Your tour guide in Rome

02/06/2025

Republic Day in Italy

16/05/2025

The Palatine Hill is the real heart of the ancient city, where on April 21st 753 BC Romulus marked the furrow with the plough and it became the sacred boundary of a new settlement. Everything started from here and later, when romans occupied the other six hills, every rich person wanted his palace exactly at the same place where Romulus had built his first hut. Emperors also preferred the Palatine Hill. Now it’s one of the most green and romantic hills of Rome. Vibrant plants create a beautiful frame for the majestic ruins. And at the foot of it there is the Roman Forum – the square, where in antiquity the social, political and religious activities took place.

09/05/2025

The Roman countryside is beautiful year-round, but it's especially remarkable during the spring and summer months. This is the best time to visit Roman Castles (Castelli Romani), to admire magnificent panoramas, explore antiquities, eat fresh strawberries and try exquisite white wines. I invite you to visit quaint little towns surrounding Rome, the true pearls scattered over the picturesque hills of Lazio. Emperors often left the city for the countryside to escape the heat, popes came to Castelgandolfo to rest and breathe fresh air, and even the commoners would rush to this area when the city is in sweltering temperatures. To reach the Roman Castles, we will travel along the ancient Appian Way, the most important Roman road, surrounded by romantic ruins, beautiful churches and mysterious catacombs. We will visit old monasteries, admire crystal-clear lakes and take a walk through narrow winding streets of beautiful medieval towns.

28/04/2025

"My ideal was contained within the word beauty, so difficult to define despite all the evidence of our senses. I felt responsible for sustaining and increasing the beauty of the world. I wanted the cities to be splendid, spacious and airy, their streets sprayed with clean water, their inhabitants all human beings whose bodies were neither degraded by marks of misery and servitude nor bloated by vulgar riches; I desired that the schoolboys should recite correctly some useful lessons; that the women presiding in their households should move with maternal dignity, expressing both vigor and calm; that the gymnasiums should be used by youths not unversed in arts and in sports; that the orchards should bear the finest fruits and the fields the richest harvests. I desired that the might and majesty of the Roman Peace should extend to all, insensibly present like the music of the revolving skies; that the most humble traveller might wander from one country, or one continent, to another without vexatious formalities, and without danger, assured everywhere of a minimum of legal protection and culture; that our soldiers should continue their eternal pyrrhic dance on the frontiers; that everything should go smoothly, whether workshops or temples; that the sea should be furrowed by brave ships, and the roads resounding to frequent carriages; that, in a world well ordered, the philosophers should have their place, and the dancers also. This ideal, modest on the whole, would be often enough approached if men would devote to it one part of the energy which they expend on stupid or cruel activities; great good fortune has allowed me a partial realization of my aims during the last quarter of a century. Arrian of Nicomedia, one of the best minds of our time, likes to recall to me the beautiful lines of ancient Terpander, defining in three words the Spartan ideal (that perfect mode of life to which Lacedaemon aspired without ever attaining it): Strength, Justice, the Muses. Strength was the basis, discipline without which there is no beauty, and firmness without which there is no justice. Justice was the balance of the parts, that whole so harmoniously composed which no excess should be permitted to endanger. Strength and justice together were but one instrument, well tuned, in the hands of the Muses. All forms of dire poverty and brutality were things to forbid as insults to the fair body of mankind, every injustice a false note to avoid in the harmony of the spheres."
Marguerite Yourcenar, Memoirs of Hadrian

24/04/2025

Rome
Byron, George Gordon, Lord (1788-1824)

O Rome! my country! city of the soul!
The orphans of the heart must turn to thee,
Lone mother of dead empires! and control
In their shut breasts their petty misery.
What are our woes and sufferance? Come and see
The cypress, hear the owl, and plod your way
O'er steps of broken thrones and temples, Ye!
Whose agonies are evils of a day--
A world is at our feet as fragile as our clay.

The Niobe of nations! there she stands,
Childless and crownless, in her voiceless woe;
An empty urn within her withered hands,
Whose holy dust was scattered long ago;
The Scipios' tomb contains no ashes now;
The very sepulchres lie tenantless
Of their heroic dwellers: dost thou flow,
Old Tiber! through a marble wilderness?
Rise, with thy yellow waves, and mantle her distress.

The Goth, the Christian, Time, War, Flood, and Fire,
Have dealth upon the seven-hilled city's pride;
She saw her glories star by star expire,
And up the steep barbarian monarchs ride,
Where the car climbed the Capitol; far and wide
Temple and tower went down, nor left a site:
Chaos of ruins! who shall trace the void,
O'er the dim fragments cast a lunar light,
And say, "here was, or is," where all is doubly night!

The double night of ages, and of her,
Night's daughter, Ignorance, hath wrapt and wrap
All round us: we but feel our way to err:
The ocean hath its chart, the stars their map,
And Knowledge spreads them on her ample lap;
But Rome is as the desert, where we steer
Stumbling o'er recollections; now we clap
Our hands, and cry "Eureka!" it is clear--
When but some false mirage of ruin rises near.

Alas! the lofty city! and alas!
The trebly hundred triumphs! and the day
When Brutus made the dagger's edge surpass
The conqueror's sword in bearing fame away!
Alas for Tully's voice, and Vergil's lay,
And Livy's pictured page!--but these shall be
Her resurrection; all beside--decay.
Alas, for Earth, for never shall we see,
That brightness in her eye she bore when Rome
Was free!

20/04/2025

St. Benedict was born and raised in Norcia (near Spoleto) in 480 AD. He went to a university in Rome, but was so horrified by the immorality in the big city that he left shortly after his arrival and sought solitude on the forested slopes of Mount Taleo near Subiaco. St. Benedict organized his first monastic community at Subiaco. He lived there for 20 years, in which he founded 12 daughter monasteries and wrote his famous Rule that would become the standard guideline for western monasticism.
Some of those monasteries still exist in the mountains around Rome where the monks following the precepts of St. Benedict live in solitude behind potent monastic walls. We can visit the oldest and the most beautiful of these monasteries, enjoy beautiful panoramas and fresh air, climb to the top of the mountain of Subiaco, where St. Benedict lived as a hermit, admire the magnificent ancient frescoes in Sacro Speco and Santa Scholastica monasteries.

08/04/2025

Rome is very beautiful in the spring with pleasant weather and vibrant colors

16/03/2025

Some pics from the exhibition dedicated to flowers. If you come to Rome go to see it at Bramante Courtyard just around the corner from Piazza Navona

01/03/2025

Is Villa Torlonia on your list of places to check out in Rome? Let me take you around this fascinating place. :)

10/02/2025

https://www.lartisien.com/blog/rome-with-valeria-merlini-and-prince-prospero-colonna/

An art restorer best known for her work on Caravaggio’s The Pilgrims’ Madonna in situ at the Church of Sant’Agostino, learn about Valeria Merlini here

08/02/2025

«Most English people, with memories of Shakespeare, look for the place in the Forum where Mark Antony made his speech and where the sorrowing mob, dragging out the chairs of the magistrates and anything that would ignite, burnt the co**se there and then, refusing to allow the funeral cortege to go on to the Campus Martius. And this place is quite easy to find. It's almost in line with, and to the north of, the three remaining white columns of the Temple of Castor and Pollux, which are one of the landmarks in the Forum.»
H. V. Morton «A Traveller in Rome»

09/01/2025

Morning and evening in the Vatican. Just to remind you, if somebody has forgotten. Holy year, the holy door is open, everything is very sumptuous and beautiful. Even the Christmas tree is still decorated and the nativity scenes are in all their glory :)