Rome Pictures
Italy Photos

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Rome antics on the Ponte Vittorio Emanuele II. Click on the next link above, or on the big photo, or choose from one of the pictures below or click below that to choose a different part of Italy.

Central Rome is a brilliant city for any traveller with an interest in culture, art or ancient history and is arguably the most fascinating city in all of Europe. The range of famous, spectacular sights within easy walking distance is staggering, the quality and quantity of art on display is massive, every building tells stories, every statue demands pictures and every cobbled street evokes historical scenes.
Needless to say Rome is - and has been for 3,000 years - a magnet for the barbarian hordes, with troops of French sipping gee-up machiattos in one café, red-faced British squaddies poring over maps in another, platoons of Germans attacking the sights by numbers, waves of chattering Japanese disembarking from buses armed with bad hats and the latest digital weaponry, fashionable Chinese units in avant-garde UV face shades and American tank crews discussing strategies and sweating off the sky-highs on rye of LA's finest diners.

Main sights

Museums

Churches

St Peter's, The Vatican

Downsides: the hideous and inappropriate screens fixed in the Colosseum arches and the poorly explained interior; the disappointingly unromantic Spanish Steps [well, the fountain's excellent, it's the steps that ain't]; the impatient traffic; the untidy and unworked archeological digs; the pickpockets; the surly ticket collectors or security guards who prefer to pass the time chatting to each other or photographing themselves with their mobile phones than helping tourists; the open-top tourist buses that have 'pay as you enter' painted by the doors but send you off to queue at an office after you've lined up by the bus for an hour; the same old, same old menus, pizza, pasta, pizza, pasta; the dull, dirty suburbs; the lack of clear, logical, sequential signposting; slippery, wet cobblestones; leaving Rome - but you'll be back if you threw a coin into the Trevi fountain!

Upsides: the endless variety of staggering structures that you've heard about for years - the Colosseum, the Forum, the Trevi Fountain, the Vatican...as well as thousands more you've never heard about; the little churches you stumble inside to cool off in and find a Michelangelo Moses in front of you or a kaleidoscopic heaven on the ceiling or a perfect marble skeleton at your feet; the drinking fountains ranging from simple taps to spitting gargoyles and leaking ships [Spanish Steps] where you can refill your bottles and wet your overheated head; the tiny alleys suddenly blossoming into magical piazzas; the incredible paintings you see that are painted on walls [especially the Vatican Museums] not hung on them; the stunning sculptures, good and mad; the wonderful coffees, ice-creams, pizzas and pastas; the freedom to bend the rules the Italian way; the way Rome traffic flows like water - dive in and it'll part around you; the sunshine; the sensational museums [and this from museophobes], especially the Vatican Museums, the Capitoline Museums and the Galleria Borghese; the funny fountains and caricatures in Piazza Navona; and finally the glorious Rome pictures you must have taken.

Desaturated Pictures: Although there's no shortage of photos in the gallery here we have not attempted to photograph all the sights, simply to hint at the feeling of tourist Rome, the ambience.
In order to focus on the sights but, at the same time, to inform the viewer of the less pleasant aspects such as crowds, garbage and cars, we have taken the liberty of desaturating [turning to black, grey and white] the distracting modern elements in the pictures - particularly the tourist hordes. We have not added, subtracted or fiddled with the scenes in any other way, so the image and colours portrayed are exactly as they appeared in July 2006 save for the desaturating effect.
And by the way, the brides pictured over the next few pages appeared purely by chance and were in no way connected to the BugForce. Romancing the Stones seems to be fashionable in Italy.