This post provides tips on the best things to do in Rome alone. There are so many travelers like you who have decided to solo travel Rome.
And there are also many locals like me who enjoy taking time for themselves while exploring the streets and neighborhoods of this great city.
I can imagine what’s already on your Rome bucket list.
You’ll want to wander the streets of the historic center, a UNESCO heritage site, making the atmosphere that permeates it your own. History is palpable wherever you go, from the ancient remains of the Colosseum to majestic monuments like the Pantheon and the Trevi Fountain.
You will also have museums you want to visit, such as the Borghese Gallery and the Vatican Museums.
In this article, I will introduce you to other enjoyable activities to make your trip to Rome perfect. For example, I’ll tell you about the free tour of Baroque Rome, the lovely cafes off the beaten path, Cinecittà Studios, and the Testaccio neighborhood, a destination for foodies.
You’ll be unlikely to feel lonely on this trip, or unsure how to spend your time.
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11 fabulous things to do in Rome alone
1. Join a free walking tour of Rome’s historic center
You don’t necessarily have to spend money to participate in a worthwhile tour of Rome and meet other travelers. In fact, there are passionate (and qualified) guides who will show you the main treasures of the historic center for free. At the conclusion of the tour, which lasts about two hours, you can, if you like, make a free offering.
This walk allows you to learn about the history and architecture of important monuments in Rome, some famous like the Spanish Steps and others that are hidden gems like Palazzo Chigi.
The tour takes place in the morning, starts at the Spanish Steps, and ends at Castel Sant’Angelo, near the Vatican. The walk does not cover the Colosseum and Roman Forum but will introduce you to medieval and Baroque Rome, which is often underrated.
There are only 20 seats for each tour and since there is always high demand, it is mandatory to book through the official platform at a cost of €1 (only €1 for a tour, great!).
TIP: With this tour, you have the opportunity to meet local guides for free. You can ask them for more useful info about your trip, such as how to go from the Trevi Fountain to the Colosseum or where to spend the evening.
You can find all the details of the free walking tour here.
2. Take a walking food tour of Rome
Italians are among the friendliest people in the world, and Romans are no exception. If there is one thing locals avoid doing on their own, it is eating!
Traveling to Rome alone you can put your own wants and needs first, but you will certainly have to organize yourself very well if you want to try at least some of the many delicious local dishes.
What many friends who visit the Eternal City for just a few days complain about is the difficulty in tasting all the local delicacies and even finding them.
This problem can be easily remedied by participating in a food walking tour with a local guide. The best tours of Rome are those that take you on a discovery of one of the city’s foodie neighborhoods.
I recommend you try this food tour.
You will discover Trastevere, one of the nicest neighborhoods in Rome, trying about 10 of the foods and drinks that you would be hard-pressed to unearth on your own. All this you will do together with a group of other travelers and while listening to all the interesting food culture facts the guide will give you.
This includes typical Roman street foods, how to toast, and how to find the most authentic gelato even in tourist areas. Of course, at the end of the evening, you will be full and satisfied!
Check out the availability of the secret food tour in Trastevere for your travel dates.
3. Bike in the Aqueduct Park
One of the reasons you decided to visit Rome is definitely the pleasant climate this city enjoys most days of the year. There are many free parks in Rome, some of which are very large and full of historical landmarks. Among them is the Aqueduct Park, which stretches in the southeastern part of the city and is easily reached by the Metro A stop Lucio Sestio.
The best way to explore this park is by bicycle. Rent a bicycle from FuoriDiRuota and ride the many paths that wind around the remains of 7 impressive aqueducts from the Roman era. The scenery is truly breathtaking, with the massive arches in the background surrounded by expanses of colorful flowers.
Important: To rent a bicycle, you must make arrangements in advance by emailing: fuoridiruota@gmail.com.
Aqueduct Park is mostly a destination for locals. The place where you will meet other travelers like you instead is Appia Antica Park, not far away. You can reach it with the Metro B (Garbatella stop) and a walk.
Here, although you will be relatively close to the center of Rome, you will feel like you are in the countryside, with fields and sheep. Along the Ancient Appian Way, made of large flat cobblestones, are the remains of many noble Roman villas.
If you want to ride the Appian Way by bicycle, I recommend renting an e-bike, because pedaling on the ancient stones can be very tiring. You can do this at the Appia Antica Eco-bike Service Center, located at 58 Via Appia Antica.
4. Relax at cute cafes
Roman locals are famous for their gobble-and-go breakfast with espresso and cappuccino at the counter of the small coffee shops in the city. This is a practice suitable for workers and not very inviting.
Also popular is the image of travelers sitting outside the cafes located on Rome’s beautiful piazzas, a not-so-cheap business, like all things in very touristy places.
But fear not! If you love to sit at a café and sip a hot or cold drink slowly and without spending a fortune, the city has what you are looking for. All it takes is a little bit of local knowledge that I will share with you.
My favorite cafes in Rome are the ones where I can sit for hours reading a book or working on a laptop. These are the ones I will share with you, perfect places for locals and travelers alike.
The Ostiense neighborhood, adjacent to the Aventine Hill and served by the subway, is home to a number of university faculties. Here you will also find cheap restaurants and places suitable for young adults, but the highlight is two cafes.
At Romeow Cat Bistrot you can relax and eat great vegan food, and you won’t feel lonely because 10 sweet cats live here. It is the first and only cat cafe in Rome! Address: 15 Francesco Negri Street. For more info, visit their page.
Not far from this café is another one with a large space and industrial decor, this is Caffé Letterario. This café has many comfortable sofas and tables and houses a library, so it is perfect for working or reading. You can even sit here without ordering anything!
Several evenings a week the café comes alive with initiatives such as live music or tango lessons.
Address: Via Ostiense, 95
5. Visit Cinecittà Studios
If visits to Rome’s usual museums, filled with tourists and families with children, have bored you, here’s an off-the-beaten-path place worth a visit.
One of the most unmissable destinations for movie buffs is Cinecittà Studios! This is a complex of film studios, the largest in Europe to be exact, where so many movies set in Rome have been filmed.
Let’s start with some practical information, such as the cost of the ticket, which can be purchased online and the price range varies between 10 and 15 euros, depending on the activities chosen. Included with the ticket is access to permanent exhibitions, temporary exhibitions, and film sets.
One of the main attractions at Cinecittà is a visit to the film sets. You can walk through the reconstructed streets that reproduce historical and international settings, immersing yourself in unique atmospheres rich in detail.
Then visit the production studios to discover how films and television series are created. By visiting the exhibitions you will be face to face with the evolution of Italian cinema through its costumes, sets, and authentic objects used in film productions.
You will be able to admire clothes worn by great actors and actresses, as well as props from the most iconic films. Another must-see stop is the Cinecittà Museum. Immerse yourself completely in the history of Italian cinema, with a vast collection of photographs, playbills, posters, and objects related to the world of cinema. Between visits, you can enjoy a good coffee or some snacks in the various venues found inside Cinecittà. It is known how important a good coffee is on a set!
Cinecittà is located in the southeastern part of the city. Reaching this wonderful complex is very easy: use subway line A and get off at the Cinecittà stop.
6. Explore Campo dei Fiori Market
Speaking of movies, surely thinking of Rome will have brought to mind the famous Trevi Fountain scene from Fellini’s “La dolce vita.” Well, just a fifteen-minute walk from the enchanting fountain is one of the most incredible squares in all of Rome: Campo dei Fiori.
Why did I mention the Trevi Fountain? Apparently, even Anita Ekberg, the very one who bathed in the fountain in one of the most famous scenes in international cinema, used to go to the Campo dei Fiori market to buy flowers.
After falling in love with the Eternal City, she moved from Hollywood to Rocca Di Papa, a small town in the Castelli Romani area south of Rome. It often happened that residents would meet her early in the morning among the flower stalls of the famous market, always choosing the brightly colored ones.
If Anita Ekberg used to go there it surely deserves a visit, don’t you think? You can visit it every day, Monday through Saturday, from 7 a.m. until 2 p.m. It is one of the oldest markets in Rome and takes place on the square of the same name.
You will find not only flowers but also food souvenirs and local crafts.
When evening comes, the square and the surrounding area made up of narrow, quaint alleys are lit up with the little lights and buzz of the nightlife that fills it. Campo dei Fiori and the nearby Via del Pellegrino are one of the hubs for nightlife for solo travelers in Rome.
The square also houses a statue dedicated to Giordano Bruno, a 16th-century Italian philosopher and heretical scientist. It is an important historical landmark and represents courage and freethinking.
It is not uncommon to find a multitude of street performers, both in the evening and during the day, all of whom hold a wide variety of skills and arts. At any time of the day, you can sit on one of the benches or on the steps of the square, taking time to observe and absorb the energy of this unique place.
And why not, to feel like a true “Roman,” listen in your headphones to the song “Campo de’ Fiori” by Rome’s most famous singer, Antonello Venditti.
7. Discover the Testaccio neighborhood
Speaking of markets, there is another neighborhood that is home to Rome’s most popular food market, Testaccio.
Cross the Tiber and, with a thirty-minute walk south, you’ll land in this historic neighborhood, where in addition to the market you’ll be able to admire a number of truly impressive attractions.
You might just start with an archaeological visit to the market’s basement. Here are the remains of a very old horreum, a storage warehouse from Roman times, which still holds hundreds of amphorae and artifacts. Speaking of finds, discover Monte Testaccio, the man-made hill made up of fragments of broken Roman amphorae that offers panoramic views of the city.
If all this walking and exploring whets your appetite, the market will know how to delight you with the best street food Rome has to offer, such as supplì or zucchini flowers with anchovies. However, you will find all the typical Roman street food here, including pizza by the slice, but also homemade pasta dishes “take away.” Eating here is a great idea to save on restaurant costs on your solo trip to Rome.
Wandering around the neighborhood, then, you will come across a real Egyptian pyramid. Fear not! You have not been teleported to Egypt. You are still in Rome and standing in front of the Pyramid of Cestius built between 18 and 12 B.C. as a tomb for an important representative of society.
Today its interior can be visited by booking a ticket online. A short walk from this striking work of historical architecture, right adjacent to St. Paul’s Gate, is the Non-Catholic Cemetery. Here are hosted the graves of international cultural figures, such as John Keats, Percy Bysshe Shelley, and Willian Story, as well as those of Antonio Gramsci, Emilio Lussu, Dario Bellezza, and Carlo Emilio Gadda.
If, on the other hand, it’s evening and you’re in Testaccio, well, it couldn’t be better. The neighborhood is full of clubs, discos, pubs, and bars where making friends will really be a piece of cake. Here you’ll find all the Rome nightlife for solo travelers you had been looking for!
The most convenient stop, by streetcar or metro, to reach the Testaccio neighborhood is Ostiense.
8. Stroll around the Garbatella neighborhood
Now I address you not far away, in one of the nicest neighborhoods in Rome. For example, to breathe in the true authenticity and “Roman-ness” of the capital, take a nice trip to the Garbatella neighborhood. You will still be able to admire the courtyards where the population, in the past, gathered to do laundry and hang it out or simply to get together.
Today this neighborhood is called a “village neighborhood,” precisely because it still holds that village spirit of closeness and sharing of its inhabitants.
Here, workshops, cellars, low walls, and chairs left on street corners tell of a past, a present and a future that reflects, in its totality, the spirit of Rome. The neighborhood originated on Feb. 18, 1920, and still today one can admire the plaque in Piazza Brin posted by King Victor Emmanuel III to mark the beginning of the construction of the neighborhood.
The name seems to take its origin from a very polite and beautiful hostess named Carlotta who ran an inn at the height of the Sepolcreto Ostiense. This grave, which can still be visited, is located just off Via delle Sette Chiese, which has been a destination for pilgrimages to seven churches in Rome since the 16th century.
Let’s be back to the hostess. The patrons of the inn liked the woman’s manners so much that they began to refer to the inn as that of the ” polite and beautiful” woman, (garbata e bella in Italian), a phrase that later extended to the entire neighborhood. If you are intrigued by this woman, today you can find her represented on the fountain in Piazza Ricoldo da Montecroce. In the center rises precisely a female face framed by long hair that casts a gush of water into the small basin.
The gracious hostess is also the protagonist of the mural at the intersection of Via Passino and Piazza Sauli, the work of Roman street artists Diamond and Solo.
9. Photograph Rome’s art nouveau
Now move to the northern part of the city, specifically to the Coppedè neighborhood, an architectural gem that is truly worth discovering. Here a mixture of styles creates a fairy-tale and somewhat surreal atmosphere. The name comes from the famous architect Gino Coppedè, who was commissioned to build a residential area near Buenos Aires Square in the 1920s. Its eclecticism gives shape to a fascinating tangle of styles ranging from Gothic, Baroque, Renaissance, and Art Nouveau.
Walking through its streets is like entering an enchanted and out-of-the-ordinary world. Buildings are decorated with intricate details, sculptures, frescoes, and colorful mosaics that make the district a true work of art. Besides the most famous Fountain of Frogs in Mincio Square, you cannot miss the fairy-tale Spider Palace. Its central tower, dome covered in colorful mosaics, and a series of balconies decorated with floral patterns will make you think you are in a Disney movie.
In addition to its unique architecture, Coppedè also offers a pleasant atmosphere for strolling and relaxing. The streets are lined with trees and plants, creating refreshing shade during hot summer days.
10. Visit the oddest villa in Rome
While everyone is going to flock to Borghese Gardens, I think a visit to Villa Torlonia Gardens is one of the best things to do in Rome alone.
Taking a 15-minute walk north, via Corso Trieste and Via Nomentana, you arrive at one of Rome’s most beautiful and undiscovered parks: Villa Torlonia. Besides enjoying the tranquility of its public green spaces, inside you can also visit its museums.
Commissioned by the Torlonia family in the 1800s, it was also the residence of Mussolini, and today houses some of the most important collections in Rome. The most striking museum is definitely the Casina delle Civette, an Art Nouveau villa named after the two “guardian owls” built on the front window. Inside you will find a museum dedicated to art glass.
The museum features a vast collection of decorative glass, lamps, and glass objects from various eras and styles. You will be fascinated by the craftsmanship and beauty of these works of art, which will take you on a journey into the world of glass craftsmanship. In addition, the villa also houses a museum dedicated to Art Nouveau.
Explore the rooms, admire the furniture, art objects, and decorations that represent the Art Nouveau aesthetic. You will be transported back in time and appreciate the elegance and originality of this art movement. It is certainly a truly evocative and unusual way to spend an afternoon in the Italian capital!
11. Get a great book
If you have followed my advice on the best things to do in Rome on your own, at this point you will have little time to spend, or perhaps you have found a traveling companion.
In the many trips I have taken on my own, I have always preferred the company of a good book, and to be precise a paper book. If you also love to read and are short on written pages, know that Rome has many bookstores, some of which offer books in foreign languages.
One such bookstore is “The Anglo-American Book” on Via della Vite, a small store not far from Via del Corso, one of the city’s shopping streets. Another, much larger and more famous, is the Feltrinelli Bookstore in Largo di Torre Argentina.
If you prefer an off-the-beaten-path bookstore, however, I recommend visiting Tomo Libreria Caffé in the San Lorenzo neighborhood, near La Sapienza University. Here you can also sit and read and enjoy a coffee or a drink, since there is also a café.
Wrap-up – Best Things to Do in Rome Alone
You already knew that by visiting Rome alone you would find so much satisfaction in exploring a city rich in history, a true open-air museum.
With this post on the best things to do in Rome alone, I wanted to show you more. By traveling to Rome on your own you can still afford to save on restaurant costs by eating great street food at the places I have recommended. By participating in tours, even free ones, you will meet other travelers who are passionate about local culture and local guides ready to satisfy your curiosity.
To increase your chance of meeting other people, consider staying in solo travelers-friendly hostels in Rome. The best ones are the Ostello Bello Colosseo, the Rome Hello, and the Beehive Hostel.
Moving a bit away from the major tourist attractions you will discover nice neighborhoods where there are cozy cafes and offbeat activities.
Is it safe to walk around Rome on your own?
Remember that Rome is a safe city. If you follow the general rules of common sense, you will feel comfortable even while explore off-the-beaten-track areas.
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