Janiculum Hill site features

The climb is the first thing, and it is steeper than it looks from the river. The road zigzags up through walled gardens and institutional gates, and the city drops away behind you in stages rather than all at once.

At the top the road runs along a terrace and the whole of Rome is on your right. It is an unbroken view east across the Tiber — domes and bell towers, one after another, from the low skyline of the centre out to the hills beyond, with nothing tall enough to interrupt it.

The terrace itself is a long gravelled walk under umbrella pines, lined on both sides with marble busts on plinths — rows and rows of them, hundreds, all facing the same way, all men, all with the same moustaches and the same fixed expression.

Partway down the slope a vast fountain fills a wall. Six columns, a triumphal-arch front in white marble, and water falling into a basin below the road — the Fontana dell'Acqua Paola, large enough that the road has to go around it.

Lower again, behind a gate on the Lungara, the hill turns into a wood. The Orto Botanico runs up the slope in 12 hectares of planted ground — oriental planes, cork oaks, Turkey oaks, downy oaks and Himalayan cedars, some of them more than a century old, climbing the hillside the road goes over.

The view

The reference work calls the Janiculum one of the best locations for a scenic view of central Rome with its domes and bell towers.

Bramante's Tempietto

At San Pietro in Montorio, on what was formerly thought to be the site of Saint Peter's crucifixion; the small shrine marks the supposed site of Peter's death.

Fontana dell'Acqua Paola

A Baroque fountain built by Pope Paul V.

Villa Lante al Gianicolo

By Giulio Romano, 1520–21 — an important early building by the Mannerist master, also with magnificent views.

The Orto Botanico

One of the largest in Italy, 12 hectares, in the park of Villa Corsini — once Christina of Sweden's residence — and partly on the Horti Getae, anciently the baths of Septimius Severus.

Over 300 ancient trees

Oriental planes, cork oaks, Turkey oaks, downy oaks and Himalayan cedars — over 300 specimens more than a century old, from over 130 species.

Fuga's two fountains

Inside the garden: the fountain of the eleven jets and the fountain of the tritons, by Ferdinando Fuga.

The academies

The American and Spanish Academies in Rome, The American University of Rome, the Pontifical Urban University, the Pontifical North American College, and Palazzo Montorio, residence of the Ambassadors of Spain.