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.

Piazza di Sant’Ignazio

Francesco Raguzzini laid out this masterpiece of Baroque urban design for the Jesuits in 1727–8, creating a stage set of a piazza carefully planned right down to the ornate iron balconies and matching dusty pink plaster walls.
Piazza Navona

The elongated oval of Rome’s loveliest square hints that it is built atop Domitian’s ancient stadium (see Domitian’s Stadium). This pedestrian paradise is filled with cafés, street performers and artists, milling tourists, kids playing football, and splashing fountains. Bernini designed the central Fountain of Four Rivers, and added the Moor figure to the most southerly of the piazza’s other two fountains, constantly altered from the 16th to 19th centuries.
Piazza Navona

One of Rome’s loveliest pedestrian squares is studded with fountains and lined with palaces, such as the Pamphilj, the church of Sant’Agnese, and classy cafés such as Tre Scalini.
Piazza Navona

Piazza Navona is my favorite place to grab a carafe of wine and people watch for hours. It is comical to watch the purse and watch vendors try to evade the police, as they drive in circles around the Piazza which used to be the site of Roman chariott races. During the Summer of 2008 the Bernini fountain was under restoration and covered by scaffolding, but the Piazza is still a great place to go and grab a table to watch the action.
Piazza of the Knights of Malta

Everyone comes here for the famous bronze keyhole view of St Peter’s Basilica, ideally framed by an arbour of perfect trees (see Knights of Malta Keyhole). However, it’s also worth a look for the piazza’s wonderful 18th-century decoration by Giambattista Piranesi, otherwise renowned for his powerful engravings of fantasy-antiquity scenes. To honour the ancient order of crusading knights (founded in 1080), the architect chose to adorn the walls with dwarf obelisks and trophy armour, in the ancient style. Originally based on the island of Rhodes, then Malta, the knights are now centred in Rome.
Piazza San Cosimato

Trastevere’s lively fruit and vegetable market. Monday to Saturday mornings.
Piazza San Pietro

Bernini’s gargantuan colonnade, 196 m (640 ft) across, embraces the hordes of worshippers and tourists arriving at St Peter’s. Its perfect ellipse is confirmed by the optical illusion of disappearing columns afforded by standing at one of the focus points – marble discs set between the central 1st-century BC obelisk, carved in Egypt for a Roman Prefect, and either fountain: Bernini’s on the left, Domenico Fontana’s on the right.
Piazza Santa Maria in Trastevere

A perfect neighbourhood square: cafés, shops, a fine restaurant, and a 17th-century palazzo abutting a medieval church, its mosaics romantically floodlit at night. A fountain fitted with shells by Carlo Fontana (1682) atop a pedestal of stairs serves as benches for backpackers to strum guitars and tourists to eat ice cream (see Santa Maria in Trastevere).
Piazza Sant’Eustachio

A lovely square, home to two cafés competing for Rome’s “best cappuccino ” title, as well as an 1196 bell tower, and an excellent view of Sant’Ivo (see A Morning Stroll around the Pantheon).
Piazza Testaccio

A covered market with lavish displays of nature’s bounty. Monday to Saturday mornings.