Rome attractions
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Access
Price
Rome’s attractions fall into three categories that need different planning.
The ticketed archaeology — the Colosseum, Forum and Palatine on a joint ticket, the Baths of Caracalla, the Capitoline Museums — needs a timed slot booked days ahead in season.
The Vatican operates separately as a foreign state: the Museums are ticketed and heavily oversubscribed, Saint Peter’s is free with a security queue, and both enforce a dress code covering shoulders and knees.
And the free city, which is most of it: the Pantheon, the churches with their Caravaggios and Berninis, the fountains, the Spanish Steps, the Appian Way and the views from the Janiculum and the Aventine keyhole.
Three sights a day is the honest maximum. Rome is walkable but the distances add up and the heat in summer is punishing.
