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Everything you might require for romance can be found in this candlelit hideaway restaurant on an ancient street. The poetic decor has a ballet theme and the atmosphere is suitably soft and subdued. Rigatoni alla crema di cavoli (fluted pasta with cream of cabbage sauce) is the unusual house speciality, and the turkey breast with mozzarella and mushrooms is equally delicious.

Rome’s zoo, once a depressing conglomeration of badly kept cement cubicles, has been overhauled to become a pretty (if relatively minor) “biological garden” set into a corner of Villa Borghese park.

Fantastically creepy chapels festively decorated with mosaics made from the bones of dead monks, a few of whose skeletons remain propped up in bone-built niches. It rarely fails to impress, and for adolescents and above can be a highlight of the trip, although it may be a bit too much for the very young or overly squeamish.

There is much to attract in this area of the Alban Hills. Swim in Lago di Albano, or visit Palazzo Chigi in Ariccia, a Baroque complex designed by Bernini in the 17th century.

The necropolis of this 6th-century BC city is still quite intact, complete with streets, houses and frescoes.

A welcome break from all the art of the Vatican complex. You get great views not only from the lantern atop the dome, across Piazza San Pietro towards the River Tiber, but also from the drum halfway up, which offers a bird’s-eye perspective down into the transept of St Peter’s Basilica itself (see Features of St Peter’s Basilica).

This museum near the city centre is specifically designed with children in mind. It allows youngsters to understand how things work through fascinating hands-on displays

There is nothing more thrillingly spooky in Rome than wandering these mazes of tight, dimly lit corridors, roughly carved in the tufa and lined with thousands of tomb niches. At the San Domitilla complex, some guides even let you touch a few of the bones – at most others, all human remains have been removed to ossuaries on lower levels (see Catacombs of Domitilla).