There’s a way certain cities wash over you, embrace you, make you love them, make you plan to return before you even leave. And there are others you know you may only visit once, but you can still appreciate them for all they are.
Rome was the latter for me. It didn’t grip me as other places have, but there are so many beautiful aspects of the city that contributed so much to civilization.
It’s really unreal to stand in the Colosseum, where gladiators fought when it opened in 80 AD. I mean, 80 AD?! How incredible that relics like that are still standing. That we can imagine a life so far before us that neither generation would recognize the other. The same goes for the Roman Forum, the center of daily life in the city, or Palatine Hill, where the emperor of Rome would have retired after handling the business of his empire. Even places like the Pantheon in all its grandeur, that looks so oddly ancient amid much newer buildings and pizza joints and hustlers slinging selfie sticks.
You have to admire a place whose people invented newspapers, aqueducts, concrete, roads and the Roman arches that are the reason these ruins are still standing some 2,000 years later.
Rome is definitely a place worth seeing in your life, and if you decide to go, here are a handful of things to look out for.
The Vatican
Whether you’re Christian or not, religious or otherwise, if you appreciate art, you’ll be hard pressed to find greater works of art and sculpture than what you’ll find lining the walls and ceilings of the Vatican. From the Gallery of Maps (which is enough to get any map-loving traveler super excited), to tapestries so intricate you can’t quite fathom how they were created, to the gilded church the Pope prays from, and of course, the Sistine Chapel itself. It took Michelangelo Buonarroti (I just learned his last name, too. He was probably like the first Madonna or Beyoncé with that first-name-only-fame) four years to paint the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, which stands 68 feet high and covers over 5,000 square feet—or about the full size of a basketball court. It’s a little magical to see the famed Creation of Adam, where the two hands meet, right in the center of the ceiling.
Pasta with a view
If you’ve never been to Italy, you’ve never had pasta. No matter how good you think your local Italian restaurant is—even if it’s in Brooklyn and made by actual Italians, it’s. still. not. the. same. Welcome to your pasta dreams come true. It’s fresh, cooked to the perfect consistency and so tasty you could easily eat it for two weeks straight for lunch and dinner and never tire of it. Not far from the Colosseum and the Roman Forum, there’s Delizie & Sapori on Via Cavour. You’ll dine outdoors, weather permitting, watching Roman life and Vespas zipping by as the backdrop to your meal. Try the fresh made garlic bread, the bucatini amatriciana and the lasagna.
Life’s greatest gelato
In Italy, there is gelato everywhere you turn. As in EVERYWHERE. Naturally, I made it my mission to have gelato as often as was possible, doing so across Milan, Venice and Rome. After all of that, La Dolce Vita gelato on Via Cavour just up the road from the Roman Forum ruins, was by far the best. The gelato is made fresh on site and it tastes that way. The banana tasted like actual bananas made even better by being gelato-ized. The Nutella flavor had beautiful streaks of actual Nutella dancing throughout it. Don’t wait until the end of your trip to try this one because I promise you’ll want to go back.