring himself; the matches were rigged - nobody dared wound the emperor - so his victims were simply butchered, some clubbed with his beloved Hercules weapon. The people loathed him, and he quarreled with his father, the scholar-emperor Marcus Aurelius. The statue belongs to the late second century, an age of decadence and decline: the emperor preens, the gravitas has vanished, and the empire will follow. Admire the curled hair and beard, the polished skin, the manicured nails, and the emblems of the stars, fertility and plenty. His memory was damned - remember him erased from the panel downstairs - yet this masterpiece somehow came through.
Facing Commodus, his father is behind you on his horse: Marcus Aurelius (c. AD 176), in the only surviving bronze horseman of any emperor. Marcus was a philosopher-emperor (r. AD 161-180), famed for his Meditations rather than his campaigns; his raised hand offers clemency to the conquered, and the patina of centuries seems to drip from him. He shares his son's fine features, but he serves the glory of Rome, not of himself. Medieval Christians read the raised hand as a blessing and took him for the first Christian emperor, Constantine - which saved him: while pagan statues were smashed, this 'Constantine' was spared, displayed at several important sites, including the popes' residence at San Giovanni in Laterano. Then, in 1538, the gilded bronze was set at the center of the Campidoglio, and Michelangelo was commissioned to design the surrounding buildings with it as the focus. Recently the original was moved indoors for restoration, and the statue outside is a copy. Note the missing stirrups - that Asian invention would not reach Europe for another 500 years.
The same room holds more fragments - head, hand, globe - of another Constantine statue, plus two of the most celebrated bronzes of antiquity. The Boy Extracting a Thorn is simply a lad pulling a splinter from his foot: bent over, his body juts out at awkward angles like a scrawny chicken wing, scuffed like any small boy. Only that thorn matters to him - one of those mundane moments we all know, when we would kill for a pair of tweezers, and which art so rarely records. His eyes were once inlaid, like those of the neighboring bronze Brutus, one of Caesar's killers. That splendid bust sums up the Roman character: resolute, thoughtful, no-nonsense, capable - and its ivory eyes are original.
A few paces on is the bronze she-wolf herself, nursing the twins Romulus and Remus. The emblem of Rome is ancient, but the bronze wolf itself - long credited to Etruscan artists of the 400s BC - was actually poured in the 1200s, and the twins were added in the 15th. Look into her eyes: an animal looks back, torn ears, bared teeth, a fixed stare. A wild beast nursing the hungriest creatures imaginable - infants - a fitting emblem for the tenacious city and empire of Rome.
A ramp from this room leads to a great dark wall of ancient blocks: the foundations of Jupiter's great temple - Giove to the Italians - once the most imposing sanctuary in Rome. A transparent scale model, 1:40, with tiny painted figures, gives a sense of scale and of your own position amid the remains. You are facing a wall that has crowned the Capitol for more than 2,500 years, still in place - the museum was built around it. The father of the gods lived in this 10,000-square-foot temple on its podium, ringed with Greek columns, looking down over the city. The most solemn rites took place here, and the victory parades of the Forum ended here; copies were built in every Roman colony. Begun by the last king, Tarquin, it was dedicated in 509 BC, the founding date of the Republic. All that is left are foundation stones of volcanic tuff, soft and easy to work: hundreds of blocks, yet only part of an immense base that was itself a small portion of the temple. In its prime the building rose two storeys overhead, sheltering a statue of the thunder-god with his lightning bolt; over the centuries it was rebuilt time and again, usually after being struck by - of course - lightning.
When you leave this wing, descend the stairs, then follow the signs for the Tabularium, crossing under the piazza via the Epigraphic Gallery (Galleria Lapidaria), lined with inscriptions in Greek and Latin. Beautifully lit, transcribed and explained, these carved texts feel strangely intimate, a direct line to the dead; the cool, quiet gallery is arranged by theme, from the army to the law to burials. Halfway along on the right, stairs descend to the vaults of the first century BC, the Tabularium, with bare rooms and a grand view of the Forum. These sturdy halls once stored the state archives - the name comes from the 'tablet' on which Rome's laws were recorded. The highlight is the head-on panorama of the Forum, which gives you the full sweep of ancient Rome. Pan left to right and you will see: the arch raised for Septimius Severus; far off, the arch of Titus; the solitary Column of Phocas; the triplet from Castor and Pollux's temple; the Palatine look-out; the eight columns of Saturn's temple close by; and nearest of all, the trio from the Temple of Vespasian. Turn around and look up: a huge block of carved white marble rides on pillars above you, a fragment of the Temple of Vespasian. Wander beneath the soaring vault and consider the engineering: Rome was not really built of marble. The Romans fired thin bricks and invented concrete, raising their great structures in brick and concrete and only then facing them with marble.
Leave the Tabularium, descend the stairs, turn right past a modest WC and climb three flights into the Palazzo Nuovo, right up to the top floor. Continue into Room 66, the Hall of the Gaul, for a masterpiece of the museum: the Dying Gaul, a copy made in the first century BC after a Greek work, created to commemorate the Greek triumph over the Galatians. The Roman version shows a warrior struck down in battle, holding himself upright - barely. Moments before the sword found his chest he had been at his peak; now all he can do is watch his life ebb away, his weapon useless against this final foe. With his tangled hair, eyes downcast, body crumpled, he is a reminder that every victory brings a defeat.
The rooms that follow are full of treasures. In Room 65, a faun in red marble revels in grapes and life, unaware of his lost penis - at least his tail remains; found among two dozen pieces at Hadrian's Villa, he has been skillfully restored, and the chandeliered ceilings remind you this is a true palazzo. The Great Hall (Room 64) shows more pieces from the Villa of Hadrian and other sites: note the Amazon by the window, one breast bared in the Amazonian manner so it would not hinder her archery, standing in classical contrapposto with her weight on one leg - a Roman replica of a Greek work by Polycletus, fifth century BC. Then come two galleries of portraits: the Hall of Philosophers (Room 63) honors Socrates, Homer, Euripides, Cicero and others; the Hall of Emperors (Room 62, in the corner) is dominated by Constantine's mother Helena, resting after her pilgrimage to Jerusalem in search of the True Cross. In this three-dimensional yearbook of antiquity, find the purple-chested Caracalla: notorious for his brutality, he told his portraitists to emphasize his cruelty - and they obliged. On the shelf opposite, the largest bust, labeled Traiano Decio, is among the finest pieces of late antiquity: the Emperor Decius of the third century, whose worried face shows a ruler watching his empire slide. Confidence, ferocity and despair - the whole drama of humanity - hang in these rooms; and before you leave, admire the delicate fashions of Roman women's hair.
Follow the corridor, turn right and continue; on your left, a small octagonal chamber holds a gem of the museum: the Capitoline Venus, a Roman work modelled on a Praxitelean Greek original of the fourth century BC. Venus, fresh from her bath, senses she is being watched; she turns and instinctively covers herself, almost. Her blank eyes carry no emotion, her elaborate hair the only fussy detail; she is merely beautiful, erotic in a generic way. Then find Room 60, the final room before the stairs, on the left, and amid the busts, the Mosaic of Doves: its four birds perch along the lip of a bronze bowl while one of them drinks. Made of minute tesserae, this exquisite small work was found in the floor of a room at Hadrian's Villa; it is a second-century AD mosaic based on an earlier Greek composition. Everyone knows ancient Rome was grand; this museum proves its taste was refined too. Before you go, take a slow turn around this final room and meet the gazes of the people who truly underpinned Rome.
To leave, descend to ground level and follow the signs to the uscita, pausing for a picture with Marforio, the colossal river god. To see the modern (and temporary) reconstruction of the Constantine statue mentioned earlier, go right around the Conservatori palace, keeping close to its flank, until you reach the little garden where the looming emperor presides. Back on the piazza, take a last look: watch for newlyweds in wedding finery - civil marriages are performed in a hall here - admire Marcus Aurelius once more and how Michelangelo gave the hilltop its architectural unity, then come down his grand staircase into the modern city.