DK Travel : Rome

Although functioning as a vibrant, modern capital akin to any in Europe, the unique appeal of Rome is that the entire city is a vast, 3,000-year-old, indoor-outdoor museum. In every quarter you’ll find ancient monuments, art treasures and timeless architecture in churches, galleries and protected ruins. Home to the world’s smallest city, the Vatican, Rome has religion at its heart and history in its soul – a city that dazzles and inspires visitors time and time again.

Jackie O’

As the name implies, this was a leading watering-hole and club in the 1960s. It still attracts international stars. Call ahead if you are not world-famous.
Jenny Fur

Bargain leather jackets and furs, some of it high quality, all of it made in Italy.
John Bull Pub

American-style bar positively hopping nightly with plenty of lively young students, both foreign and Italian.
John Keats

The English Romantic poet (1795–1821) came to Rome in 1820 for the antiquities and Italian lifestyle – and to bolster his ailing health, which nevertheless failed. Keats died at age 25 of tuberculosis in an apartment by the Spanish Steps (see The Spanish Steps and Piazza di Spagna).
John Paul II

The first non-Italian Pope for over 400 years, John Paul II (1920-2005), was famed for his extensive travelling.
Jonathan’s Angels

A must-see for its outlandish decor, which was the brainchild of the proprietor Jonathan, a former circus performer and also the artist. Taking a cue from his Baroque forbears, he’s covered practically every square inch of the place with squirming colour. There’s a piano bar and floor shows.
Jonathan’s Angels

Perhaps Rome’s most unique and kitsch nightspot, which should be seen to be believed. Run by a former circus acrobat, it is eccentrically decorated, with a piano bar, tables out on the narrow alley strung with fairy lights, and the occasional impromptu floor show.
Julius II

Warrior pope and patron of the arts (1513–21), he hired Michelangelo for the Sistine Chapel and Raphael to decorate his apartment (see , .
Juvenal

Romans invented satire; Juvenal (60–130) perfected the form in his poems.
Keats-Shelley Memorial

The pink-stuccoed apartment overlooking the Spanish Steps, where 25-year-old John Keats breathed his last, consumptive breath in 1821, has been turned into a modest little museum dedicated to the Romantic-era British poets who lived part of their lives in Rome (see John Keats). Main displays include documents, letters, copies of publications, and Keats’s death mask. Companion Joseph Severn cradled Keats’s head as he died; his resultant drawing of Keats on his Deathbed is also on exhibit.