The Most Beautiful Places in Lazio
47 places · updated 14 October 2026
In short: By our ranking, the most beautiful places in Lazio are Civita di Bagnoregio, Trevi Fountain and Garden of Ninfa. The list covers 47 places. Last updated 14 October 2026.
Lazio holds Rome, and Rome holds almost three thousand years of continuous building: the capital of an empire, then the seat of the popes, who rebuilt it in Renaissance and baroque splendour. Beyond the city the region adds volcanic lakes, hill towns and villas, but it is the capital that sets the measure, with ancient ruins and baroque churches often standing side by side in the same street.
The Colosseum, inaugurated in AD 80, is the largest amphitheatre the Romans built, and the Roman Forum below the Palatine was the civic heart of the city. Trajan's Column spirals with reliefs of the Dacian wars, and the Arch of Constantine celebrates a victory of 312 with sculpture reused from earlier monuments. Castel Sant'Angelo began as the mausoleum of Hadrian before becoming a papal fortress.
The baroque city answered with its own masterpieces. Bernini's angels line the Ponte Sant'Angelo, and Piazza Navona keeps the oval of an ancient stadium around his Fountain of the Four Rivers. Borromini fitted San Carlo alle Quattro Fontane, with its undulating façade and oval dome, onto a tiny corner plot. Michelangelo's Moses sits at the tomb of Pope Julius II, the Trevi Fountain pours from a palace front, the Spanish Steps climb to Trinità dei Monti, and the white Vittoriano honours the first king of united Italy.
In this list
| # | Place | Type | UNESCO |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Civita di Bagnoregio | Most beautiful village | |
| 2 | Trevi Fountain | Sculpture | |
| 3 | Garden of Ninfa | Historic garden | |
| 4 | Pantheon, Rome | Archaeological site | |
| 5 | Villa d'Este | Historic garden | ✓ |
| 6 | Sant'Ignazio Church | Church building | |
| 7 | Gardens of Bomarzo | Sculpture garden | |
| 8 | Piazza Navona | Square | |
| 9 | Colosseum | Archaeological site | |
| 10 | Roman Forum | Archaeological site | |
| 11 | Castel Sant'Angelo | Castle | |
| 12 | Trajan's Column | Sculpture | |
| 13 | Arch of Constantine | Triumphal arch | |
| 14 | Ponte Sant'Angelo | Bridge | |
| 15 | Palatine Hill | Archaeological site | |
| 16 | Column of Marcus Aurelius | Sculpture | |
| 17 | San Carlo alle Quattro Fontane | Church building | |
| 18 | Moses | Sculpture | |
| 19 | Vittoriano (Victor Emmanuel II Monument), Rome | Monument | |
| 20 | Trajan's Market | Ruins | |
| 21 | Spanish Steps | Stairs | |
| 22 | Baths of Caracalla | Thermae | |
| 23 | Hadrian's Villa | Open-air museum | ✓ |
| 24 | Villa Farnese | Palace | |
| 25 | Basilica of San Clemente, Rome | Temple | |
| 26 | Ecstasy of Saint Teresa | Sculpture | |
| 27 | Baths of Diocletian | Thermae | |
| 28 | Aqua Claudia | Aqueduct | |
| 29 | Scala Sancta | Stairs | ✓ |
| 30 | Basilica di Santa Maria Maggiore | Church building | ✓ |
01 Civita di Bagnoregio
Italy42.628° N 12.114° E
- one of the most beautiful villages
Orlando Paride · CC BY-SA 4.0 Civita di Bagnoregio is a hill town left standing on a pillar of rock. It sits on a narrow plateau of volcanic tuff over a softer base of clay, and all around it the land has fallen away into the Valle dei Calanchi, a badland of grey and ochre ridges carved by rain and streams.
Did you know? Visitor numbers rose from about 40,000 in 2010 to an estimated 850,000 in 2017.
02 Trevi Fountain
Fontana di Trevi
Italy · 0.4 km from Rome41.901° N 12.483° E
Image by jdegheest from Pixabay What feeds this fountain isn't ornamental plumbing — it's the working outflow of the Aqua Virgo, an aqueduct finished in 19 BC that has been delivering the same spring water to roughly this same spot for over two thousand years.
Did you know? Bernini was asked by Pope Urban VIII to plan a new fountain here in 1629, but the project was abandoned and only completed a century later by others.
03 Garden of Ninfa
Giardino di Ninfa
Italy41.578° N 12.950° E
WikiRomaWiki · CC BY-SA 4.0 Ninfa is a garden grown inside the ruins of a medieval town. 4 km long. A pope, Alexander III, was crowned here in 1159; twelve years later Frederick Barbarossa's army sacked and burned it.
Did you know? In the 16th century Cardinal Nicolò III Caetani had the architect Francesco Perugino lay out a garden here, but it decayed after his death in 1585.
04 Pantheon, Rome
Pantheon
Italy · 0.4 km from Rome41.899° N 12.477° E
Image by falcon505 from Pixabay The Pantheon is the best-preserved great building of ancient Rome, and its interior is one of the most perfect spaces ever built. The temple first raised by Marcus Agrippa under Augustus burned down; the building that stands today was reconstructed under the emperor Hadrian and completed around AD 126.
Did you know? Two small bell towers added in the 17th century were mocked by Romans as ass's ears and finally taken down in 1883.
05 Villa d'Este
Italy · 27.1 km from Rome41.962° N 12.796° E
- UNESCO World Heritage
Image by lapping from Pixabay Villa d'Este is less a palace with a garden than a machine for turning a river into theatre.
Did you know? Gian Lorenzo Bernini added the Fountain of the Bicchierone, shaped like a great goblet, in 1660 and 1661.
06 Sant'Ignazio Church
Chiesa di Sant'Ignazio di Loyola in Campo Marzio
Italy · 0.2 km from Rome41.899° N 12.480° E
Fiat 500e · CC BY 4.0 In the church of Sant'Ignazio in Rome the ceiling opens into the sky.
Did you know? The painter Domenichino submitted designs, but the Jesuits insisted the new church must follow their mother church, the Gesù.
07 Gardens of Bomarzo
Parco dei Mostri
Italy42.492° N 12.248° E
Livioandronico2013 · CC BY-SA 4.0 The Sacro Bosco, the "Sacred Grove" of Bomarzo, better known as the Park of the Monsters, is one of the strangest gardens of the Renaissance.
Did you know? The architectural historian Liane Lefaivre has argued that the sculptures illustrate scenes from the Renaissance romance Hypnerotomachia Poliphili.
08 Piazza Navona
Italy · 0.7 km from Rome41.899° N 12.473° E
Krzysztof Golik · CC BY-SA 4.0 Piazza Navona keeps the exact outline of a Roman racetrack. Emperor Domitian built a stadium here around 80 AD for athletic contests, the agones, and when the stands were quarried away after the fall of the empire the houses that replaced them simply followed the curve.
Did you know? According to tradition, Saint Agnes was martyred in one of the stadium's arcades, and the church on the square keeps her skull in a shrine.
09 Colosseum
Colosseo
Italy · 1.2 km from Rome41.890° N 12.492° E
Image by MARTINOPHUC from Pixabay The eighty-foot drop beneath the Colosseum's sand floor is where the real machinery of the show lived.
Did you know? Spectators were guided to their seats by numbered pottery tokens that matched one of the 80 ground-level entrances.
10 Roman Forum
Foro Romano
Italy · 0.7 km from Rome41.892° N 12.485° E
Image by jensjunge from Pixabay The Roman Forum fills a small valley between the Palatine and Capitoline hills that was once a marsh.
Did you know? The Temple of Saturn doubled as the state treasury, holding vaults for public funds and private deposits.
11 Castel Sant'Angelo
Italy · 1.4 km from Rome41.903° N 12.466° E
Image by rainhard2 from Pixabay Hadrian started building his own tomb in 123 CE and didn't live to see it finished — it was completed in 139 under his successor Antoninus Pius, a cylindrical drum of a monument meant to hold the ashes of an emperor and his family for eternity. Eternity lasted about three centuries as a mausoleum.
Did you know? The last emperor known to have been interred here was Caracalla, in 217.
12 Trajan's Column
Colonna Traiana
Italy · 0.3 km from Rome41.896° N 12.484° E
Raffaele pagani · CC BY-SA 4.0 Trajan's Column is a 30-metre marble shaft, 35 m with its pedestal, that has stood in Trajan's Forum just north of the Roman Forum since it was dedicated on 12 May 113.
Did you know? Ancient coins suggest the column was first topped by a figure that was probably an eagle, before a statue of Trajan took its place.
13 Arch of Constantine
Arco di Costantino
Italy · 1.2 km from Rome41.890° N 12.491° E
Image by TreptowerAlex from Pixabay The Arch of Constantine stands in the open ground between the Colosseum and the Palatine Hill, the largest triumphal arch to survive from ancient Rome: 21 metres high, almost 26 metres wide and more than 7 metres deep, with a tall central opening flanked by two smaller ones.
Did you know? The arch was officially opened on 25 July 315, the start of the tenth anniversary year of Constantine's reign.
14 Ponte Sant'Angelo
Ponte Sant’Angelo
Italy · 1.3 km from Rome41.902° N 12.466° E
Image by valtercirillo from Pixabay Ponte Sant'Angelo crosses the Tiber in the heart of Rome, leading straight to the massive drum of Castel Sant'Angelo. Emperor Hadrian built it in 134 AD as the Pons Aelius, the approach to his own mausoleum — the drum that later became a papal fortress and gave the bridge its present name.
Did you know? The angels were carved by a team of sculptors including Antonio Raggi, Ercole Ferrata, Domenico Guidi and Cosimo Fancelli, with Bernini's son Paolo helping on the two originals.
15 Palatine Hill
Palatino
Italy · 1.2 km from Rome41.888° N 12.487° E
Livioandronico2013 · CC BY-SA 4.0 The Palatine is the hill where Rome says it began. Roman tradition put the she-wolf's cave, the Lupercal, at its foot and Romulus's founding of the city on its summit, and archaeology is not far off: huts of the early Iron Age have been found here.
16 Column of Marcus Aurelius
Colonna di Marco Aurelio
Italy · 0.3 km from Rome41.901° N 12.480° E
Diego Delso · CC BY-SA 4.0 The Column of Marcus Aurelius stands in Piazza Colonna, on the Via del Corso in the centre of Rome, in front of Palazzo Chigi, the seat of the Italian government.
17 San Carlo alle Quattro Fontane
Chiesa di San Carlo alle Quattro Fontane
Italy · 0.9 km from Rome41.902° N 12.491° E
Alexkom000 · CC BY 4.0 San Carlo is so small that it would get lost in most Roman churches: the whole building measures only about 20 by 12 metres. Yet into that cramped corner plot Francesco Borromini fitted one of the most inventive spaces of the Baroque, and it was his first independent commission.
Did you know? Borromini favoured humble plaster and stucco over costly marble, in keeping with both the friars' poverty and his own taste.
18 Moses
Mosè
Italy · 1.1 km from Rome41.894° N 12.493° E
Luciano Tronati · CC BY-SA 4.0 Michelangelo's Moses sits in the church of San Pietro in Vincoli, on the Oppian Hill a short walk from the Colosseum, as the centrepiece of the tomb of Pope Julius II.
Did you know? The figures flanking Moses, Rachel and Leah, were carved by Michelangelo in 1542 to 1545 and symbolise the contemplative and active life.
19 Vittoriano (Victor Emmanuel II Monument), Rome
Vittoriano
Italy · 0.4 km from Rome41.895° N 12.483° E
Image by serghei_topor from Pixabay The Vittoriano, the national monument to Victor Emmanuel II, is the building that Rome loves to argue about. Raised in honour of the first king of united Italy, it was designed by Giuseppe Sacconi, winner of a competition, and begun in 1885 on the northern slope of the Capitoline Hill.
Did you know? Excavations for the foundations turned up the remains of a mammoth, which were transferred to the University of Rome.
20 Trajan's Market
Mercati di Traiano
Italy · 0.5 km from Rome41.896° N 12.486° E
NikonZ7II · CC BY-SA 4.0 Trajan's Market is a curved cliff of Roman brick set into the side of the Quirinal Hill, above the ruins of Trajan's Forum and across Via dei Fori Imperiali from the Vittoriano.
21 Spanish Steps
Scalinata di Trinità dei Monti
Italy · 0.9 km from Rome41.906° N 12.483° E
Image by Leonhard_Niederwimmer from Pixabay The Spanish Steps are Rome's great outdoor staircase, climbing a steep 29-metre slope from the Piazza di Spagna to the church of Trinità dei Monti on the shoulder of the Pincian Hill.
Did you know? For a long time the winning design was attributed to Alessandro Specchi; very little is known about Francesco de Sanctis, the architect who actually won.
22 Baths of Caracalla
Terme di Caracalla
Italy · 2.2 km from Rome41.880° N 12.493° E
Image by pcdazero from Pixabay Few ruins in Rome convey the scale of imperial ambition as bluntly as the Baths of Caracalla. Begun under Septimius Severus and inaugurated by his son Caracalla in AD 216, the complex occupied a walled rectangle of roughly 337 by 328 metres on the southern edge of the city, on land that had once been a garden estate.
Did you know? The furnaces beneath the baths burned around 10 tonnes of wood every day, drawn from stores holding more than 2,000 tonnes.
23 Hadrian's Villa
Villa Adriana
Italy · 24.9 km from Rome41.942° N 12.775° E
- UNESCO World Heritage
Elenadeca · CC BY 4.0 Hadrian was the Roman emperor who actually left the empire to go look at it — he spent more of his reign travelling its provinces than any predecessor, and when he came home, he didn't just bring back souvenirs.
Did you know? The Pecile, a huge garden court of about 232 by 97 metres, was bordered by a double portico built against a central wall 9 metres high.
24 Villa Farnese
Palazzo Farnese
Italy42.329° N 12.237° E
Livioandronico2013 · CC BY-SA 4.0 Villa Farnese towers over the small town of Caprarola like a fortress, and that is exactly how it began. Its plan is a regular pentagon with corner bastions, set on a platform cut from the volcanic tuff of the Cimini hills, and the town's main street runs straight up the slope to its front terraces.
Did you know? The villa's five floors were each assigned a different function, from the guardroom-like base to the state rooms and the floors for courtiers and servants above.
25 Basilica of San Clemente, Rome
Basilica di San Clemente al Laterano
Italy · 1.7 km from Rome41.889° N 12.498° E
Johann Rudolf Rahn · Public domain Few buildings show the layering of Rome as plainly as San Clemente. A staircase inside the church leads down through roughly two thousand years: from a twelfth-century basilica to the church that preceded it, and from there to Roman rooms of the first and second centuries, including a sanctuary of the god Mithras.
Did you know? Masolino painted the frescoes of the Chapel of St Catherine in the upper church around 1430, early landmarks of Renaissance painting in Rome.
26 Ecstasy of Saint Teresa
Estasi di santa Teresa d'Avila
Italy · 1.3 km from Rome41.905° N 12.494° E
Livioandronico2013 · CC BY-SA 4.0 Bernini did not simply carve a statue for the Cornaro Chapel in Santa Maria della Vittoria; he staged a scene. Above the altar, Teresa of Ávila sinks back on a bank of marble cloud, eyes half closed and mouth open, while a smiling angel lifts a golden-tipped arrow over her.
Did you know? The Victorian critic Anna Jameson found the group so improper that she wrote approvingly of the idea of destroying it.
27 Baths of Diocletian
Terme di Diocleziano
Italy · 1.5 km from Rome41.903° N 12.498° E
NikonZ7II · CC BY-SA 4.0 The Baths of Diocletian were the largest bathing complex ancient Rome ever built, and a surprising amount of them is still standing, hidden in plain sight across the square from Termini station.
Did you know? The full dedication inscription survives only because a pilgrim of the 8th or 9th century copied it; the copy is kept at Einsiedeln Abbey in Switzerland.
28 Aqua Claudia
Acquedotto Claudio
Italy · 8.1 km from Rome41.849° N 12.554° E
Larry from Charlottetown, PEI, Canada · CC BY 2.0 The emperor Caligula began the Aqua Claudia in 38 AD and his successor Claudius, whose name it carries, inaugurated it in 52 AD.
Did you know? Frontinus reports that of the Claudia's water reaching the city, 819 units went to the emperor, 1,012 to public use and 1,067 to private users.
29 Scala Sancta
Scala Santa
Italy · 2.4 km from Rome41.887° N 12.507° E
- UNESCO World Heritage
Miguel Hermoso Cuesta · CC BY-SA 4.0 The Scala Sancta, or Holy Stairs, is a flight of 28 marble steps in Rome which Catholic tradition holds are the steps of Pontius Pilate's praetorium in Jerusalem, climbed by Christ on the way to his trial. Medieval legend says that St Helena, mother of Constantine, brought them to Rome around 326.
30 Basilica di Santa Maria Maggiore
Italy · 1.4 km from Rome41.898° N 12.499° E
- UNESCO World Heritage
L'Ospite Inatteso · CC BY-SA 4.0 Santa Maria Maggiore, the Basilica of Saint Mary Major, stands on the summit of the Esquiline Hill and is one of Rome's four major papal basilicas. Unlike most great Roman churches, it has kept the bones of its original Early Christian building.
Did you know? The King of Spain is, by tradition, the honorary first canon of the basilica's chapter.
How this list is ranked
Places are chosen for how they look, not for how famous they are: each one has its own description and a photograph credited to its author. The order is a single world ranking that weighs the beauty of the place in curated photography together with how widely it is documented — the number of language editions of its encyclopedia article and how often that article is read in a year. The list is rebuilt as places are added, so the order and the counts on this page are always current.
Questions people ask
- What are the most beautiful places in Lazio?
- On our list, Civita di Bagnoregio ranks first, followed by Trevi Fountain and Garden of Ninfa.
- How many spectators could the Colosseum hold?
- Estimates range from about 50,000 to 80,000 spectators. It was begun under Vespasian and inaugurated under Titus in AD 80.
- Why does Michelangelo's Moses have horns?
- The horns come from a long tradition based on the Latin Vulgate, which rendered the Hebrew word describing Moses' shining face after Sinai as 'horned'. Michelangelo followed this convention, common in medieval and Renaissance art.
- Why is Piazza Navona oval?
- The square follows the outline of the Stadium of Domitian, built in the first century AD for athletic contests. Houses were later built on the old seating, preserving the stadium's long shape.
- What kinds of places are there to see in Lazio?
- In our collection, the places in Lazio are most often archaeological sites (10), churches (8), sculptures (7) and monuments (5).
- How many places are on this list in Lazio?
- The list covers 47 places.