Visiting Rome: How to See and Enjoy the Best of the City

A view over part of the Roman Forum in Rome, Italy. April 25, 2022.

Rome has more and deeper historical roots (ones that are mapped, anyway) than most of the other major cities of the world, including London, Paris, Hong Kong, and Tokyo. Whether you love ancient history or find the world wars of more interest, you’ll find it here—and everything in between, too.

Alas, you can’t do it all on just one trip. This means you’ll have plenty of reasons to go back—and it means that a quality trip to Rome requires careful planning if you want to see even a good part of what there is to see.

For ideas on where to stay, what to eat, and how much time to allot for your visit to Rome, read my first article in this two-article Rome travel tips series.

For the nitty gritty on planning your visit to Roman tourist attractions, here’s what we learned from our recent travel experience that can save you time, energy, and grief—and help ensure you have an amazing visit.

Pick Your Must-See Attractions and Book in Advance

The most major of the major tourist attractions in Rome book up far in advance. If you cannot imagine a trip to Rome without seeing the Colosseum or the Vatican, for example, then you should buy your tickets shortly after you book your flight and secure your lodging for the trip.

Important heads up: When you book your tickets, note that almost all the major attractions have several different options for different types of visits. For example, we thought we’d booked a comprehensive tour of the Vatican City well in advance—only to find, after we’d arrived in Rome and took another look at our tickets for the visit, that what we’d bought didn’t cover more than half of the Vatican City’s sites. We had to buy another set of tickets for the other parts of the City—and found only one possible time available during our stay for the other parts we wanted to see. This meant we had to go to the Vatican twice during our trip and, for the second visit, had to wake up well before 6 a.m. to make it for our designated start time. (Ouch.)

We might have had to get up much earlier than we would have liked, I’m glad we did: We otherwise would have missed seeing the inside Saint Peter’s Cathedral, including its astounding dome. Rome, Italy. April 28, 2022.

Learn from our mistakes and carefully cross-check your attraction tickets to ensure they include the parts of the site that you want to see.

Everyone will have slightly different must-sees, of course. If you want a guided tour of the Roman Forum and the Palatine Hill, book that in advance. If you want to see the Catacombs, they book up fast, too—get the ticket well before you arrive.

If you have only moderate interest in seeing an attraction and won’t feel crushed if you miss it due to lack of capacity after you arrive in Rome, you can absolutely play that site by ear after you get there.

Side note: The dome in The Vatican, pictured above, features the most amazing luminescent mosaics. I’ve included close-up videos and photos in my article about the mosaics I saw in Rome.

Go for the Guided Tour

Though many sites, like the Roman Forum and the Pantheon, allow you to visit freely whenever and without a ticket, they have limited information posted about what you’re seeing.

On my first visit to Rome, I thought I’d save money and just read the signs and my guidebook—and I felt completely lost. I knew I was missing a ton of context and explanation, but I didn’t even know what. And I had no one to whom I could pose any questions.

I remember standing in the Roman Forum, a lover of ancient Roman history since childhood, almost wanting to cry because I didn’t really know what I was looking at, even though I knew it was amazing.

Don’t be young-and-naïve me.

In all cases, book guided tours where possible and, where not possible, fork over the few extra Euro for the audioguide. While tours and guides may not matter in many places, I found them essential in Rome.

Ah, and just as the tickets to sites book up well in advance, so do the guided tours. Lock down your guided-tour tickets as soon as you know you’re headed to Rome and you know what you most want to see.

When to See What in Rome

If you’re booking tickets and tours, you’ll need to visit an attraction when there’s availability in the schedule to do so. Sometimes that means you won’t have a lot of choice—especially if you’re visiting in a heavily touristed season.

However, if you have a choice, see the major tourist sites during the week and early in the week, if possible. Save the less sought-after sites for the end of the week and the weekends.

We found the sites like the Roman Forum almost too crowded to enjoy during the weekends and at the end of the week (i.e., Thursday and Friday), when certain museums like the Palazzo Altemps and the Roman National Museum (both fabulous and highly recommended) had lots of space and we could visit at a relaxed pace.

How to Prioritize the Tourist Sites in Rome

Real talk: You will not have time to see all the sites in Rome. In fact, you likely will not have time to see even all the major ones.

We had nine days in Rome and we didn’t even cover all the three-star attractions listed in our Michelin Green guide to the city.

Therefore, pick the must-see sites for you and get them on the calendar as a framework for the rest of your trip. Most of the must-see sites include the Roman Forum and Palatine Hill, the Colosseum, the Vatican City, the Pantheon, the Spanish Steps, the Trevi Fountain, and the Catacombs.

You can see the Pantheon without a guided tour, but you’ll appreciate it so much more if you have someone walking you through it. Rome, Italy. April 22, 2022.

Once your must-see sites are in place on your travel program, you can fit into the remaining windows the next tier of your site preferences.

How you choose your next tier will be your personal challenge! The beauty of Rome is that it has culture and history to fit almost every preference—though this can make choosing between options incredibly difficult, too.

Decide whether you want to focus your remaining time on religious sites, on ancient history sites, or on sites linked to the 18th and 19th century—or a bit of a mix of each—and consider this grouping your B list for filling in available slots.

As for a C list, if you have one, I think you can plan to put those on a list to store for you’re a later trip to Rome. (Once you visit, you’ll want to come back!)

Additional Help for Rome Trip Planning

If all this information has you eager to visit Rome, know that just writing it has me eager to return.

To plan other aspects of your trip, click through to my article on where to stay, what to expect in terms of food, and how much time to schedule for a visit.

And who knows—maybe we’ll even see each other there!