Which legends does Rome tell about itself, since when, and what lies underneath them?
8 walks with different starting points and stories. Compare their maps, stops and duration, then choose where to begin.
Explore these walks
Rome tells itself through legends that travel from one square to another. This theme gathers mysteries, popular tales and explanations repeated beside its monuments. The walks look for each story's origins without taking away the pleasure of hearing it. A stone, statue or fountain becomes more interesting when you can distinguish tradition from documented history.
In “Castel Sant'Angelo and St Peter's”: The angel that gave the castle its name and Caesar's supposed ashes in the obelisk invite you to separate legends from surviving accounts.
In “From the Capitoline to the Bocca”: Rome at its oldest, told through its legends, and through what's actually true in them: a sibyl, a tribune who fled with a bedspread over his head, a horseman saved by mistake, the traitors' rock, the geese that woke the city, and the mouth that bites liars.
In “Piazza Navona and Campo de' Fiori”: You enter Piazza Navona through the stadium beneath it, take apart the myth of Bernini's rivers, and hear the legend of Agnes and the day Giordano Bruno's sentence was read out to him.
Choose from 8 independent walks in Rome. Open the one that interests you to see its map, stops and approximate duration before deciding. You don't need to do them all or follow this selection's order; each walk has its own starting and finishing points.
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Rome at its oldest, told through its legends, and through what's actually true in them: a sibyl, a tribune who fled with a bedspread over his head, a horseman saved by mistake, the traitors' rock, the geese that woke the city, and the mouth that bites liars.
Beside Santi Giovanni e Paolo stands the platform of the temple Agrippina raised to the husband she poisoned, according to one version recorded by Suetonius; underneath, the Roman houses that tradition gives to two martyrs.
You cross the Suburra with a poet from Calatayud, climb the Borgia Steps, beside Tullia's legendary street, and finish at San Pietro in Vincoli, in front of the tomb Michelangelo could never complete the way he wanted.
You enter Piazza Navona through the stadium beneath it, take apart the myth of Bernini's rivers, and hear the legend of Agnes and the day Giordano Bruno's sentence was read out to him.
You start where, according to a legend a pilgrim heard in 1452, Nero's devils lived in a walnut tree.
The angel that gave the castle its name and Caesar's supposed ashes in the obelisk invite you to separate legends from surviving accounts.
You start at the top, outside the Villa Medici, with a cannonball that legend pins on a queen and a column that calls an embassy a prison.
The neighbourhood that calls itself "us": a statue the people took back from an emperor, a poet who ended up as a censor, a Madonna who, legend has it, came out of the river, a mother in a wool factory in 1867 and the baker's daughter Raphael may have loved.
Rome calls for a water bottle, reliable shoes and room for a detour. Its squares link up on foot; the hills and sunshine decide how many you will enjoy in a day.
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