Discover Unique Things to Do in Rome Beyond the Crowds

On the Aventine Hill, one of Rome's original seven hills, there is a plain green door set into a high wall belonging to the Priory of the Knights of Malta. Through its keyhole, you can see something that shouldn't be possible: the dome of St. Peter's Basilica, perfectly centred and framed by a tunnel of manicured hedge, appearing much closer than it should be. The alignment is entirely deliberate, designed in 1765 by the Renaissance architect Giambattista Piranesi. The queue here is always short; most visitors to Rome have no idea it exists. Stand in line, take your thirty seconds at the keyhole, and you'll have an image in your head that no photograph quite captures. Nearby, the Orange Garden (Giardino degli Aranci) offers one of the best panoramic views over Rome's rooftops, best visited just before sunset when the light turns everything amber. Both are completely free.

Most visitors to Rome see the city at street level. But Rome is built on Rome, and beneath the modern streets lies a labyrinth of ancient layers that most tourists never reach. Exploring this underground city is one of the most genuinely extraordinary things to do in Rome, and it changes the way you understand the place entirely.

The Basilica of San Clemente is the perfect example. At street level, it's a beautiful 12th-century church. Descend one floor and you're in a 4th-century basilica. Descend another, and you're standing in a 1st-century Roman building, complete with a functioning stream of water from an ancient aqueduct still flowing beneath the floor. Three distinct civilisations stacked directly on top of one another, accessible for a modest entry fee.

The Catacombs of San Callisto on the Appian Way take you into 20 kilometres of underground tunnels where the early Christians buried their dead, including sixteen popes from the 2nd and 3rd centuries. The silence down there is absolute. Above ground, the Appian Way itself, flanked by umbrella pines and ancient tombs, is one of the most atmospheric walks in the entire city.

Trastevere is what people imagine when they dream of Rome. A tangle of cobblestone lanes west of the Tiber, its medieval buildings strung with laundry and draped in bougainvillea, the neighbourhood has somehow preserved a village-within-a-city atmosphere despite being well inside the capital. By day it's charming; by night, lit by warm lamplight with the sound of conversation spilling from open doorways, it's intoxicating.
The thing about Trastevere is that the best experiences here aren't organised. They happen when you turn down a lane you haven't been down before and find a tiny osteria with four tables and a chalkboard menu, or stumble onto a piazza where musicians are playing for the sheer pleasure of it. The neighbourhood's Roman Jewish food heritage is extraordinary too: carciofi alla giudia (deep-fried artichokes, crisp as a biscuit and rich as butter) are a Roman invention perfected in these streets, and ordering a plate with a glass of cold white wine is one of the great simple pleasures of the city. For travellers who want their Rome experience to include expert-guided access to the icons alongside these quieter neighbourhood moments, an intimate small-group journey through Italy's most celebrated cities, including expert-guided visits to the Vatican and the Colosseum with time built in for independent wandering through places like Trastevere, gives you both without having to choose between them.

The most memorable unique things to do in Rome are often the simplest: eating breakfast standing at a bar counter the way Romans do (a cornetto and a macchiato, consumed in under five minutes and costing under two euros), watching a football match at a local bar when AS Roma or Lazio are playing, or taking the tram to the end of the line just to see where it goes. Rome's bacaro culture, borrowed from Venice but adapted with Roman directness, is thriving in the city's wine bars. These are places that serve wine by the glass, natural and biodynamic alongside traditional labels, with boards of local cheese, cured meats, and seasonal vegetables. They tend to be small, loud, and completely unpretentious, and they're where Romans actually spend their evenings.

For those who want a private, immersive journey through Italy that includes both the iconic landmarks and these quieter cultural layers, a thoughtfully designed private tour through Venice, Florence and Rome, with expert guides, cooking classes, wine tastings in local bacari, and carefully curated experiences built around Italian culinary traditions, is the ideal way to experience the country at its full depth.

One of the most rewarding things to do in Rome Italy costs almost nothing and requires no booking, no queue, and no planning: the aperitivo. Between 6pm and 9pm, Romans across the city settle into bars and cafés for a pre-dinner drink, typically a Campari Spritz, Negroni, or simple glass of local wine, accompanied by a small spread of olives, crisps, and sometimes a full buffet of antipasti included in the price of the drink.

This is not happy hour. It's a ritual, and participating in it properly means slowing down, staying for longer than feels comfortable, and watching the city transition from afternoon heat to evening. The best aperitivo spots in Rome are not in the tourist centre: head to Pigneto (Rome's most interesting up-and-coming neighbourhood), Ostiense, or the streets around Piazza Trilussa in Trastevere, where locals gather in the early evening and conversation is the main event. Rome rewards this kind of unhurried attention more than almost any other city. The travellers who leave loving it most deeply are usually those who built in empty hours, who sat long enough at a fountain to notice the light change, or who stayed at the dinner table until midnight because the conversation, the wine, and the pasta were all too good to rush.