When In Rome … Go Where The Romans Go, Not The Tourist Crowds

The Eternal City’s monuments and museums are busy at the best of times, but there remain myriad treasures to explore that are well off the beaten track

One of the earliest European printed books was a tourist guide to Rome. Ranging from information on ancient ruins, fallen temples and classical bathhouses to the place where an emperor “saw a vision in the sky”, Mirabilia Urbis Romae (Marvels of the City of Rome) was written in Latin in the early 12th century. The popular text was reproduced in dozens of manuscripts and was printed and published in the mid-1470s, a mere two decades after the Gutenberg Bible. As with many a menu in modern-day Rome, English, French, German and Italian versions were available.

Later, the Grand Tour brought throngs to the Eternal City of monuments and museums. Beguiled by its beauty, its mixture of terracotta and mocha colours, the galleries of renaissance sculpture and dark chapels full of old masters, many thought it a heaven on Earth. Dickens had mixed feelings. Recollecting the Piazza di Spagna, where artists’ models gathered in public to be hired, he wrote: “They started up before me, in Rome, in the broad day, like so many saddled and bridled nightmares.”