All The Places I Visited in Rome | A Roman Holiday

We recently went to Italy for a belated honeymoon and anniversary trip! However, we did so much that I am splitting our trip into two separate blog posts. This post will cover Rome, and the post after this will be covering the other areas we visited in Italy linked here: TBD

DAY 1
We landed in Rome around 11am Friday. We picked up our bags and went straight to our hotel. I was jet lagged and super tired so I took a nap and freshened up. Around 5:30pm, we started exploring. We walked through Piazza della Rotonda and saw the Pantheon. We had already visited on a previous trip, so we just walked by.

Note: A Piazza is basically a public square/marketplace or plaza and we went to a bunch of them, so you'll see me mention them throughout this trip.

Pantheon

Then we headed to was Piazza Navona.  There was a Christmas market happening at this one, so we decided to check it out. Honestly very underwhelming, but it was nice to see Christmas festivities.

After that, we went to Pizza Florida. One of our favorite pizza spots. We usually take it to go and eat outside.

Then we headed towards Trastevere, one of the neighborhoods in Rome. This is an area where locals usually go to avoid tourists. We had a bite at Trapizzino, and then walked to Piazza del Popolo. We had walked a bit, so we sat on a bench and took a little break (forgot to take a picture, but you will see it later in this post). 

Trapizzino

After that, we walked through the streets of Rome and over to Bar Locarno for drinks. It's a bar that's attached to a hotel. Drinks were really good!

Bar Locarno

After that, we walked back to our hotel through Piazza de Spagna which is by the Spanish Steps. It was a good first day in Rome!

Spanish Steps

DAY 2
We woke up bright and early and had breakfast at our hotel. Hotel breakfasts in Italy really hit different compared to what you get in the states. Everything was so delicious and I became a tea drinker quickly (still drinking tea here back home). Then we walked to Trevi Fountain. It was packed as anticipated, so I took a quick picture and we went on our way.

Trevi Fountain

The next place we went to was the Palazzo Colonna (Colonna Palace). This was something I saw on Instagram, so I was skeptical, but it was 100% worth visiting! They are only open to the public on Saturdays and if you want to visit any other day, you have to schedule an appointment. The palace belongs to the Colonna family and construction started back in the 14th century. The family still lives there today! It is absolutely beautiful, inside and out.

View of the city from the garden (L)

View of the garden (R)

Inside the palace

Main area of the palace. Pictures don't do justice.

After visiting the palace, we then we walked to a cat sanctuary called Feral Feline Colonies Torre Argentina. It is located right in the ruins of where Julius Caesar was killed. You wouldn't even notice it was there unless you were actively searching for it and saw the sign. Crazy, I know. I read about this sanctuary on Reddit and definitely worth the visit (if you like cats). They don't allow photography or video, so I don't have anything to show except the area where it's located, but it was definitely a cool and unique experience. We got to hang out with the cats and learn a little bit about the sanctuary. They spay roughly 7,000 cats a year and you can sponsor a cat if you want.

Sanctuary is located in the area behind the sign on the left

After visiting the sanctuary, we went back to Pizza Florida for a slice of pizza since it is literally across the street from the sanctuary. We then walked to the Basilica Santa Maria in Aracoeli. A beautiful church as expected.

Basilica Santa Maria in Aracoeli

The basilica is right next to the Vittoriano. It's a neoclassical monument to celebrate Vittorio Emanuele II, the first king of Italy. In the center of the main staircase is the monument to the unknown soldier and they do a similar changing of the guards like they do in Washington D.C. There is a museum and everything, but we went straight to the rooftop terrace. We took a lift and got to see a 360 view of Rome. It was beautiful.

The front where they do the changing of the guard

Stunning views of Ancient Rome from the top of the Vittoriano.

The next place we visited was the Roman Forum. We didn't do an official tour and just walked by it. It's amazing to see historic landmarks still around today.

Roman Forum

The Colosseo Metro station was recently renovated, so we walked over towards the Colosseum. It's literally right next to the Colosseum as the name suggests. It's basically a metro/museum combination and it was really cool to visit! To see everything, you'll have to buy a metro ticket, but it's cheap and totally worth it.

Since we were right by the Colosseum, we spent a few minutes there. I still to this day haven't gone inside, lol. Maybe on the next trip? But it wasn't super crowded, so we were able to take some good pictures from the outside.

We took an Uber to our next stop, the Aventine Keyhole, which I had also seen all over Instagram. Basically what's special about it is that you can see a really cool view of St. Peter's Basilica through the keyhole. I can confidently say it was not worth it the time we spent there. We waited an hour and fifteen minutes just to look through the keyhole. The newest season of Emily in Paris had just come out and it had featured a scene there, which definitely didn’t help with the crowds. Since it’s such a viral spot, people also took forever trying to get the perfect photo. At first, I couldn’t understand why it was taking everyone so long, but then I realized that most phone cameras now have multiple lenses, so when you zoom in, the camera switches lenses. I didn’t have the patience to figure it out, so my photo turned out awful. I did find it funny that there was one man in front of us who went and looked at the keyhole and did not attempt to take a picture or video. He literally waited for over an hour just to look through the keyhole for 5 seconds and leave. It was honestly admirable considering we live in the age of social media.

The line to see the keyhole

The picture I took of the keyhole. Did not turn out well.

The next place we went to was the Basilica Di San Pietro in Vincoli. The basilica is most famous for Michelangelo's Moses, but the chains that kept St. Peter (one of the 12 disciples of Jesus) bound are kept here. 

The chains of St. Peter (L). Michelangelo's Moses (R).

The next place we ventured to was The Court for aperitivo. Another instagram find that was misleading in my opinion. It's advertised as rooftop cocktail bar with a view of the Colosseum. However, it is not on the rooftop but on a patio at the midlevel of the building. You also have to be seated in a certain area to be able to see the Colosseum and there are only enough seats for 4-5 groups of two. We were lucky to be seated in the area with the view, but there were a group of girls behind us that were clearly disappointed with their table. When we were leaving, we let them come over to our seats so they could see the view and take photos.

View from our seats. As you can see, we are not on a rooftop. But pretty views none the less.

After aperitivo, we went back to our hotel to change and freshen up. We then headed to Roma Sparita for dinner. It was delicious, but we ate too much. We usually share a few dishes, but for some odd reason, we decided to order separately and it was entirely too much food. We were soooo full. Luckily, we were able to walk it off afterwards.

After dinner, we went to St. Peter’s Square to see their Christmas lights, nativity, and Christmas tree. Slightly underwhelming, but it there was a crowd for it surprisingly.

DAY 3
It was Sunday, so woke up and went to Mass at St. Patrick’s Church. It is an American ran church, so Mass was in English which was cool.

After Mass, we came back to the hotel, had breakfast, and got ready for the day. Next, we walked over to the Villa Borghese. We did not buy tickets prior to tour the actual villa and we were going to have to wait a while to get tickets, so we just walked around the garden. It was very peaceful and pretty.

Villa Borghese

Villa Borghese Gardens

View of Piazza del Popolo from the gardens of Villa Borghese

Then we took an Uber to St. Peter’s Basilica. We bought tickets to go up to the dome! Did not know this was a thing. There are lots of stairs so be prepared to climb. But it is 100% worth it! You get an incredible view of Rome. You can also hang out outside the dome (pictures below). They have a gift shop and a small restaurant if you want to grab a quick bite or drink.

St. Peter's Basilica

Views of Rome from the top of the dome. St. Peter's Square is on the left.

Area below the dome where you can chill, go to the gift shop, or get a snack.

We spent a bit of time up there and then took the stairs back down to the bottom of St. Peter's. We went inside the sanctuary of St. Peter’s. Since 2025 was Jubilee year, we felt it was important to walk through the Holy Door. According to Pope Francis, "In the Catholic tradition, the Holy Door represents the passage to salvation — the path to a new and eternal life, which was opened to humanity by Jesus."

In front of the alter at St. Peter's Basilica

We spent some time there and then and walked through an exhibition in St. Peter's Square called 100 Nativity Scenes in the Vatican which is basically what it is. They had nativity scenes made from all over the world. Really cool to see! Out of all the Christmasy things we saw in Rome, this was probably my favorite. This is an annual event, so it's definitely worth checking out! Below were some of my favorite nativity scenes.

Next we took the train to Bonci for pizza. It was a nice little snack before we continued our adventures.

I really wanted to go shopping, so we took the train to Via del Corso which is a long street lined with places to shop at from popular clothing chains to high end brands. I did a little a damage at Zara. I've been trying to shop less fast fashion, but the Zaras in Italy are just so much better than the ones in the US (in my personal non-professional opinion).

We had dinner reservations later, so on our way to the restaurant, we stopped at Limon’e and had some lemon gelato. It was delicious. even as someone who doesn’t like lemon desserts. Some of the best gelato I had on this trip!

Such a cute place and some really good gelato.

After gelato we walked over for dinner at Giano (I know, dessert before dinner—weird). It was so good and a great way to end the first leg of our trip in Rome.

DAY 4
We woke up at 4:30am for a key master tour at the Vatican Museum that started at 6am. Honestly, this tour itself could be a whole post or video because it was a very unique experience, especially as it was my first time ever going to the Vatican museum. But I'm summarizing as best as possible. It was still dark when we arrived as shown below.

Front of the museum (L). View of St. Peter's basilica from the museum (R). 

We started the tour by our tour guide showing us all the keys used to unlock doors around the Vatican and it's over 2700 individual keys. Actually insane.

These were just a few of the many keys!

We all took turns unlocking doors and the actual key master would turn on the lights in that room. It was pretty cool. The museum was completely empty except for us and another other tour group. Both of the groups were very small so there were probably less than 15 people total between both groups including the guides.

Before and after the lights would be turned on.

More pictures of the (mostly) empty museum.

We ended the tour at the Sistine Chapel. I’ve been told that photography is strictly prohibited in the chapel but they allowed us to take photos and videos which was a total surprise! Since unlocking the door to the Sistine Chapel was a special moment, our tour guide allowed all of us to unlock the door to the chapel. The chapel was completely different from what I envisioned in my head (I had never looked at pictures), but it was one of the coolest experience of my entire life.

We had to take a picture inside!

This was 100% worth waking up for and probably the highlight of our time in Rome! Truly an unforgettable experience.

After the tour, we returned to our hotel. We packed up our bags, ate breakfast, and headed to the train station to go to Milan. 

Please read about our time in Milan and other cities in the link here.

DAY 9

We took the train from Florence back to Rome. We were originally supposed to go to Naples and stay there, but we decided to come back and stay in Rome and make Naples a day trip, which you can read about in my other post. We dropped our bags off and changed at the hotel. One thing on my Italy shopping list was a vintage designer bag that would go with everything. I went to Lesley Luxury Vintage and bought a beautiful Ferragamo purse. We had stayed at a Ferragamo property during our stay in Italy, so it felt like the perfect bag to remember this trip by.

Inside the vintage shop

It was dinner time by the time I was done shopping, so we had dinner at Al Forno Della. It was yummy!

As we were nearing the end of our trip, we tried to get as much gelato as possible. We got gelato at Gelateria La Romana dal 1947.

DAY 10

This was our last full day in Italy 😭 I was not okay. We woke up, got ready, and had breakfast at our hotel. Then we headed over to the train station to go to Naples for the day. You can read about it in the other post. Once we got back to Rome, Thomas went and picked up Trapazzino for us and we opened a bottle of wine we were gifted from Il Borro (can be read about in the other blog post). 

As our last hoorah in Italy, we decided to go out and end the night with... gelato lol. So we walked to Como Il Latte for more gelato. 

It was past 10:30pm at this point so we decided why not try to go to the Trevi Fountain. It was not crowded so we got to spend some time there and take pictures! Perfect way to end our stay in Italy and Rome. After seeing the fountain, we walked back to our hotel and started packing to head back home 😭

Overall thoughts, I LOVED Rome. Rome can be super touristy, however, coming here at Christmas time was the best idea. The weather was perfect (cold but not freezing) and nothing was super crowded outside of the Trevi Fountain and the Aventine Keyhole. When we left Rome the first leg of our trip, we were so sad to leave and wished we had ended the trip with Rome. Thankfully the rest of the trip was great and we were still able to come back to Rome at the end and spend time here. Here are compiled lists of everything we visited/ate in Rome:

SITES

- Piazza della Rotonda

- Pantheon

- Piazza Navona

- Trastevere

- Piazza del Popolo

- Trevi Fountain

- Palazzo Colonna (Colonna Palace)

- Feral Feline Colonies Torre Argentina

- Basilica Santa Maria in Aracoeli

- Vittoriano

- Roman Forum

- Colosseo Metro station

- Colosseum

- Aventine Keyhole

- Basilica Di San Pietro in Vincoli

- St. Peter’s Square

- St. Patrick’s Church

- Villa Borghese

- St. Peter’s Basilica

- Via del Corso

- Vatican Museum

- Sistine Chapel

- Lesley Luxury Vintage

FOOD

- Pizza Florida

- Trapizzino

- Bar Locarno

- The Court

- Roma Sparita

- Bonci

- Limon’e

- Giano

- Al Forno Della

- Gelateria La Romana dal 1947

- Como Il Latte

Read about the other places we visited in Italy!

Check out my last non-Italy post here: A Weekend in North Georgia

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