Rome Travel Guide

05/01/2024

Tour privato di Ostia Antica.
Solo per intenditori

13/09/2023

28/06/2023

Augusto, uno dei due gatti guardiani del Colosseo

23/06/2023

A pochi km da Roma, verso il litorale, c'è un luogo magico chiamato

21/05/2023

Il cortile interno di é uno dei giardini poco conosciuti nel centro di . Un giardino rinascimentale lontano dal caos dove riposarsi qualche minuto mentre si esplora la Città Eterna

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06/07/2021

Under the church of St Joseph, next to the Roman Forum, is the oldest prison of Ancient Rome where famous enemies of the Roman State were strangled or just kept waiting for their trial, including St Peter, St Paul and Vercingetorix King of the Gauls defeated by Julius Ceasar.
The hole you see on the floor was the way in.
According to the cristian tradition, Peter & Paul made water come out from the earth and converted their guardians (Processus & Martinianus) before leaving.

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08/06/2021

The Leontocephalus, in the wonderful collection of the Vatican Museums, is hidden behind a corner and invisible to most people, as if to recall the dark places to which it belonged: the Mithraic Mysteries.
It has been associated with Time, which with its voracity tears apart the days, flies away (seen the little wings?), continually renewing Nature like a snake that changes its skin.
The perfect place to talk about Mithraism is Ostia Antica, the ancient port of Rome and, above all, a multi-religious community where archeologists have found 17 mithraeums

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03/05/2021

The first time I can recall going inside, as a teenager in the early 90's, the Colosseum was free of charge, almost empty and full of cats. Then mass tourism exploded and all the feline community was moved to another site. Only one still lived as a 'guardian' inside the symbol of the city: Nerina. You could see her sneaking in and out of the ruins, sleeping on an ancient column and get close as a star of Hollywood on the Tiber.
RIP 🖤

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21/04/2021

On the anniversary of the Birth of Rome (April 21st 753 BC), the splendid Zodiac Fountain in Ostia Lido reopens after a five-year restoration of the mosaics and plumbing.
Designed by Pier Luigi Nervi in ​​1955, one year after the completion of Via Cristoforo Colombo, it offers beautiful water plays and a sunset loved by Romans who immediately took advantage of it.
A camera system linked to the municipal police will hopefully protect her from vandals.
According to tradition, it was on this coast that Aeneas landed, the progenitor of the Latin lineage from which the Eternal City was born, which has always had an indissoluble link with its sea.

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02/04/2021

A silent and empty Rome has welcomed me today.
A privilege that I hope to loose soon

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09/03/2021

In the eastern suburbs of Rome (between Villa Gordiani and Centocelle) I have noticed these works.
Street Art not only gives color to the neighborhoods but often tells us its stories which, if you look closely, are everywhere .. The talent and communicative strength of the writers is now recognized so that condominiums accept willingly a mural on their homes and many shopkeepers (in Centocelle I have seen many) advertise their business with captivating paintings ..

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01/03/2021

Today the Mausoleum of Augustus (and of Livia, Agrippa, Marcellus and others of his lineage) reopens to the public after many years. Below is a preview of some photos taken yesterday, thanks to a special entrance.
The whole area around is about to be requalified, as shown in the model of the first picture.

The Mausoleum of Augustus was built in 28 BC, immediately after the victory of Actium over Marcus Antonius and Cleopatra as an imposing dynastic funerary monument for Augustus and his family. It is the largest circular tomb of the ancient world, with a total diameter of almost 90 meters, with an assumed height of at least 45 meters (approximately one third of the original roman monument remains). The gigantic bulk, which almost equaled the summit of the nearby Pincio hill, was strategically located near the bank of the Tiber, to be visible from most of the city.

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23/02/2021

THE TOMB OF JOHN KEATS AT THE NON-CATHOLIC CEMETERY IN ROME
Two hundred years ago, on February 23, 1821, the poet John Keats, born in London on October 31, 1795, died in Rome, one of the most significant exponents of English Romanticism.
Keats fell ill with tuberculosis and the doctors advised him to move to Rome hoping that a warmer climate would benefit him. So he did and reached the capital in 1818 with his painter friend Joseph Severn. During the months in Rome Keats lived and died at no. 26 of Piazza di Spagna, in that building to the right of the Spanish Steps where the Keats Shelley memorial house is now located.
When Keats felt that the end was approaching, he sent Severn to see the place of his burial and was told that the wildflowers, daisies, white violets and blue flowers that Keats loved very much and rejoiced and very romantically grew there. he said that he already thought he could feel the flowers growing above his body.
When he died on February 23, 1821, at the age of only twenty-five he was buried in that place so well described by his friend Severn: the non-Catholic cemetery in Rome, near the pyramid of Caio Cestio. On his grave Keats wanted neither the name nor the date of death written, but simply a short epitaph, which reads as follows: "This tomb contains the mortal remains of a YOUNG ENGLISH POET who, on his deathbed, in the bitterness of his heart, faced with the evil power of his enemies, wanted these words to be engraved on his tombstone: "Here lies a man whose name was writ in the water".
On his grave is a Greek lyre with four of the eight strings broken to mean, as Severn later explained, "his Classical Genius broken by premature death". Next to Keats is buried Joseph Severn, his painter friend on whose tombstone is engraved a palette and the inscription: "In memory of Joseph Severn, devoted friend and deathbed companion of John Keats, who survived to see him counted among the poets immortals of England.

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25/01/2021

🇮🇹 Dal 1847, il Mezzogiorno alla cittá lo diamo così. Serviva per coordinare il suono delle campane ma al giorno d'oggi qualcosa è andato storto visto che molte suonano prima dello sparo..
🇬🇧 In Rome We've been announcing Noon this way since 1847. It had to coordinate the bell ringing but something went wrong in the modern times since some churches anticipate the sound..
(countdown - for Saint Barbara - fire - target hit)