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Augustus Caesar built this “Altar of Peace” between 13 BC and 9 BC to celebrate the famed pax romana (Roman peace) he instituted – largely by subjugating most of Western Europe, the Levant and North Africa. Fragments of the altar were excavated over several centuries, and in the 1920s Mussolini placed the reconstituted Ara Pacis by Augustus’s Mausoleum. The altar is now housed in a Richard Meier-designed museum, the first modern structure to rise in the centre of Rome in 70 years.

An example of Bernini’s fun-loving side. This baby elephant, carved to the master’s designs by Ercole Ferrata in 1667, carries a miniature 6th-century BC Egyptian obelisk on its back. It is a tongue-in-cheek reference to Carthaginian leader Hannibal’s war elephants, which carried tall siege towers across the Alps to attack the Roman Empire in 218 BC.

Trajan’s Column was such a success (see Trajan’s Forum and Column) that this 29.5-m (97-ft) one was erected in AD 180–93 to honour the military career of Marcus Aurelius. The spiral of reliefs celebrates his campaigns against the Germans (169–73) on the bottom and the Sarmatians (174–76) on the top. In 1588, Pope Sixtus V replaced the statues of the emperor and his wife with that of St Paul.

The best of the private collection galleries in Rome. In addition to paintings by Rubens, Correggio, Tintoretto, Carracci and Brueghel, star works include Caravaggio’s Mary Magdalene , Rest on the Flight into Egypt , and Young St John the Baptist (a copy he made of his Capitoline version); Titian’s Salome with the Head of John the Baptist ; and Bernini’s bust of Pope Innocent X.

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.

The only truly Gothic church in Rome, possibly built, as the name suggests, atop a temple to Minerva. Michelangelo’s bold Risen Christ (1514–21) is a muscular rendition of the Saviour so shockingly nude that church officials added the bronze wisp of drapery. Filippino Lippi frescoed the last chapel on the right; the lower scene on the right wall includes portraits of young Giovanni and Giulio de’ Medici (better known as Popes Leo X and Clement VII), who are buried in tombs by Antonio Sangallo the Younger, in the apse, along with Fra’ Angelico and (most of) St Catherine of Siena.

When the Jesuits’s new Baroque church was finished in 1685, it still lacked a dome. Master of trompe-l’oeil Andrea Pozzo used his flawless technique to create the illusion of an airy dome on the flat circle of ceiling over the church’s crossing; stand on the yellow marble disc for the full effect, then walk directly under the “dome” to see how skewed the painting actually is. Pozzo also painted the nave vault with the lovely Glory of Sant’Ignazio .

“Simple, erect, severe, austere, sublime” – even Lord Byron struggled to find words to express this marvel of ancient Roman architecture, the only ancient Roman temple to survive the millennia virtually intact.