July's Monthly Newsletter

How to visit Rome in high summer, and enjoy it.

All photos taken over the last week

Here are some photos from my past week of tours, despite occasional days of torrid heat, the tail end of June and this first week of July have been rather more temperate than last year. In high summer the correct response to Rome’s summer temperatures (even without heatwaves) is to seek out underground areas, the perennial marble cool of shadowy churches, and the refreshing mist of fountains. Stick to the longer shadows of morning and late afternoon to visit archaeological sites. Avoid walking along main roads: narrow cobbled streets are both prettier and shadier than the stifling thoroughfares razed through Renaissance Rome by the post-Risorgimento Haussmannian sledgehammer school of town planning. Take a nap in the middle of the day, you’ll see more and feel it less. Have dinner when the Romans do: it’s far too hot to eat before at least 8.30pm, and you’ll have an infinitely more interesting anthropological experience.

At this time of year I always prefer spending more time in the verdant shade of the Palatine Hill over the torpor-inducing heat bowl of the Roman Forum; and the fabulous views from above give a sense of perspective to the occasionally bewildering muddle below. There is, I always think, no bad time to visit Rome, there are simply bad ways of doing it. And there is nothing that anyone has to see: if the prospect of the un-air conditioned throng of the Vatican Museums fills you with trepidation you have my permission not to go. Visit Palazzo Altemps, Palazzo Barberini, Palazzo Massimo alle Terme, or the Capitoline Museums instead (just to name four); they are absolutely extraordinary museums and you can have them almost to yourself at any time of year. Remember, it’s supposed to be fun not a slog!

Here’s last July’s Vespa Tune, now without a paywall:

Baci from Roma,

Agnes

Ristorante Sibilla, an excellent stop on a day trip to Tivoli. The ultimate in minimal effort sightseeing is admiring a temple while having lunch. Embrace the languorous spirit of the Grand Tour!

Excellent views from the Palatine beneath the shade of a holm oak. A sturdy and ancient arboreal choice of which Horace and Virgil would have approved.

The Mithraic temple beneath San Clemente. Very cool in more than one way.

San Clemente, and its glorious mosaics and “Cosmatesque” floor.

Refreshing fountains at Villa d’Este, Tivoli

Carabinieri in the shade of the obelisk of Augustus’ Horologium, now at piazza di Montecitorio

La Polizia di Stato in the shade of the Column of Marcus Aurelius in front of Palazzo Chigi, piazza Colonna.

Resisting temptation at the crystalline waters of the Trevi Fountain

The geometry of a Roman July

The lovely little museum at Hadrian’s Villa, complete with crocodile of cipollino marble (about which I wrote this).

Evocative Gattopardian melancholy a stone’s throw from the Colosseum. Villa Celimontana.

Finding all the shade at Hadrian’s Villa.

Cool, calm, and collected. Late Renaissance frescoes at Villa d’Este