ROMA with House of Travel

Rome is a famously walkable capital, but there is a better way to get around: VESPA. Michele Bartolini is a longstanding Scooteroma tour guide, and he will whizz you around Rome in a vintage Vespa. The result of 3000 years of emperors and architects and popes and engineers furiously trying to outdo each other, Rome’s cityscape is breathtaking to ride through. Landmarks like the Colosseum, Roman Forum and Pantheon testify to the city’s golden age as “caput mundi” (capital of the world), with a population of more than a million inhabitants in the 1st century CE. No other city in Western Eurasia reached this population again before the 19th century. But Rome’s bigness was never really about size. Rome is about big ideas.

When in Rome …

Stay

JK Place Roma

Housed in what was once Rome’s school of architecture, JK Place Roma offers an updated five-star alternative to the equally ravishing Hotel de Russie, Rome’s indomitable grande dame hotel. Italian mid-century furniture, gemstone hues and stately four-poster beds meld beautifully in this genuinely memorable boutique hotel in the Centro Storico.