So, you’re planning your first trip to Rome and feeling a little overwhelmed by all the sights suggested in your travel guide. You’ve heard about all these famous cathedrals and monuments and fountains and squares all your life and now you have a chance to visit them, but you’re beginning to suspect that your allotted four days in Rome won’t be enough time to see everything you want while still having a chance to relax and just soak up the Roman atmosphere. Where to start? How to prioritize? Top 8 List of What to See in Rome in Four Days. “Basta!” You say, not another list? Ah, but this one comes with fullscreen 360-degree panoramas – the next best thing to being there. So read through these suggestions and view the panos as you plan your trip to the Eternal City.
Pantheon
Marcus Agrippa's Pantheon is one of the world's most perfect architectural creations: a perfectly proportioned floating dome resting on an elegant drum of columns and pediments is an architectural marvel that later inspired Bramante when he built St. Peters.
The interior is breathtaking. And under the dome are some famous coffins – Raphael, and Vittorio Emanuelle II. For those that enjoy such details, know that the interior is a perfect circle with the same diameter and height of 43m, and that the lower and second levels are divided by the cornis in the ratio of a square root of 2 to1.
Don’t question this one. Just go!
World’s Most Famous Fountain
Featured in “Three Coins in a Fountain”(1954) and Fellini’s “La Dolce Vita”(1960), where Anita Ekberg cooled off, the Trevi Fountain is a popular gathering place for locals and tourists, with the latter throwing a coin over their shoulder to guarantee their return to Rome. Designed by Nicola Salvi, this grand fountain was completed in 1762 but there has been a source of water at this site for over a thousand years Trevi Fountain derives its name from its position at the intersection of three roads (tre vie). The Trevi Fountain is located in the Trevi Sqare, within walking distance of the Spanish Steps and Piazza Navona. Go at night, when the fountain is lit, and you’ll fall in love with the magic of Rome, and perhaps the one you’re with!
St Peter’s Square
This one is a must! You cannot visit Rome without visiting this large public square outside Saint Peter’s Basilica (the greatest church on Earth) and the brownie points you earn will assuage the guilt pangs you experience when you get back home and Aunt Rosetta asks why you didn’t visit the church of her patron saint. And you can check out the famous (hunky) Swiss guards, charged with protecting the Vatican and the Pope since 1506. Do make note of the Egyptian obelisk in the center of the square, brought to Rome by Caligula in 38 AD.
Colossal Coliseum
You say Colosseum, I say Coliseum, they say Colosseo. This is another must-see. One absolutely cannot visit Rome without a trip to the most impressive building of the Roman Empire. As you’re rummaging around the ruins of this most imposing and beautiful sight, imagine yourself back in the day when lions and tigers and Christians provided reams of side-splitting entertainment to 55,000 spectators as they fought off gladiators, and each other. This is how politicians entertained the public and curried their favor. To mark the Coliseum’s inauguration in 80 AD, Emperor Titus held 100 days of games, during which some 9,000 wild animals were slaughtered. Quelle fun! Today, the Coliseum has crumbled enough so that you can see the underground rooms and cages where the animals (and Christians, no doubt) were held in cages, which could be hoisted up enabling the animals to appear in the middle of the arena.
Roman Forum
If you’ve read Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, then you know the story: Brutus, Cassius and some of their friends stab Caesar to death (27 times, for good measure) on the Ides of March, 44 BC in the portico of the theater Pompey built. Brutus and Cassius flee to Greece and later committ suicide. (Ah, the good old days, when life was short and the end was swift and brutal, no golden years hanging around the nursing home ... but I digress.) The Forum is where the betrayal all came down on poor Caesar; it was the epicenter of daily Roman life, the place where the politicians and senators and regular folk congregated to air their problems and seek redress. Here, triumphal processions took place, elections were held and the Senate assembled. Today, remains of temples, basilicas and triumphal arches from different periods are visible.
On my very first visit to Rome, when I was just a 19-year-old wisp of a thing and didn’t yet know what I didn’t know, I confidently asked a passing Roman to confirm that this significant looking expanse of ruins below me was the Catacombs! Come si dice, “How embarrassing!”?
La Dolce Vita in Quirinale Square
One can get a little fatigued (understandable) with yet another historic (loads of facts to digest) and world famous (can gloat back home to relatives) cathedral that one absolutely must visit. Time for a little relaxation in an attractive piazza with a great view of Rome. Piazza del Quirinale is your spot. The view is great because it’s a little higher up, and it’s lined with palaces and ancient statues to give a real sense of location and history. There’s even an obelisk and fountain. And it’s close to the Trevi Fountain, so while you’re sampling La Dolce Vita you can also cross two off your list in one evening.
Ave Maria in Santa Maria Maggiore (St. Mary Major)
Ever ponder why cathedrals in Rome are so, well, popular with tourists? Turns out it’s for good reason. Most of them are mind-numbingly beautiful, with the best artists of the period, and arguably history, spending years of effort to make them that away, decorating them with works of art, frescos, statues and encasing relics and remains in elaborate crypts (under the altar in S. Maria Maggiore is a crypt containing the remains of St. Matthais, who was the Apostle chosen to replace Judas Iscariot).
Santa Maria Maggiore is a patriarchal basilica dedicated to the Blessed Virgin Mary and considered the most beautiful church in Rome, after St. Peters. (You’ll hear the phrase ‘patriarchal basilica’ bandied about a lot in Rome if you're on the Cathedral Tour. Basically, there are five churches considered to be the great ancient basilicas of Rome, and this is one of them. 'Maggiore' means it's a major church, as opposed to minor.) S. Marria Maggiore is also special because it’s the only Roman basilica to retain the core of its original structure. It’s a beautiful church, and you can view it here to the sounds of Ave Maria, performed by Italian songstress Mina - Italy’s Barbra Streisand. (Now Santa Maria Maggiore has a Sistine Chapel, but don’t confuse it with the ‘real’ one, the famed Sistine Chapel, which is located at the Vatican.)
Mouth of Truth
Make like the lovely Audrey and delectable Gregory in “Roman Holiday” (1953) and head over to the Mouth of Truth. Be sure to bring your significant other so you can ask him (or her) about bothersome inconsistency that's disturbing your beauty sleep. Just stick his hand in the ancient drain cover called the Bocca della Verita and see if it remains intact, but be prepared for a gory stump.
Click here to view the Arounder Rome site.
Related Links:
Listen to Italian diva Mina as you tour all the Cathedral panoramas of the Vatican. Click on ‘Mina Sings in the Vatican’ in the upper right of the page.
