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.

Percy Bysshe Shelley

The English poet (1792– 1822) lived in Italy with his wife Mary from 1818 until he drowned near Pisa. He visited Rome often, and penned the masterpiece The Cenci about the scandal of Roman patrician Beatrice Cenci.
Petronius

Petronius (70–130) parodied Roman life in Satiricon .
Philosophy di Alberta Ferretti

Well-cut women’s clothing that is feminine yet powerful and modern.
Piazza Barberini

This busy piazza is centred on Bernini’s Triton Fountain (1642–3), the merman spouting water from a conch shell. It was commissioned by Pope Urban VIII and features his family symbol (bees) on its base.
Piazza Barberini

This could be called the “piazza of the bees”, the Barberini family symbol (judiciously upgraded from horseflies when their fortunes improved). Both of the piazza’s fountains by Bernini have large, mutant-like versions of the busy insects carved onto them, to let everyone know who sponsored their creation. The central figure of a triton blowing his conch is one of Rome’s most appealing and memorable, made of travertine that takes on a warm honey colour. The other fountain is a simple scallop shell (see Palazzo Barberini).
Piazza Cairoli

One of the very newest city parks makes an ideal break from this hectic district. Sitting on a bench by a well-tended lawn, with flowers in bloom and the gently splashing fountain, can go a long way towards restoring frayed nerves.
Piazza del Popolo

Architect Giuseppe Valadier expanded this site of festivals and public executions into an elegant piazza in 1811–23, adding four Egyptian-style lion fountains to the base of one of Rome’s oldest obelisks. The 1200 BC Ramases II monolith was moved to the Circus Maximus by Augustus then placed here by Pope Sixtus V.
Piazza del Popolo

Rome’s elegant public living room started as a trapezoidal piazza in 1538. In 1589, Sixtus V had Domenico Fontana build a fountain crowned with a 3,200-year-old obelisk – the 25-m (82-ft) megalith from Heliopolis, honouring Ramses II, was brought to Rome by Augustus. Napoleon’s man in Rome hired Giuseppe Valadier to overhaul the piazza to its current Neo-Classical look in 1811–24, a giant oval that grades up the steep slope of the Pincio via a winding road. Valadier also added the fountain’s Egyptian-style lions (see Santa Maria del Popolo).
Piazza della Rotonda

The square in front of the Pantheon was filled with a boisterous daily market until 1847; some of the Pantheon’s portico columns still bear square holes from the stall posts once set into them. The square is now filled with tourists, outdoor tables of cafés, and horse-drawn carriages, all ranged around Giacomo della Porta’s 1575 fountain, which supports a tiny Egyptian obelisk dedicated to Ramses II.
Piazza di Montecitorio

The square’s obelisk was once part of the Augustus’s giant sundial, which used to be flanked by the Ara Pacis.