Places/Italy

Lazio

Rome

A working capital sitting on a ruined one, best taken at walking pace.

Rome is layers, not a list. You can see the Forum in a morning and still spend the useful part of the day in a neighbourhood that has no arch in it. The city rewards people who stop for lunch as if it were part of the plan, because it is.

Four nights lets you walk to one ancient site, one church that is not only famous, and one hill for the view, without turning the metro into the holiday.

See

• The Forum, early

  Book the ticket that includes the Palatine if you want the hill. Go at opening. The heat and the groups arrive together.

• A neighbourhood church

  Something you did not already know from a poster — in Monti, or across the river. Sit down. The point is the room, not the photograph of the façade.

• A view you walk to

  The Gianicolo or the Orange Garden, late in the day. Both outclass most paid terraces.

• Trastevere after the lanes empty

  Walk it in the late morning, eat somewhere the blackboard is in Italian, and leave before the evening becomes a procession.