Get Ready for Rome

Centered on the Pantheon and Piazza Navona, the Campus Martius is for good reason Rome's most popular zone. Today we note its main sites to visit.

Today we review the sites on the Quirinal, Viminal, and Esquiline Hills, which are not so much hills as ridges that meet in the area of the Termini Train Station. They offer a rich mix of Ancient, Christian, and Modern monuments.

Today we inventory the main sites in the area near the Capitoline Hill, including the Forum and the Colosseum. This is an essential first step toward choosing what is most important to visit in this zone of Rome.

I offer here a few thoughts on how to plan a visit to Rome, from places to stay to the need to decide what sites you want to visit.

Having a big picture in mind helps you find your way around Rome. I offer one here consisting of a Fixed Point, Four Roads, and Five Zones.

We return to the Hall of Constantine, one of the four Raphael Rooms in the Vatican Museums. Its main frescoes show crucial episodes in the life of the Emperor Constantine, but did they ever happen?

After an overview of the three Raphael Rooms that followed the Stanza della Segnatura, we focus today on the Hall or Sala of Constantine, the first Christian Emperor.

We devoted a couple of Mini Pods to the greatest of the Raphael Rooms, but what about the others? This overview should help get us ready for the Room of Constantine, coming up next.

Raphael's famous "School of Athens" is in the Stanza della Segnatura in the Vatican, but what else is in this room, and are its several parts brought into a harmonious whole?

While the beauty of Raphael's School of Athens is widely appreciated, we today probe the controversial idea behind it.