Rome

Rome is the capital of Italy, built on the Tiber across more than 2,500 years of continuous construction, with ancient forums, Baroque squares, and a working city layered on top of each other. Vatican City, the world’s smallest state, sits as an enclave on the river’s west bank. The historic centre is compact: the Colosseum, the Pantheon, and the Trevi Fountain are all within a half-hour walk of one another.

History of Rome

Rome ran an empire from here for centuries, and the city never stopped being rebuilt on its own foundations. Temples became churches, a mausoleum became a papal fortress, stadium ruins became quarries, and in 1871 the city of the emperors and popes became the capital of a newly unified Italy.

For a photographer, that layering is the entire point. A single frame can hold ruins from the age of Julius Caesar and a monument to a 19th-century king, and both read as Rome.

Colosseum

The Colosseum is the largest amphitheatre ever built, begun under Vespasian in 72 AD and completed under Titus in 80 AD, with room for 50,000 to 80,000 spectators. Made of travertine, tuff, and brick-faced concrete, it hosted gladiatorial contests, animal hunts, and at one point even mock sea battles.

We visited around the Ides of March, when the marathon had closed off most of the spots I had planned. Once we had almost completed the circle around the arena, I noticed a small patch of sun on the ground, went to it, dialed down the aperture, and had literally a few seconds to take the shot of the Colosseum with the sun bursting through an arch before a school group arrived. Sometimes, you need to get lucky.

Roman Forum and the Forum of Caesar

The Foro di Cesare, built between 54 and 46 BC to relieve the overcrowded Roman Forum, is considered the first of the Imperial Forums: the earliest purpose-built political centre of its kind. Walking back from the Colosseum, I stopped at a view that stacked the Forum of Caesar against the Altare della Patria, with the Baroque dome of Santi Luca e Martina framing the ruins.

The white Victor Emmanuel II Monument behind them, built between 1885 and 1935 for the first king of unified Italy, is visible from almost everywhere in Rome, celebrated and mocked by Romans at the same time. Impossible to ignore, either way. Two thousand years of political ambition in one frame.

Pantheon

The Pantheon was built around 126 AD, and its concrete dome is still the largest unreinforced dome in the world. I photographed the Pantheon before dawn, a frontal view across Piazza della Rotonda with the fountain’s obelisk against a purple sky. The only other people out were marathon runners in training; aside from photographers, runners are the only ones who get the empty city.

Inside the Pantheon

On another morning, we entered right at opening, and minutes later the staff stopped letting anyone in: a memorial ceremony at the royal tombs was about to begin. We were allowed to stay, and when it ended, the building was unnaturally empty. I let everyone else leave first, and as the last visitor inside asked a staff member to step aside for a moment.

The result is the bronze doors framing the marble floor and the oculus, shot at 12mm. The doors tower around 7.5 meters, weigh more than 8 tonnes each, and have hung here since the age of Hadrian, which makes them some of the oldest functioning doors in the world. Sometimes the perfect image comes from simply being the last to leave.

Trevi Fountain

The best spot to photograph the Trevi Fountain is through the window of a fashion shop. It is hilarious to watch people stroll in, feign interest in some clothes, and head discreetly for the staircase. Obviously, I had to be one of them, and the elevated view of the Trevi Fountain shows the whole composition without the crowds that fill the piazza below.

The fountain marks the end of the Aqua Virgo, an aqueduct from 19 BC, and the central figure is Oceanus, not Neptune as most assume. Nicola Salvi won the papal design contest but died before completion; Pietro Bracci finished the work in 1762. The coins tossed over shoulders, about 3,000 euros a day, go to charity.

Spanish Steps

At sixteen, on a school trip, the Spanish Steps were our group’s meeting point after navigating the metro. Twenty years later I came back with Daria, and the square was partly fenced off for the Rome Marathon. The restriction forced me to a spot that turned out better than the one I had planned: the Barcaccia Fountain, the Steps, and Trinità dei Monti in one frame, taken before sunrise when the only sound was water.

The Barcaccia was built in the early 1600s by Pietro Bernini, father of Gian Lorenzo; legend says a Tiber flood carried a small boat here, and the fountain preserves its shape. The Steps themselves were completed in 1725.

Castel Sant’Angelo

What stuck with me most from that school trip was not the Colosseum. It was this bridge and fortress. Two decades later I returned as a photographer and circled Castel Sant’Angelo for days, over the bridge, beneath it, and from across the river, looking for the composition that matched the memory.

The spot I settled on was the opposite bank of the Tiber, just beyond Ponte Sant’Angelo, where the bridge leads the eye straight to the fortress. A 30-second exposure at f/16 turned the river to glass and the streetlamps into defined stars. March was kind: bare trees opened a clean sight-line along the water. After years of chasing exposures, sometimes what you are really trying to capture is a memory.

Vatican City

The obelisk at the centre of St Peter’s Square was carved in Egypt over 3,000 years ago and brought to Rome in 37 AD on a ship built for the job, which was later sunk and filled with concrete. It first stood in the Circus of Nero; moving it the short distance to the square took hundreds of workers, teams of horses, and meticulous coordination, with the final raising completed in a single day, without modern machinery.

While photographing the square I turned around and made the obelisk the centre of the frame, towering into a dramatic glowing sky between Bernini’s colonnades. St Peter’s Square is set east to west, so around the equinoxes the light lines up perfectly with its symmetry. I used the same effect at the Colosseum.

When to Visit Rome

We spent ten days in Rome around the Ides of March and had good light every single day. Mind-blowing, but also exhausting, because it meant waking up for sunrise. Every. Single. Day.

March has a specific advantage: near the equinox, the sun rises exactly east and sets exactly west, which aligns with east-west monuments like St Peter’s Square and the Colosseum. Spring and autumn bring mild weather and manageable crowds; summer is hot and packed; winter is quiet and mild by northern standards. Check the Rome Marathon date before booking a March trip, unless you want fences in every composition. Even then, the constraint sparked some of my better frames.

Photographing Rome

Rome at night reveals a different dimension: the Pantheon, Castel Sant’Angelo, the Spanish Steps, and the Trevi Fountain all take on a theatrical glow. Early mornings are still my favourite for quieter sessions, and in Rome the difference between 6am and 10am is the difference between an empty piazza and a queue.

The craft that carried this trip: narrow apertures for sunstars and front-to-back sharpness, long exposures for glassy water, and elevation wherever it exists, even a shop staircase. The whole historic centre was inscribed on the World Heritage List in 1980, and the density of it rewards walking with the camera always out. The same approach runs through the full Milan guide, the Verona guide, and my travels across the rest of Italy.

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