Rome

The currency is the euro. An espresso at the bar costs €1.20–1.50 and a cappuccino €1.50–2.20; sitting at a table can cost up to four times the counter price. The difference is printed on the menu, which is your warning before you pull up a chair. A slice of pizza al taglio costs €3–6, priced by weight, a supplì €2–3 and a maritozzo €2.50–4. A simple lunch runs €12–18; dinner at a trattoria €25–40 per person with house wine, plus the coperto of €1.50–3 per person, a standard charge that must be listed on the menu. Hostels cost €35–60 a night and midrange hotels €120–220 in high season (2026). The city tourist tax is charged separately at checkout and ranges from €3 to €10 per person per night depending on the category of lodging, €6 in short-term rentals, capped at the first ten nights of each stay. Cards are accepted almost everywhere and merchants are required by law to have a card reader, but carry €30–50 in cash for small bars, markets and public restrooms. Tipping isn't required or expected: rounding up the bill or leaving €1–2 is enough. Decline conversion to your card's currency at the terminal (DCC) and avoid the exchange offices in tourist areas.

Fiumicino, 30 km away, with the Leonardo Express to Termini

Fiumicino (FCO), 30 km southwest, is the main airport. The Leonardo Express links Terminal 1 to Termini station nonstop in 32 minutes, runs every 15 minutes and costs around €14. The FL1 regional train costs about half as much but doesn't reach Termini: its central stops are Trastevere, Ostiense and Tiburtina. Taxis from Fiumicino to anywhere inside the Aurelian Walls charge a flat fare of around €55 per ride, for up to four passengers with luggage; use only the licensed white cars waiting in the official line. Ciampino (CIA), 15 km southeast, mainly serves low-cost airlines, with buses to Termini for €6–7 in about 40 minutes and a flat taxi fare of around €40. Overland, Roma Termini is the country's biggest rail hub, with high-speed trains to Florence in about 1 hour 30 minutes, Milan in about 3 hours and Naples in about 1 hour 10 minutes.

Metro with three lines and a 100-minute ticket

ATAC's urban network has three metro lines (A orange, B and B1 blue, C green), trams, and hundreds of bus lines. The single BIT ticket costs €1.50 and is valid for 100 minutes with a single metro entry; a rise to €2 has been announced and is pending regional approval, so check the price on the machine (2026). Passes run around €7 for 24 hours, €12.50 for 48 hours, €18 for 72 hours, and €24 for the weekly CIS; always validate when boarding, including on the bus, and note that the validators take contactless cards directly. The metro closes at 11:30pm, 1:30am on Fridays and Saturdays, and doesn't serve the historic center: from the Pantheon to Piazza Navona and Campo de' Fiori it's on foot or buses 40, 62, and 64 only, and Line C is still under construction around Piazza Venezia, with worksites that reroute surface traffic. Taxis only at stands or by app (FreeNow, itTaxi); a street hail rarely stops. The center is walkable, 5 to 7 km a day is normal, but the sanpietrini cobblestones wreck thin soles and heels; a bike is uncomfortable for the same reason, electric scooters are regulated and banned in several areas, and much of the center is a ZTL, where a rented car just earns you a fine.

Rome is safe in terms of violence: the real problem is pickpocketing, not mugging. The classic spots are buses 64 and 40 between Termini and the Vatican, metro line A between Termini and Ottaviano, crowded escalators and the area around Termini station at night. Wear your backpack in front on public transit, don't leave your phone on a sidewalk table and be wary of groups that bump into you at the train doors. The common scams repeat so often that you can recognize them by the script: the “free” bracelet tied around your wrist near the Colosseum and Ponte Sant'Angelo, the clipboard petition for a charity that doesn't exist, the three-card game on the bridges, the rose offered as a gift and charged for afterward, and the unlicensed driver who approaches you inside the airport. At restaurants, confirm whether fish is priced per 100 g before ordering and always ask for the fiscal receipt. At night, San Lorenzo, Pigneto and the area around Termini call for normal big-city awareness; no central neighborhood is off-limits. The emergency number is 112, and the water from the nasoni, the iron fountains scattered on street corners, is drinkable and free.

Cappuccino is a morning thing

Milk after lunch isn't the local habit; after 11am, Romans order caffè, which here means espresso and nothing else. No one will refuse your order, but it marks you instantly.

Pay at the register before the counter

At many bars you pay first, get the scontrino, and hand it to the barista along with your order. Standing at the counter costs less than sitting, and the two-price list is posted, as required by law.

Cover your shoulders and knees in the basilicas

St. Peter's and the major basilicas turn away bare shoulders, short shorts, and skirts above the knee, with checks at the entrance. A scarf in your bag solves it; there's no clothing rental at the door.

Don't sit on the steps or get into the fountains

Sitting on the Spanish Steps, eating on monuments and wading into any fountain carry steep fines under the 2019 city regulations. Enforcement is real, especially there and at the Trevi Fountain.

The bill comes as one

Splitting by item isn't house custom; ask for conto unico and settle up among yourselves after. The per-person coperto isn't a service charge and doesn't replace a tip.

Greet on the way in and on the way out

Say buongiorno on entering a shop, bar, or bakery, and arrivederci on leaving, even if you bought nothing. Walking in silently and handling the merchandise reads as rude, not as discretion.

The restaurant with a photo of the dish by the door

Sitting down at the first restaurant with photos of the dishes, a menu in six languages and a staff member calling out from the sidewalk, fifty meters from the Trevi Fountain. A practical rule works well: walk ten minutes away from the monument and choose a place whose menu has fewer than twenty dishes.

Timed entry at the Colosseum, which sells out days ahead

Showing up at the Colosseum without a ticket and counting on the ticket office. Entry works only with a reserved time slot, and slots sell out days in advance; buying from a reseller in line usually costs double and doesn't always include access to the arena.

Counting on the metro to see the center

Rome's metro skirts the historic center: the Pantheon, Piazza Navona, and Campo de' Fiori have no station and are 20 to 30 minutes on foot from Barberini or Spagna. The Trevi Fountain is the exception, a few minutes' walk from the Barberini station. For the rest, walk or take the bus, instead of wasting the afternoon looking for a station that isn't there.

Walking the sanpietrini in thin-soled shoes

Underestimating the walking and the sanpietrini. Five to seven kilometers a day over irregular basalt cobblestones wreck thin-soled shoes; bring thick-soled sneakers and decent socks.

The Vatican on a Wednesday morning

Booking the Vatican Museums for a Wednesday morning, when the papal audience closes St. Peter's Square, or for the last Sunday of the month, when entry is free and the line wraps around the wall. In both cases, the wait can eat up the whole morning.

Buongiorno / Buonasera

Good day / good evening: say it on entering any establishment

Un caffè, per favore

An espresso, please: “caffè” alone already means espresso

Il conto, per favore

The bill, please: it never comes on its own, you have to ask

Posso pagare con la carta?

Can I pay by card?

No, grazie, vado via

No thanks, I'm on my way: shuts down a street approach without argument

Daje!

Come on! / that's the way: in Romanesco, works as a cheer and as encouragement generally

The site, the river, and the hills

Rome occupies the alluvial plain of the lower Tiber and the volcanic tuff hills around it, about 25 km from the river mouth at Ostia. The traditional seven hills (Palatine, Capitoline, Aventine, Caelian, Esquiline, Viminal, and Quirinal) stand between 40 and 60 m and lie almost entirely on the left bank; the right bank holds the Janiculum (88 m), Monte Mario (139 m, the highest point in the urban area), Trastevere, and the Vatican.

The ring-shaped grid

The old core fits inside the Aurelian Walls, built between AD 271 and 275, with a 19 km perimeter, much of it still standing; the grid inside is medieval and irregular, divided into rioni and stitched together by avenues cut open during the Renaissance and by three gashes from the fascist period. Outside the walls the city grows in rings: the quartieri from the late 19th century, the postwar public housing estates, the EUR district planned to the south from 1937, and the periphery contained by the Grande Raccordo Anulare, a 68 km ring completed in 1970.

The climate and the walled Tiber

The climate is Mediterranean, with dry, hot summers and the heaviest rain in the fall. The Tiber runs boxed in between massive embankment walls built from 1876 onward, after the flood of 1870, and since then it has stopped flooding the center, but it has also dropped out of the city's daily life, which now passes over it on the bridges.

Cinecittà and neorealism

Rome is the city where Italian cinema filmed itself. Cinecittà opened in 1937 and hosted Ben-Hur (1959), Cleopatra (1963), and nearly all of Fellini's work, becoming the “Hollywood on the Tiber” of the 1950s and 1960s and today a base for international series. Rome, Open City (Rossellini, 1945) was shot on streets still scarred by the occupation and founded neorealism; Bicycle Thieves (De Sica, 1948) used Val Melaina and Porta Portese; La Dolce Vita (Fellini, 1960) fixed Via Veneto and the Trevi Fountain in the world's imagination; The Great Beauty (Sorrentino, 2013) won the Oscar for foreign film in 2014. The Rome Film Fest happens in October at the Auditorium Parco della Musica, a Renzo Piano project opened in 2002.

Literature in Romanesco, opera, churches and La Sapienza

In literature, Romanesco is a written language and not just a spoken one: Giuseppe Gioachino Belli left 2,279 sonnets in dialect in the 19th century, Pasolini wrote Ragazzi di vita (1955) about the postwar borgate, and Carlo Emilio Gadda used dialect as raw material in Quer pasticciaccio brutto de via Merulana (1957). Opera has its home at the Teatro dell’Opera and, in summer, moves to the open-air stage of the Baths of Caracalla, a tradition that began in 1937. Religion shapes the city's calendar and space, with around 900 churches, the pope's general audience on Wednesdays and the Angelus on Sundays at noon in St. Peter's Square. University life revolves around La Sapienza, founded in 1303, which has around 110,000 students and ranks among the largest universities in Europe.

Soccer splits the city in two

Soccer splits the city between AS Roma, founded in 1927, and Lazio, founded in 1900, which both play at the Stadio Olimpico, with around 70,000 seats; on the day of the Derby della Capitale, the match between the two, traffic stops and the game takes over every conversation. Nightlife centers on Trastevere, San Lorenzo (right next to La Sapienza), Pigneto and Testaccio, where clubs are dug into the base of Monte dei Cocci. In summer, the Estate Romana, a city program created in 1977, spreads open-air cinema, concerts and kiosks along the Tiber between Ponte Sisto and Tiber Island.

Rome, Open City (Roberto Rossellini, 1945)

Filmed in streets still marked by the German occupation, on film stock bought on the black market; it founded neorealism and shows the city of 1944 with no sets at all.

SPQR: A History of Ancient Rome (Mary Beard, 2015)

Mary Beard tells how a village by a ford on the Tiber became an empire, without presenting that path as inevitable, and shows what remains of the Republic and the Empire in the ruins visitors walk through today.

The Great Beauty (Paolo Sorrentino, 2013)

Winner of the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film in 2014; it wanders the terraces, cloisters, and parties of contemporary Rome and treats inherited beauty as a problem, not a postcard.