Things to do in Rome

Landmark · Centro storico

The amphitheatre and the archaeological spine of the ancient city running to the Palatine.

Local tip: Residents of Rome can buy an annual pass to the archaeological park for the price of about two tickets, which turns the Forum into a place you walk through on a Sunday rather than a day out. Tickets are timed and the underground and arena levels sell out weeks ahead.

Neighborhood · West bank, south of the Vatican

Ochre lanes, ivy, and the old working-class quarter that became the city's most photographed neighbourhood.

Local tip: West of Viale di Trastevere is the tourist half. East of it, toward Piazza San Cosimato, is where people actually live and where the morning market still runs. The Gianicolo hill above has the best free view in Rome and a cannon fired at noon every day.

Food · South of the centre, on the Tiber

The old slaughterhouse district and the birthplace of Roman offal cooking, now the city's most serious food neighbourhood.

Local tip: The covered market is the point — go before one o'clock. Monte Testaccio behind it is an artificial hill made entirely of two thousand years of broken Roman amphorae, and the clubs are built into its base.

Nature · West, above Trastevere

Rome's largest park — 184 hectares of umbrella pines, meadows and a formal garden, and almost entirely local.

Local tip: Visitors go to Villa Borghese; Romans run here. Enter from Via di San Pancrazio for the formal gardens or Via Vitellia for the open ground. Sundays it fills with families and stays quiet the rest of the week.

Neighborhood · South, along the Tiber

Industrial archaeology turned nightlife district, next to a 1920s garden-city experiment of courtyards and staircases.

Local tip: The Centrale Montemartini museum puts classical sculpture among the turbines of a decommissioned power station and is the best-value museum in Rome. Garbatella next door is a listed housing experiment and one of the few genuinely intact community neighbourhoods left inside the ring road.

Culture · Trieste, north-east of Villa Borghese

A tiny 1920s fantasy district of Art Nouveau, medieval pastiche and Assyrian ornament, built around one square.

Local tip: Four streets in total, entered under an iron arch on Via Dora, and most visitors to Rome never hear of it. Free, always open, and best in late afternoon light. Combine it with the Villa Torlonia park ten minutes away.