Hadrian didn't just rebuild the Pantheon — he kept the original dedication to Marcus Agrippa on the front, so for centuries people credited the wrong man. The inscription still reads Marcus Agrippa, son of Lucius, consul for the third time, built this. Inside, the dome rises exactly as high as the room is wide: forty-three metres, with a nine-metre hole open to the sky. It remains the largest unreinforced concrete dome ever built.
Audio guide Rome
Tella is a free audio guide for any place on Earth. Here are 30 places in Rome worth a story. Open one on the map and hear it read aloud in English, or take the Android app on a walk and let it narrate whatever you pass.
Places worth a story
Sistine Chapel
chapel in the Apostolic Palace, Vatican City
Photo: The original uploader was Snowdog at Italian Wikipedia . · CC BY-SA 3.0
Sapienza University of Rome
Italian university founded in Rome in 1303
Sapienza counts the largest student body in all of Europe — over one hundred twenty thousand enrolled, enough people to double the population of a small city. It was founded in 1303 by Pope Boniface VIII, making it one of the oldest universities in continuous operation anywhere. The name means wisdom, and the campus has held to it: Enrico Fermi worked out nuclear physics here, Maria Montessori trained as a doctor here before she ever built a classroom, and the physicist Emilio Segrè won a Nobel for the antiproton. The main campus sits among Rome's museums and theatres, students crossing paths with art on the way to lecture. The university's library system holds over two and a half million volumes, one of the largest collections in Italy.
Photo: Melirius · CC BY-SA 2.0
Trevi Fountain
Baroque fountain in Rome, Italy
The Trevi Fountain swallows about a million euros in coins every year — all of it scooped out and given to a Catholic charity that feeds Rome’s poor. The tradition started with a movie: in *Three Coins in the Fountain*, a coin tossed over your shoulder promises a return trip to Rome. Today the ritual is so entrenched that city workers brave the crowds twice a week to vacuum up the haul. The fountain itself is the work of Nicola Salvi, who won a papal design competition in 1732 and spent thirty years building it before his death.
Photo: NikonZ7II · CC BY-SA 4.0
Basilica di Santa Maria Maggiore
largest Catholic Marian church in Rome
Photo: NikonZ7II · CC BY-SA 4.0
Castel Sant'Angelo
castle and museum in Rome, formerly the imperial mausoleum of the emperor Hadrian and subsequent Roman emperors
Metropolitan City of Rome
Italian metropolitan city
Photo: [[User:Ilocos.com ` LocalGuidesConnect.com°]] · CC BY-SA 3.0
Quirinal Palace
historic building in Rome, Italy; official residence of the President of the Italian Republic
Photo: This Photo was taken by Wolfgang Moroder . Feel free to use my photos, but plea… · CC BY-SA 3.0
Arch of Constantine
triumphal arch in Rome
The Senate built this arch in 315 to honor Constantine's victory at the Milvian Bridge, but the monument is essentially a collage of recycled art. Sculptors stripped reliefs and statues from monuments to Trajan, Hadrian, and Marcus Aurelius, then recut the faces to look like Constantine. The arch was the last great triumphal monument of imperial Rome, and it still spans the route victorious generals took into the city.
Piazza Navona
public square in Rome, Italy
The shape of Piazza Navona is no accident — it’s the ghost of a Roman stadium. Around 86 AD, the Emperor Domitian built a vast arena here for running races, and for centuries the square we see now was its track. The grandstands rose where the surrounding buildings stand today, and the piazza kept the stadium’s long, rounded form.
Inside that footprint, the square became the city’s most theatrical stage. Bernini’s Fountain of the Four Rivers dominates the centre — four river gods, one for the Nile, the Ganges, the Danube, and the Río de la Plata. The story goes that the Río de la Plata figure raises his hand to shield himself from the church façade across the square, supposedly designed by Bernini’s rival, Borromini. The church was finished first, so the gesture is pure legend — but it’s still a good one.
Photo: NikonZ7II · CC BY-SA 4.0
Galleria Borghese
Art museum in Rome, Italy
Long before it was a public museum, the Galleria Borghese was how Cardinal Scipione Borghese kept his collection all to himself. The nephew of a pope, he had the money and the ruthlessness to grab masterpieces the moment they appeared, and the villa was built as his private showcase. Today it holds one of the densest collections of sculpture and painting anywhere: Bernini’s Apollo and Daphne, Caravaggio’s David with the Head of Goliath, Titian’s Sacred and Profane Love. What makes it unusual is the scale — a villa, not a palace, so every room feels crowded with masterpieces rather than spaced out. The building itself is the Casino Nobile, set inside the Villa Borghese gardens above the Spanish Steps.
Photo: Blackcat · CC BY-SA 4.0
Capitoline Museums
municipal museum of the city of Rome, Italy
Capitoline Wolf
bronze sculpture of a she-wolf suckling twin infants, inspired by the founding legend of Rome, on display in the Capitoline Museums, Rome
Photo: CC0
Altare della Patria
monument built in honour of Victor Emmanuel II of Italy
In 1921, an unknown soldier killed on the Italian front was carried here by train, through every town and village, to lie at the centre of the nation. The Altare della Patria was built to honour Victor Emmanuel II, the first king of unified Italy, but the tomb of that unnamed soldier turned it into something more personal. Its white Brescian marble was intended to outshine the ancient ruins around it. The monument took fifty years to build, opening only in 1935.
Photo: Max_Ryazanov · CC BY-SA 3.0
Università degli Studi ''Guglielmo Marconi''
university in Rome, Italy
Photo: Janets444 · CC BY-SA 3.0
Church of the Gesù
church in Rome, Italy, and precursor of the Baroque style
Photo: Rione Colonna · CC BY 4.0
Stories are written by an AI from public map and encyclopaedia data and may contain mistakes.