Drenched in history with bucket-list landmarks and sights around every corner, a trip to the Eternal City never gets old.
Ed Grenby - 28 July 2026
The Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire
Sunday 8.00pm Sky History
If there was one thing the Romans really understood, it was showing off.
Tune into The Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire on Sky History – or any of the Rome season beginning on BBC Four next week – and you’ll see a 500-year procession of emperors, each determined to outdo the others with ever more extravagant statements in stone. Vast amphitheatres. Triumphal arches. Temples whose columns seemed designed to hold up the heavens themselves. And 2,000 years on, the remarkable thing isn’t that so much of it has crumbled; it’s that so much of it hasn’t.
Rome is one of the few cities where history refuses to stay behind glass. It doesn’t sit politely in museums waiting for you to admire it; it barges into your day at every opportunity. You nip out for a coffee and find yourself walking alongside walls that were ancient before us Britons had even got the hang of roads. You turn a corner expecting another boutique or gelateria and instead come face-to-face with the Colosseum, still absurdly, magnificently present after a couple of millennia in the middle of a honking metropolis.
It’s easy to forget just how astonishing that is. The Colosseum isn’t some carefully reconstructed replica, it’s the genuine article. It has survived earthquakes, looting, pollution and millions of visitors, yet it still somehow carries itself with the sturdiness and confidence of a building that knows it’s one of the greatest things humans have ever built.
Just beyond it sprawls the Roman Forum, the political and commercial heart of the empire, where every toppled column hints at another tale of conspiracy, conquest or imperial ego. Climb on to the neighbouring Palatine Hill and you’re standing where those emperors built their palaces, gazing over the city they ruled. It takes only a tiny leap of imagination to picture senators in snowy-white togas, merchants haggling over prices and citizens arguing loudly about politics.
And that’s only for starters. One minute you’re standing where chariots once thundered around the Circus Maximus; the next you’re wandering the vast Baths of Caracalla, whose soaring brick vaults make modern spas look decidedly unambitious.
Elsewhere, and all seeable in a long weekend if you’ve got the legs for it, there are Castel Sant’Angelo, built as Emperor Hadrian’s mausoleum; the remarkably intact Theatre of Marcellus; and triumphal arches that seem to crop up (and get ignored by locals) almost as regularly as traffic lights.
In this city, Ancient Rome isn’t a single attraction, it’s practically the street furniture.
The joy, though, is that you don’t have to march from one headline sight to the next. In fact, Rome is probably at its best when you don’t.
I spent hours pottering, ducking down side streets and wandering whichever way looked prettiest, only to stumble across bustling food markets, tiny wine bars, neighbourhood trattorias and, without warning, the actual Pantheon.
Outside, it’s imposing (of course); inside, it’s breathtaking. The vast dome still feels impossible, while the famous oculus – a perfectly circular hole at its zenith, open to the sky – lets sunshine pour through like the gods’ spotlight.
Nearly a hundred generations after the Romans made it, modern engineers still marvel at how they managed it. Me, I just marvelled at the motes of dust swirling in its beam of divine light.
The strange thing is that, after a day or two, these masterpieces begin to feel almost normal. That’s Rome’s greatest trick. Cities elsewhere would build entire tourism campaigns around one monument like this, but Rome scatters dozens of them across the map then carries on with lunch.
Which is another thing Romans have perfected. This city treats every meal as an affirmation that life is worth lingering over, and I eat impossibly well every day – from melty-inside truffle arancini from a no-fuss neighbourhood take-away, to an exquisite sea-bass carpaccio with almonds, lemon and bottarga, alongside an elegant bottle of Ribolla, at Al 22 Bistrot, in Casa J.K. Place, where I’m staying (jkplaces.com/casa-jkroma).
Hidden discreetly on a quiet street just a few minutes’ stroll from the Spanish Steps, it occupies one of those enviable Roman neighbourhoods where every wander seems to end in a beautiful piazza, elegant fountain or café terrace.
A grand 18th-century palazzo converted into 12 huge serviced residences, it offers the privacy and live-like-a-local feel of your own apartment, plus the facilities, service and polish of a luxury hotel.
It’s a reminder, too, that something of ancient Rome’s insistence on things done in excelsis lived on into the Baroque – and to the present day.
Watching The Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire, you’ll see how extraordinary Ancient Rome once was. Staying in today’s Rome, you’ll discover something perhaps even more remarkable: that so much of its grandeur, and desire to live beautifully, never really went away.
The empire may have fallen; the city, somehow, never quite has.
The Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire
Sunday 8.00pm Sky History
If there was one thing the Romans really understood, it was showing off.
Tune into The Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire on Sky History – or any of the Rome season beginning on BBC Four next week – and you’ll see a 500-year procession of emperors, each determined to outdo the others with ever more extravagant statements in stone. Vast amphitheatres. Triumphal arches. Temples whose columns seemed designed to hold up the heavens themselves. And 2,000 years on, the remarkable thing isn’t that so much of it has crumbled; it’s that so much of it hasn’t.
Rome is one of the few cities where history refuses to stay behind glass. It doesn’t sit politely in museums waiting for you to admire it; it barges into your day at every opportunity. You nip out for a coffee and find yourself walking alongside walls that were ancient before us Britons had even got the hang of roads. You turn a corner expecting another boutique or gelateria and instead come face-to-face with the Colosseum, still absurdly, magnificently present after a couple of millennia in the middle of a honking metropolis.
It’s easy to forget just how astonishing that is. The Colosseum isn’t some carefully reconstructed replica, it’s the genuine article. It has survived earthquakes, looting, pollution and millions of visitors, yet it still somehow carries itself with the sturdiness and confidence of a building that knows it’s one of the greatest things humans have ever built.
Just beyond it sprawls the Roman Forum, the political and commercial heart of the empire, where every toppled column hints at another tale of conspiracy, conquest or imperial ego. Climb on to the neighbouring Palatine Hill and you’re standing where those emperors built their palaces, gazing over the city they ruled. It takes only a tiny leap of imagination to picture senators in snowy-white togas, merchants haggling over prices and citizens arguing loudly about politics.
And that’s only for starters. One minute you’re standing where chariots once thundered around the Circus Maximus; the next you’re wandering the vast Baths of Caracalla, whose soaring brick vaults make modern spas look decidedly unambitious.
Elsewhere, and all seeable in a long weekend if you’ve got the legs for it, there are Castel Sant’Angelo, built as Emperor Hadrian’s mausoleum; the remarkably intact Theatre of Marcellus; and triumphal arches that seem to crop up (and get ignored by locals) almost as regularly as traffic lights.
In this city, Ancient Rome isn’t a single attraction, it’s practically the street furniture.
The joy, though, is that you don’t have to march from one headline sight to the next. In fact, Rome is probably at its best when you don’t.
I spent hours pottering, ducking down side streets and wandering whichever way looked prettiest, only to stumble across bustling food markets, tiny wine bars, neighbourhood trattorias and, without warning, the actual Pantheon.
Outside, it’s imposing (of course); inside, it’s breathtaking. The vast dome still feels impossible, while the famous oculus – a perfectly circular hole at its zenith, open to the sky – lets sunshine pour through like the gods’ spotlight.
Nearly a hundred generations after the Romans made it, modern engineers still marvel at how they managed it. Me, I just marvelled at the motes of dust swirling in its beam of divine light.
The strange thing is that, after a day or two, these masterpieces begin to feel almost normal. That’s Rome’s greatest trick. Cities elsewhere would build entire tourism campaigns around one monument like this, but Rome scatters dozens of them across the map then carries on with lunch.
Which is another thing Romans have perfected. This city treats every meal as an affirmation that life is worth lingering over, and I eat impossibly well every day – from melty-inside truffle arancini from a no-fuss neighbourhood take-away, to an exquisite sea-bass carpaccio with almonds, lemon and bottarga, alongside an elegant bottle of Ribolla, at Al 22 Bistrot, in Casa J.K. Place, where I’m staying (jkplaces.com/casa-jkroma).
Hidden discreetly on a quiet street just a few minutes’ stroll from the Spanish Steps, it occupies one of those enviable Roman neighbourhoods where every wander seems to end in a beautiful piazza, elegant fountain or café terrace.
A grand 18th-century palazzo converted into 12 huge serviced residences, it offers the privacy and live-like-a-local feel of your own apartment, plus the facilities, service and polish of a luxury hotel.
It’s a reminder, too, that something of ancient Rome’s insistence on things done in excelsis lived on into the Baroque – and to the present day.
Watching The Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire, you’ll see how extraordinary Ancient Rome once was. Staying in today’s Rome, you’ll discover something perhaps even more remarkable: that so much of its grandeur, and desire to live beautifully, never really went away.
The empire may have fallen; the city, somehow, never quite has.