The Most Beautiful Places in Rome
41 places · updated 14 October 2026
In short: By our ranking, the most beautiful places in Rome are Colosseum, Roman Forum and Castel Sant'Angelo. The list covers 41 places. Last updated 14 October 2026.
No other city holds so many layers of European art and power in one place. Rome was the capital of an empire for centuries, then the seat of the popes, and each era built over and around the last: ancient temples became churches, a stadium became a piazza, an emperor's tomb became a fortress. The Renaissance and Baroque popes then hired the greatest artists of their age, so Rome is as much a city of sculpture and church interiors as of ruins.
The Colosseum, inaugurated in AD 80, and the Roman Forum below the Palatine Hill are the heart of the ancient city. Trajan's Column winds a spiral frieze of the Dacian Wars around its shaft, and the Arch of Constantine, finished in 315, reuses carved panels from earlier imperial monuments. Hadrian's mausoleum survives as Castel Sant'Angelo, reached across the Tiber by the Ponte Sant'Angelo with its row of angels designed by Bernini.
Piazza Navona keeps the oval outline of the stadium of Domitian, with Bernini's Fountain of the Four Rivers at its centre, and Borromini's small church of San Carlo alle Quattro Fontane folds its walls and dome into restless curves. Michelangelo's Moses sits in San Pietro in Vincoli. Across the river in the Vatican, St. Peter's Basilica holds his Pietà, carved when he was in his early twenties, and the Vatican Museums keep the ancient Laocoön group, unearthed in Rome in 1506.
In this list
| # | Place | Type | UNESCO |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Colosseum | Archaeological site | |
| 2 | Roman Forum | Archaeological site | |
| 3 | Castel Sant'Angelo | Castle | |
| 4 | Trajan's Column | Sculpture | |
| 5 | Arch of Constantine | Triumphal arch | |
| 6 | Ponte Sant'Angelo | Bridge | |
| 7 | Piazza Navona | Square | |
| 8 | Palatine Hill | Archaeological site | |
| 9 | Column of Marcus Aurelius | Sculpture | |
| 10 | San Carlo alle Quattro Fontane | Church building | |
| 11 | Moses | Sculpture | |
| 12 | Vittoriano (Victor Emmanuel II Monument), Rome | Monument | |
| 13 | Trevi Fountain | Sculpture | |
| 14 | Trajan's Market | Ruins | |
| 15 | Spanish Steps | Stairs | |
| 16 | Baths of Caracalla | Thermae | |
| 17 | Hadrian's Villa | Open-air museum | ✓ |
| 18 | Basilica of San Clemente, Rome | Temple | |
| 19 | Ecstasy of Saint Teresa | Sculpture | |
| 20 | Baths of Diocletian | Thermae | |
| 21 | Sant'Ignazio Church | Church building | |
| 22 | Aqua Claudia | Aqueduct | |
| 23 | Scala Sancta | Stairs | ✓ |
| 24 | Basilica di Santa Maria Maggiore | Church building | ✓ |
| 25 | Catacomb of Priscilla | Catacombs | |
| 26 | Tempietto | Church building | |
| 27 | Piazza del Campidoglio | Square | |
| 28 | Apollo and Daphne | Sculpture | |
| 29 | Pantheon, Rome | Archaeological site | |
| 30 | Archbasilica of St. John Lateran | Cathedral | ✓ |
01 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.
02 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.
03 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.
04 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.
05 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.
06 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.
07 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.
08 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.
09 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.
10 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.
11 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.
12 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.
13 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.
14 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.
15 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.
16 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.
17 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.
18 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.
19 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.
20 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.
21 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.
22 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.
23 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.
24 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.
25 Catacomb of Priscilla
Catacombe di Priscilla
Italy · 4.2 km from Rome41.930° N 12.509° E
Unknown author Unknown author · Public domain Beneath the Via Salaria, on the northern side of Rome, lies one of the richest of the city's early Christian cemeteries. The Catacomb of Priscilla was dug from an ancient quarry and grew into many kilometres of galleries on two levels, used for burials from the late second century into the fourth.
26 Tempietto
Tempietto di San Pietro in Montorio
Italy · 1.6 km from Rome41.889° N 12.466° E
Sailko · CC BY-SA 3.0 Hidden in a courtyard on the Janiculum hill, Bramante's Tempietto is barely bigger than a garden pavilion, yet it is one of the founding buildings of the High Renaissance.
Did you know? Bramante based the Doric frieze of triglyphs and metopes on the ancient Theatre of Marcellus in Rome.
27 Piazza del Campidoglio
Italy · 0.5 km from Rome41.893° N 12.483° E
Image by patrizio1948 from Pixabay On the summit of the Capitoline, the smallest and most sacred of Rome's hills, Michelangelo made one of the first great squares of the modern world.
Did you know? In 1471 Pope Sixtus IV gave ancient bronzes, including the Capitoline Wolf, to the people of Rome, the gift usually counted as the founding of the Capitoline collections.
28 Apollo and Daphne
Apollo e Dafne
Italy · 2 km from Rome41.914° N 12.492° E
Alvesgaspar · CC BY-SA 4.0 Bernini was still a young sculptor when he carved Apollo and Daphne for Cardinal Scipione Borghese, between 1622 and 1625, and the group is still displayed in the villa for which it was made.
Did you know? Cardinal Scipione Borghese ordered it after giving away Bernini's Rape of Proserpina to Cardinal Ludovico Ludovisi, nephew of Pope Gregory XV.
29 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.
30 Archbasilica of St. John Lateran
Basilica di San Giovanni in Laterano
Italy · 2.5 km from Rome41.886° N 12.506° E
- UNESCO World Heritage
NikonZ7II · CC BY-SA 4.0 Saint John Lateran, not Saint Peter's, is the cathedral of Rome. It is the seat of the pope as bishop of the city, and an inscription on its front calls it the mother and head of all churches of the city and the world.
Did you know? Its early riches earned it the nickname Golden Basilica, which made it a target: the Vandals stripped it of its treasures in the 5th century.
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 Rome?
- On our list, Colosseum ranks first, followed by Roman Forum and Castel Sant'Angelo.
- How old is the Colosseum?
- Construction of the Colosseum began under Emperor Vespasian around AD 72, and it was inaugurated under his son Titus in AD 80. It is the largest amphitheatre ever built in the Roman world.
- Why is Piazza Navona oval?
- Piazza Navona follows the outline of the Stadium of Domitian, built in the first century AD for athletic contests. Later buildings rose on the stadium's seating, preserving its long shape as the open square.
- Where is Michelangelo's Moses?
- Michelangelo's Moses is in the church of San Pietro in Vincoli in Rome. It was carved as part of the tomb of Pope Julius II.
- What kinds of places are there to see in Rome?
- In our collection, the places in Rome are most often archaeological sites (10), churches (8), sculptures (7) and monuments (5).
- How many places are on this list in Rome?
- The list covers 41 places.