A guide to Rome’s most fascinating, lesser-known attractions
They say one lifetime is not enough to see and discover all of Rome’s beauty. This is even more true when you consider that, beyond its most famous sights, the city hides a series of lesser-known gems, far from the usual itineraries. If you’re curious, take a look at our guide: it will lead you to 10 wonders that most of the tourists crowding Rome’s streets every day never get to see.
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39 Best Things to Do in Rome
Arco dei Banchi
Underpass between Via del Banco di Santo Spirito and Via Paola
Free entry
The Arco dei Banchi is a charming covered pedestrian passage connecting Via del Banco di Santo Spirito to Via Paola, just a short walk from Ponte Sant’Angelo. The arch takes its name from the surrounding area, which in ancient times hosted many bankers’ shops, including that of the famous Agostino Chigi, who lived nearby in a lavish residence. Its most striking feature is the beautiful starry sky painted on the vault, inviting you to walk through with your eyes turned upward, enjoying a moment of pure contemplation.
In the past, pilgrims heading to St Peter’s often stopped here for prayer before a wooden statue of the Virgin kept under the arch, today replaced by a 19th-century painting with the same devotional subject. At dusk, the votive area was once the only part lit within the arch, giving it a mystical aura of protection. Inside you can also see a plaque commemorating the first recorded flood of the Tiber, in 1277.
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Things to do for free in Rome
Michelangelo’s Cloister at the Baths of Diocletian
Museo Nazionale Romano Terme di Diocleziano
Viale Enrico De Nicola, 79
Tue – Sun 9.30am-7pm; Tickets: €15
In 1561, Michelangelo was commissioned to transform the frigidarium of the Baths of Diocletian into the Church and Charterhouse of Santa Maria degli Angeli. Michelangelo, then 86, signed the project, later completed by his pupils.
The cloister, covering 10,000 square metres, is one of the largest in Italy. It is a magical, atmospheric place where, wrapped in a suspended calm, you can admire sarcophagi and classical sculptures, as well as seven magnificent colossal animal heads discovered in 1586 around Trajan’s Column. Around the Fountain of the Dolphins, attributed to Giacomo della Porta, stand four cypress trees. The oldest, over a century old, is known as Michelangelo’s cypress.
La Casina delle Civette
Villa Torlonia
Via Nomentana, 70
Tuesday to Sunday 9:00 am to 7:00 pm
Tickets: full €10.50, reduced €7
When it comes to unusual architecture in Rome, the fairy-tale Casina delle Civette undoubtedly takes the prize. Set in the gardens of Villa Torlonia, home of the Torlonia princes until 1938, it was built in the early 1900s for Giovanni Torlonia Jr. The result is a whimsical complex with medieval-style features including little towers, arches and small loggias.
A place out of time, its greatest highlight is the decorative scheme, especially the splendid Art Nouveau stained-glass windows made between 1908 and 1930 from designs by Duilio Cambellotti. One window depicts two owls among ivy branches, giving the building its name. Inside, the owl motif recurs. The rooms are furnished in a linear yet imaginative and elegant style, with stucco, polychrome tiles, inlaid wood and wrought iron.
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Visit the park and the museums of Villa Torlonia
Church of the Sacred Heart of the Suffrage
Lungotevere Prati, 12
Everyone knows the beauty and variety of Rome’s churches, but Gothic spires and pinnacles are genuinely rare. Unless you happen to be in Prati, where you’ll find a unique example of this style: the Church of the Sacred Heart of the Suffrage. Built in 1890 by architect Giuseppe Gualandi, it features a bright façade adorned with a beautiful rose window and flanked by tall niches with statues.
The church is dedicated to the Sacred Heart in suffrage for the souls in Purgatory and houses a very unusual museum: the Museum of the Souls in Purgatory, which preserves “visible testimonies” linked to the cult. The story is worth telling. In the late 19th century, a chapel inside caught fire, and once the flames were extinguished, the outline of a man’s head appeared imprinted on one of the altar pillars. The event was interpreted as an apparition of a soul from Purgatory. A French priest, Victor Jouet, decided to investigate and began collecting similar accounts, which later became the collection you can visit today. Among the items are scorched handprints and fingermarks on clothing, books and objects.
Borromini’s Perspective Gallery
Galleria Spada
Piazza Capo di Ferro, 13
Every day except Tuesday 8:30 am to 7:30 pm
Tickets: full €6, reduced €2
If you love optical illusions, as Cardinal Bernardino Spada did, this is the place for you. In his residence (Palazzo Spada), Francesco Borromini was commissioned in the 17th century to create this gallery, one of the most famous demonstrations of perspective skill in art history.
Thanks to clever technical tricks, such as columns that gradually narrow, the corridor appears far longer than it really is, measuring just over 8 metres. Enhancing the illusion is the small statue at the end, whose reduced size amplifies the sense of distance. It is not only a visual game, but also a moral lesson: the cardinal wished to underline how the greatness of earthly things is ultimately fleeting.
The Talking Statues
Addresses listed below
Popular dissent, satire and criticism of power have existed since ancient times. In Rome, when people wanted to protest or express an opinion, they would write messages on slips of paper and secretly attach them at night to a series of statues, turning them into unwitting messengers. These are the so-called “talking statues”.
There are five of them scattered through the historic centre: Pasquino, Il Babuino, Il Facchino, Marforio, Madama Lucrezia and L’Abate Luigi. The first to be used was Pasquino, to the point that the satirical notes came to be called pasquinades (pasquinate). Even today, it is still possible to find poems and satirical messages posted on these statues, keeping alive a tradition meant to provoke laughter and, at the same time, reflection on the social and historical context of different eras.
The Jasmine Walk (La passeggiata del gelsomino)
Roma San Pietro Station
Piazza della Stazione di San Pietro
St Peter’s Dome is one of the most iconic elements of Rome’s skyline. If you want to admire it from a new, close-up perspective, here’s what you should do: take the train. Walk alongside platform 1 at Roma San Pietro Station, then turn right and follow the signs to a charming path lined with jasmine, filling the air with its distinctive scent. The name also comes from the fact that the route overlooks the Valle del Gelsomino (Jasmine Valley), which once stretched between the Vatican heights and the Janiculum Hill. What is the story of the Jasmine Walk? In 1929, the Lateran Treaties led to the creation of the Vatican City State Railway. For the Jubilee of 2000, one of the two tracks was removed, creating this romantic itinerary.
The Alchemical Door
Giardini Nicola Calipari in Piazza Vittorio
Piazza Vittorio Emanuele II
Free entrance
“Open Sesame!” is the magic phrase that opens the treasure cave in the tale of “Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves”. We do not know what words would open the Alchemical Door, a curious architectural fragment located inside the Nicola Calipari Gardens in Piazza Vittorio. Also known as the Magic Door, it was one of the five gates of Villa Palombara, the 17th-century residence of the Marquis of Pietraforte. The villa once stood on the Esquiline Hill, where the gardens are today.
Fascinated by alchemy, the marquis, according to legend, hosted a pilgrim who was in fact an alchemist. After spending the night in the villa’s gardens searching for a mysterious herb capable of producing gold, the pilgrim disappeared the next morning through the door, leaving behind traces of gold, proof of an alchemical transmutation. He also left a mysterious sheet filled with symbols, which the marquis tried in vain to decipher, perhaps linked to the secret of the philosopher’s stone. He then had the symbols engraved on the five gates, hoping that one day someone would understand them.
The Sciarra Gallery
Via Marco Minghetti, 10
Free entrance
While walking around the Trevi Fountain area, do not miss the Sciarra Gallery, a beautiful covered courtyard built in Art Nouveau style at the end of the 19th century at the request of Prince and patron Maffeo Sciarra. As you move between the buildings, you suddenly find yourself surrounded by something unexpected: a square-plan structure richly decorated and covered by an iron-and-glass roof.
The central theme is the celebration of women in their many roles, as angel of the home, wife and mother, accompanied by allegorical figures of the Virtues. In keeping with the late 19th-century bourgeois worldview, the decorations also depict scenes of everyday life.
The Garden of Palazzo Venezia
Palazzo Venezia
Entrance from Piazza San Marco
Free entrance
Overlooking Piazza Venezia, Palazzo Venezia is a majestic, austere 15th-century building that, over the centuries, has housed popes and powerful figures. Today it houses a museum and conceals a beautiful, little-known garden, open to the public, a true oasis of peace amid the city traffic. You enter from Piazza San Marco.
Surrounded by a portico, the garden is a green pocket with a fountain by Carlo Monaldi at its centre. Its water features help create a calm, relaxing atmosphere where you can stroll or simply admire the palace architecture and the adjacent Church of San Marco.
