Rated Tourist Attractions in Rome

Diocletian's baths were so enormous that today, they contain two churches, large parts of a Carthusian monastery and a major museum. Michelangelo used the vast tepidarium (hot baths) as the shell for his church of Santa Maria degli Angeli, and the Museo Nazionale Romano, Rome's National Museum, fills another section with treasures of antiquity: Greek and Roman sculpture, pre-Christian and later sarcophagi, and beautiful mosaics and frescoes.

One of Rome's oldest churches and with the city's most beautifully decorated apse, covered in mosaics of Old and New Testament scenes, San Clemente has a further fascination: the multiple layers of its history as each era built upon the last.

Rome's finest private collection of art is displayed in the magnificent Baroque galleries, state rooms, and chapel of the Palazzo Doria Pamphilj. Representing works by European masters from the 15th through the 18th centuries, the collections include paintings by Filippo Lippi, Brueghel the Elder, Correggio, and Raphael, along with major works by Caravaggio (Rest in the Flight into Egypt) and Titian (Salome with the Head of John the Baptist).

The Catacombs of San Callisto (St. Calixtus) and San Sebastiano, both underground burial places in the Via Appia Antica, are extensive - San Callista fills an area of 300 by 400 meters - with intricate multi-layered networks of passages and chambers carved into the soft tufa. In addition to the tombs, St. Calixtus has six sacramental chapels, constructed between 290 and 310, with both pagan and early Christian wall paintings.

As you might expect for the episcopal church of the Pope, St. John Lateran is one of Rome's most impressive churches. After centuries of alterations, it still retains its original form from the age of Constantine, when it was built.

Completed by Caracalla in 216, these were much more than public baths. They were a complete sports center, with hot and cold baths, a swimming pool, dry and steam saunas, gymnastics and sports facilities, social rooms, gardens, libraries, hairdressers, and shops.

Two palaces on Piazza del Campidoglio house Europe's oldest public collection of art, founded in 1471. Primarily devoted to sculptures from across the ancient world, the highlights of its treasures include the realistic Hellenistic bronze Boy with a Thorn; Capitoline Venus, from a 4th-century BC original by Praxiteles; a 4.24-meter-tall Roman equestrian statue of Marcus Aurelius; a Roman sculpture of the Dying Gaul; and the Capitoline She-Wolf, an Etruscan work from the 6th century BC.

Begun in AD 135 as a mausoleum for the Emperor Hadrian and his family, Castel Sant'Angelo is a massive drum-shaped structure overlooking the Tiber near the Vatican. Over the millennia of its existence, Castel Sant'Angelo has been used as a papal residence and a fortress, and more recently as a National Museum.

One of Rome's largest parks, the Borghese Gardens contain a number of attractions that include two museums, the most prominent of which is the Villa Borghese. Built as a party villa and to house the Borghese art collection, the gallery contains paintings, sculptures, mosaics, and reliefs, most from the 15th to the 18th century, and include works by Raphael, Titian, Caravaggio, and Rubens.

Strategically set 50 meters above the Tiber, the Palatine Hill shows evidence of Rome's earliest settlement: rock-cuttings found in front of the Temple of Cybele show human activity as long ago as the ninth century BC. Later, this was the site chosen by the emperors and great aristocratic families for their palaces.