The stateliness of Carlo Maderno’s seventeenth century façade hints at the immensity of St. Peter’s Basilica inside, which today remains one of the largest churches in the world.

The old Basilica of St. Peter, whose vast size was similar to today’s, was built at around 320 by the Emperor Constantine on the site where, tradition has it, the Apostle St. Peter was buried.

Over the centuries and under a number of different papacies, the long process was launched which, within the space of about two hundred years and thanks to the genial contribution of artists such as Bramante, Michelangelo and Bernini,  led to the complete overhaul of the early Constantine church.

The dome dominating the skyline is the fruit of Michelangelo’s vision. Its amazing size and harmony is best appreciated by bravely climbing its steps. Rest assured, your efforts will be rewarded by both a close up inspection of the cupola’s magnificent internal decorations and the awe-inspiring panorama waiting for you at the top.

Michelangelo’s masterpiece of Renaissance sculpture the Pietà, where many a visitor remains mesmerized by its combination of technical purity and emotional impact, arguably stands out among the St. Peter’s countless artistic attractions.

Contact: tel.: +39 06 69883731 - 06 6982 (centralino) - 06 69881662 (turistic info)

Web site: www.vatican.va/various/basiliche/san_pietro/index_it.htm

Hours: Octobre - March: every day from 7.00 am to 6.30; April – September: every day fron 7.00 am to 7.00 pm.

The magnificent and immense Vatican Museums are among the greatest and most important in the world. This explains the extremely long queues tailing back from the the entrance, especially in the high seasons such as at Christmas, Easter and during spring.

Rest assured however, your patience will be rewarded inside!

In order to avoid the queues and save time, it is therefore a good idea booking your admission ticket or guided tour online (ask to iRome Suites).

The Vatican Museums in fact encompass a number of different museums: the Pio-Clementino Museum, the Chiaramonti Museum, the Gregorian Etruscan Museum, the Gregorian Egyptian Museum, the Gregorian Profane Museum, the Pio-Christian Museum, the Ethnological Missionary Museum, the Collection of Modern Religious Art, the Upper Galleries Museum, the Vatican Library Museum, the Pinacoteca (Art Gallery) and of course the exquisite and unique Sistine Chapel.

An entire day will not be long enough to see everything, so you would do well to dress comfortably and have a clear idea of what you really want to visit before embarking of this “expedition”.

The Vatican Museums are also open on the last Sunday of every month when admission is free.

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Address: Viale Vaticano, 100

Prices:  full: 16,00 - reduced: 8,00

Online purchase: http://biglietteriamusei.vatican.va/musei/tickets/index.html

Web site: www.museivaticani.va ; Telephone: +39 06 69883145 - 06 69884676 info - 06 6982

Hours

Vatican Museums - Sistine Chapel
Monday-Saturday: 9:00 - 18:00;
Last admission 16:00;
Last Sunday of the month: open and free of charge from 9:00 to 14:00, last admission 12:30.

Vatican Gardens fill about two thirds of the surface of Vatican City. It is a place of rest and meditation of the Roman Pontiff since 1279, when Pope Nicholas III moved the papal residence from the Lateran to the Vatican.
The gardens can be visited with a tour group lasting two hours or an approved electrical bus.

Address: Viale Vaticano

Web site: http://mv.vatican.va/2_IT/pages/z-Info/MV_Info_Servizi_Visite.html

Prices: admission: 32,00 - reduced: 24,00

Online reservation: mandatory for groups (visiteguidategruppi.musei@scv.va) and for singles (visiteguidatesingoli.musei@scv.va)

Telephone booking: 0039 06 69883145 - 06 69884676

Hours: guided tours every day, except wednsday and sunday.

An explosion of colours, shapes, varieties and scents: it is the flower market, which is only open a few hours a week, to be precise just on Tuesday. The market offers a perfect stage for nature to show off its wonders, where spring is always in blossom. Let your imagination run wild while ambling through the stands of clipped and finely arranged bunches of flowers, dry flowers, aromatic plants and countless assortments of different kinds. Here, there is indeed something for everyone and at very affordable prices.

Address: Via Trionfale, 45

Telephone: 0039 06 39733326 - 06 39738027

Hours: open on Tuesdays from 10.00 am to 1.00 pm

www.comune.roma.it/PCR/resources/cms/documents/opuscolo_Mercato_dei_fiori.pdf

The Mausoleum of Hadrian, usually known as Castel Sant'Angelo, is a towering cylindrical building. It was initially commissioned by the Roman Emperor Hadrian as a mausoleum for himself and his family and builted around the year 123. The building was later used by the popes as a fortress and castle.

The Papal state also used Sant'Angelo as a prison; Giordano Bruno, for example, was imprisoned there for six years.

Address: Lungotevere Castello, 50

e-mail: pm-laz@beniculturali.it

Information and booking:  tel. +39 06 32810 +39 06 32810

Hours: every day from 9.00 am to 7.30 pm – ticket office stops at 6.30 pm

Reservations: recommended for groups over 20 persons; optional for single. Booking fee  € 1,00  on line: http://www.gebart.it/

Prices:
Admission € 10,00

Reduced € 5,00

Just 100 meters from iRome Suites is one of the most important and crowded shopping streets of the city, able to satisfy the tastes and needs of all, with many shops that hosts not only clothing, but range from furniture and home decorative objects to accessories, books, gifts, perfumes and much more. It is here also one of the few indoor markets remained in Rome, the Piazza Unità Market, built in 1928 in an elegant structure.

If you want to stop for a breakfast or an aperitif, Via Cola di Rienzo offers numerous nice bars.

If you wish to enjoy a more substantial break, you can choose from many places to suit your palate! We highlight Castroni and Franchi, where the possibilities of consuming over the counter or take home excellent products of Italian and international cuisine is provided.

The Store Coin Excelsior, the place for Christmas gifts and more, has recently opened a space dedicated to the jewelry that all women love: Tiffany.

In the Store you can also find a Nespresso area and buy a very good coffee.

For cuisine lovers, however, in the lower level is located Eat's, a luxury food market with high-quality, special and delicious food, that maybe not everyone can afford ...

Piazza del Popolo is a large urban square in Rome. The name in modern Italian literally means "People's Square. The piazza lies inside the northern gate in the Aurelian Walls, once the Porta Flaminia of ancient Rome, and now called the Porta del Popolo. This was the starting point of the Via Flaminia, the road to Ariminum (modern-day Rimini) and the most important route to the north. At the same time, before the age of railroads, it was the traveller's first view of Rome upon arrival. For centuries, the Piazza del Popolo was a place for public executions, the last of which took place in 1826.

The piazza’s charm is principally heightened by the twin Churches of Santa Maria dei Miracoli and Santa Maria di Montesanto, the obelisk (known as the Oblisco Flaminio) which is the oldest and second tallest in Rome and the two Valadier fountains.

Standing at one end of this exquisite piazza, designed by Neoclassical Architect Giuseppe Valadier between 1811 and 1822, and alongside the gate, is the Church of Santa Maria del Popolo.  Built on the burial site of Emperor Nero, it is an artistic treasure house under whose roof may be found several major works, including two magnificent paintings by Caravaggio.

"When I returned to Rome from Gaul and from Spain, in the consulship of Tiberius Nero and Publius Quintilio, having brought to a satisfactory finish my works in these provinces, the Senate decreed that there should be consecrated in the Field of Mars an altar to the Augustan Peace and ordered that the officials, priests and vestal virgins should celebrate a sacrifice at it every year."

It is with these words that Augustus, in his spiritual testimony, the Res Gestae, tells us of the Senate's decision to construct an altar to Peace, following the conclusion of his labours North of the Alps from 16 to 13 B.C. The altar reflects the Augustan vision of Roman civil religion. The lower register of its frieze depicts vegetal work meant to communicate the abundance and prosperity of the Roman Peace (Latin: Pax Augusta), while the monument as a whole serves a civic ritual function whilst simultaneous operating as propaganda for Augustus and his regime, easing notions of autocracy and dynastic succession that might otherwise be unpalatable to traditional Roman culture.

Address : Lungotevere in Augusta (angolo via Tomacelli) - 00186 Roma

Hours: every day 9.30 am-7.30 pm

Information and booking: tel. 060608

Prices : admission € 10,50 - reduced € 8,50

During exhibitions and cultural events the prize on the ticket can be diferent.

Via del Corso is a famous street of the historic center of Rome which connects Piazza Venezia to Piazza del Popolo and measures approximately 1.6 kilometers. It is the central artery of the city area known as The Trident.

For centuries Via del Corso has been: the main street for parades of famous people who came from the Porta del Popolo in triumph; the meeting point of intellectuals, artists and Roman politics, with its busy cafes located along the road. From the Nineteenth the street hosts the most famous Italian fashion shops, libraries and newspaper offices, which have made via del Corso the busiest street in Rome.

Villa Borghese is a landscape garden in the naturalistic English manner in Rome, containing a number of buildings, museums (see Galleria Borghese) and attractions. It is the third largest public park in Rome (80 hectares or 197.7 acres) after the ones of the Villa Doria Pamphili and Villa Ada. The gardens were developed for the Villa Borghese Pinciana ("Borghese villa on the Pincian Hill"), built by the architect Flaminio Ponzio, developing sketches by Scipione Borghese, who used it as a villa suburbana, a party villa, at the edge of Rome, and to house his art collection. The gardens as they are now were remade in the early nineteenth century.

Villas in the gardens

• Today the Galleria Borghese is housed in the Villa Borghese itself. The garden Casino Borghese, built on a rise above the Villa by the architect Giovanni Vasanzio, was set up by Camillo Borghese to contain sculptures by Bernini from the Borghese collection, including his David and his Daphne, and paintings by Titian, Raphael and Caravaggio.

• The Villa Giulia adjoining the Villa Borghese gardens was built in 1551 - 1555 as a summer residence for Pope Julius III; now it contains the Etruscan Museum (Museo Etrusco).

• The Villa Medici houses the French Academy in Rome, and the Fortezzuola a Gothic garden structure that houses a collection memorializing the academic modern sculptor Pietro Canonica. In the 1650s, Diego Velázquez painted several depictions of this Villa's garden casino festively illuminated at night. Before electricity, such torchlit illuminations carried an excitement hard to conceive today.

• The Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Moderna located in its grounds has a collection of 19th- and 20th-century paintings emphasizing Italian artists.

Other points of interest

• The garden contains a replica of the Shakespeare's Globe Theatre built in 2003.

• Beside the 1911 Exposition's villas, there is the Exposition's Zoo, recently redesigned, with minimal caging, as the Bioparco, and the Zoological Museum (Museo di Zoologia).

• In 1873 a hydrochronometer on the 1867 design of Gian Battista Embriaco, O.P. inventor and professor of the Roman College of St. Thomas was built in the gardens in emulation of the one at the College of St. Thomas. Another version stands in the gardens of the Pincian Hill. Embriaco had presented two prototypes of his invention at the Paris Universal Exposition in 1867 where it won prizes and great acclaim.

In 2005 it was finally completed the cycle route along the Tiber in the entire central area of the eternal city. It runs along the Tiber a little above the average level of the river. A part of the track, located at street level, and therefore clearly visible, is located within walking distance of iRome Suites. From this point you can go towards Ponte Milvio, passing under the Foro Italico complex, or continue on a track formed on the sidewalk of the Tiber and get to the Risorgimento Bridge, where you can turn left, cross the bridge and continue along the track for Valle Giulia and Villa Borghese.

Just before the Risorgimento bridge a downhill track leads you to the runway of the Tiber dock.

There you can go under the historic bridges of Rome - from the bridge of Castel Sant'Angelo to the Tiberina island, where there is the most impressive view of Rome from below. In this central section there are no ramps to go up or down, but only stairways; Who wants to go back to the road surface have to bring the bike by hand.

The track continues to Porta Portese. From here the route continues to the south of Rome (EUR area).

See: www.comune.roma.it/PCR/resources/cms/documents/bici.pdf