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Rome is a ghost town in August and unbearably hot. Most Italians go on holiday for the month and while most sights are open and hotels are emptier, many shops and restaurants are closed, and you’re only seeing the tourist side of the city, not its true nature (see When to Go).

Pickpockets infest many of Rome’s streets, squares and metro stations but are worst and at their most aggressive at a few prime tourist bottlenecks: the narrow pavement around the Vatican walls from the museums to St Peter’s; around the Forum, especially the road from the back of the Capitoline; and the pedestrianized via dei Pastini and via di Pietra from the Pantheon to the Trevi Fountain.

Yes, you get in for free the last Sunday of each month, but the trade-off is that the museums – often claustrophobic even on a good day – become a crush of bodies.

With rare exceptions, the restaurants that cluster around Rome’s two prime tourist spots, advertising menus in six languages and often planted with a waiter waving you over, put the Roman dining experience to shame. No self-respecting Italian patronizes them, and you would be wise to avoid them.

The homeless and dispossessed congregating in the dull train station neighbourhood, home to a glut of budget hotels, make it unsavoury after dark. Generally, the streets south of the station are darker and more dangerous than those to the north.

The “Pickpocket Express” or “Wallet Eater” trundling from Termini to St Peter’s has long held the title for the worst pickpocketing bus in Rome. It now faces competition from the No. 40, an express bus on the same route. Keep your wits about you, and one hand on your wallet or purse.

The worst travel accessory ever invented. Nothing has pleased the world’s pickpockets more than the popularity of these pouches, which place all of your most important belongings discreetly below eye-level and at the perfect height for a light-fingered thief to rifle through at his leisure.

A car is utterly unnecessary in Rome: many of its sights are on pedestrian roads so you can’t drive to them anyway, and parking spaces at those accessible by car are almost impossible to find. All parking in the city is limited and preposterously expensive, and to the uninitiated, Italians seem to drive like maniacs (see Getting around Rome). Save renting a car until the last day of your stay in Rome and use it only to drive out of town.

Save these areas for a different day as two of the more important sights on the Tiber Bend are closed on Thursday: Sant’ Agostino with its unmissable Caravaggio works (see Piazza Navona) and the painting collection of the Galleria Doria Pamphilj.

Two words: tour buses. These are actually worse on Saturday, now that all vehicular traffic save a public minibus is diverted off the Via Appia Antica (the catacombs’s main access road) on Sundays (see Catacombs of Domitilla).