Any Italy experts out there??

Parent Cafe
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<p>My husband and I are going to Italy for 10 days in early March. We are flying into Venice and out of Rome. Currently, we plan on spending 2 nights in Venice, 2 nights in Florence and 5 nights in Rome. I’m starting to wonder if we should stay 3 nights in Florence and 4 in Rome?? </p>

<p>I realize we can’t see everything in the allotted time (wish we could stay longer), so we are trying to schedule our time efficiently. We are very active travelers (some would say a bit hyper), so we have no problem getting up very early and going to bed very late. We can sleep when we get home!</p>

<p>Also, any opinions on private tours of Rome, the Vatican, etc. Some friends have suggested that its almost “necessary” to hire a private tour guide in order to fully experience many Rome sites. We don’t mind hiring someone, if its worth it - just don’t know if most do it to avoid big crowds/long lines (which shouldn’t be an issue in early March) or if it really enhances the experience?</p>

<p>Thanks.</p>

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<p>I was in Rome in February of 2012. I hired a private tour guide through the reco of another CC’er whose opinion I value highly. Having a driver made our time around SO much more efficient than it would have been otherwise. This tour guide is an American woman who has lived in Italy for years, and her knowledge enhanced my visit immensely. I would recommend her and would use her again in a heartbeat if I went back. Worth every penny. Her name is Caitlin Miller and you can find her at caitlinmillerguide at gmail dot com. I can only speak to the Rome tour, but I believe she does tours for other cities as well. I didn’t do the Vatican, but that’s just because I didn’t have time to do so. My pictures are incredible and the whole experience was one of the best days of my life.</p>

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<p>I’ve done the same trip in reverse. You don’t need a guide but what you absolutely need are advance reservations to avoid the lines. They will be an issue, especially in Florence. You need reservations to do the Secret Doge’s Palace tour in Venice also. Believe me, this will save you hours and hours. This is the one trip that you will want to plan out in detail if you are a museum goer. I think your plan of 3 nights Florence and 4 Rome makes sense. No matter how you split it, it will not be enough! By the way, Ostia Antica is an easy day trip from Rome and was lovely.</p>

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<p>I lived in Florence and later in Venice. Whether or not I am an expert is up for debate :wink:
If you don’t mind spending a few hundred dollars each, there is an after hours tour of the Vatican museums that includes the Sistine. [Vatican</a> Tours | Rome Tours | Skip the line Vatican Tours](<a href=“http://www.italywithus.com%5DVatican”>http://www.italywithus.com) Be aware that Holy Days will adversely affect the crowds there. The Vatican is spectacular but overwhelmed with tourists—a splurge here might be worthwhile. I’ve been to Rome on several occasions, probably 60 days total and I feel that I have only scratched the surface. There is so much to see and experience.
As far as your time in Venice, you might want to consult the calendar and check for the days of the “aqua alta” (high tide) and make sure your dates there do not coincide. One of the things that I always do in Italy, no matter who or where we are visiting, is to check the tourist information kiosks (marked with a big I for “Informazione”) for concerts at historic venues. Nothing like visiting a baroque church, ancient ruin or spectacular piazza after hours and hearing a classical music concert (frequently free).
In Florence, it’s a good idea to get your Uffizi tickets online and well ahead of time. When you do that, also take advantage of the private tours through the Corridoio Vasariano. It is a long corridor that travels from the Uffizi across the river, right over the Ponte Vecchio and all the way to the Pitti palace . It is only available with the private group tour. It has been turned into a museum of self portraits, it’s fantastic and the views from the corridor are unique. For the corridoio tickets MUST be purchased ahead of time.</p>

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<p>I knew you all would come through with sound advice - Grazie!! I will research all the options suggested - gonna be a busy 10 days!!</p>

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<p>Sounds like your timing also works out for your visit to Venice. You’ll be there during Carnivals, which is the BEST time to be there. </p>

<p>Also, a big +1 on getting a tour guide in Rome and the Vatican. We had a guy who drove us all over town and we learned so much from him (like keep your eyes closed when your a car passenger in Rome if you don’t want a heart attack!), and we had a separate guide for the Vatican, and we avoided all the loooooong lines because of her. Worth eery penny!</p>

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<p>When in Rome, cross the street with a group of nuns. Nobody would dare drive into you.:p</p>

<p>We also took the after hours tour of the Vatican museum/Sistine and loved it! This can be booked online, but read it carefully to make sure you are ordering the correct tour.</p>

<p>I also recommend securing tickets in advance for the Uffizi in Florence. (we got ours though our hotel) We hired a guide in Florence to take us to San Giamono / Gimignano sp? and to Siena.</p>

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<p>dwhite…please post about your trip–the do’s, don’ts and everything else. H & I are heading to Italy in September (Rome/Florence/Venice/Milan). H handled the planes, hotels…and left the rest of the details for me to figure out…hmmm. So this is a timely thread for me–thanks!</p>

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<p>Time to repost my informal guide to Rome that I’ve posted a couple of times before:</p>

<p>(I’m a Roman history buff, but this is written from memory from my two trips to Rome, so some of the historical dates may be off by a few years)</p>

<p>Gossipy Details Beyond the Guidebooks to Pay Attention to When in Rome:</p>

<p>In The Forum</p>

<p>The Arch of Titus
The Romans built arches to commemorate some great military triumph. The Arc D’ Triomphe in Paris is a modern imitation of a Roman arch that was built by Napoleon. At one end of the Forum is the Arch of Septimius Severus - an emperor who was born in Leptis Magna (modern day Tripoli, Libya) and ruled in the early 200s A.D. At the other end is the Arch of Constantine - the first Christian emperor who lived about a hundred years later than Septimius. But in the middle of the Forum is a smaller but rather neat little arch - the Arch of Titus.</p>

<p>Titus was an able general and was also the son of the emperor Vespasian - a general himself who became emperor in the turmoil that ensued after the assassination of Nero in about A.D. 67. The arch was built to honor Titus’ victory over the Jews from their revolt in AD 68 - 70. As you walk under the arch, notice the carvings on the underside showing soldiers carrying booty out of the temple in Jerusalem - the huge menorah and other Jewish stuff. It was possibly during this sack of the temple that the Ark of Covenant finally disappeared, without which we wouldn’t have had all those Raiders of the Lost Ark movies 2000 years later. The sale of the booty from Jerusalem and the temple helped to finance the construction of the Colosseum, which was started in the reign of Vespasian and completed 8 years later in the reign of Titus. To this day, Jews will not walk under the Arch of Titus since it celebrates the destruction of their temple, which has never been rebuilt. The Western Wall (aka Wailing Wall) in Jerusalem is the last vestige of the temple that Titus’ troops destroyed.</p>

<p>Titus later succeeded his father and became emperor himself. Like his dad he was honest and upright and a good administrator, but he died under possibly mysterious circumstances after only three years in office - the main suspect being his evil younger brother Domitian who succeeded him. The destruction of Pompeii by the eruption of Vesuvius happened during the brief reign of Titus.</p>

<p>The Temple of Antoninus Pius and Faustina (also in the Forum)
Antoninus Pius was the fourth of the Five Good Emperors who ruled Rome from approximately AD 100 to AD 200 - forming the absolute golden age of ancient Rome. The stalwart Faustina was the emperor’s beloved wife and she actually died first. He built this temple in her honor. When he died some years later his name was added to the inscription as well. They are described as DIVAE and DIVI respectively - the feminine and masculine forms of the Latin for “divine” indicating that both were elevated to be gods after they died. Only psycho emperors like Caligula and Nero had themselves made gods during their own lifetimes. But it soon became routine to deify any halfway good emperor after his death.</p>

<p>Notice the Christian church which was later built right inside the ruins of the pagan temple. It was built in about the 6th century. And those huge bronze doors you see there are the originals, having stood there on their hinges for over 15 centuries</p>

<p>Inscriptions
Notice that many of the ancient inscriptions on arches in the forum and elsewhere contain the abbreviation SPQR. This stands for Senatus PopulusQue Romanum, meaning “(In the name of) The Senate and People of Rome.” It means it has the official stamp of the government. It is still used today - you see it in Rome on modern public works such as manhole covers and fire hydrants.</p>

<p>The Pantheon
Not to be confused with the Parthenon in Athens, the Pantheon is unique in that it is a temple dedicated to all the gods (pan = “all or every” + theos = “god”) instead of honoring the gods one at a time as was the usual custom. The temple you see was built by Hadrian (the third of the Five Good Emperors) to replace an earlier pantheon that burned down. The original was built ~130 or so years earlier by Marcus Agrippa, the emperor Augustus’s favorite general and side kick. The odd thing is that the inscription you see on the front of the building still credits Agrippa and not Hadrian, even though the structure that Agrippa built is long gone. It says: MAGRIPPA (other stuff) FECIT = “M(arcus) Agrippa made this.” (“Fecit” is pronounced “fekit”).</p>

<p>The wonderful thing about the Pantheon is that it is made almost entirely of concrete - very similar in composition to modern concrete. The Romans invented concrete and used it to great advantage. But like much of their advanced technology, the recipe for concrete was lost in the dark ages and was not reinvented for many centuries.
Many scholars believe that the current Pantheon was designed by Hadrian himself, since he was known to be a talented architect.</p>

<p>Hadrian was an interesting character - very talented, very literate. But he didn’t get along with his difficult wife Sabina. All agree that Sabina was a very disagreeable person, but the whole family situation was not helped by the fact that Hadrian seemed to prefer the company of good-looking young men. His favorite boy-toy was a Greek youth named Antinuous, who died under mysterious circumstances in Egypt during a trip down the Nile with Hadrian. Some suspect that one of Hadrian’s ministers or generals pushed the lad overboard. Some say it was suicide. It’s still a mystery to this day. Hadrian never really recovered from his grief over the loss. At Tivoli, the ruins of Hadrian’s villa outside of Rome, they have dug up a bunch of statues of Antinuous in various heroic guises: Antinuous as Pharaoh, Antinuous as Hercules, Antinuous as Apollo, etc.</p>

<p>The amazing thing about the Pantheon is the dome. Thanks to the use of concrete and some very clever design features, it was for centuries the largest unsupported (i.e. no interior columns holding it up) dome in the world from the time it was finished in the second century A.D. until 1965 when the Astro Dome was completed. Engineers in the middle ages were completely baffled as to how the Romans did it. How could that dome possibly stand up? In fact some medieval Church leaders proposed that, since the Pantheon was originally a pagan temple, demons must be holding the dome up. This despite the fact that the Pantheon was converted into a Catholic church in the middle ages. It was the only possible explanation.</p>

<p>The Spanish Steps
If you walk up the Spanish Steps and head to the right, you will pass by the building in which the poet Keats died. It has been made over into a museum to him and some of the other 18th and 19th century literary figures who lived in the Piazza Di Spagna area - Keats, Shelley, Byron, etc.</p>

<p>The Spanish Steps area is a popular hang-out for tourists, especially kids on backpacking tours. Panhandlers there can beg for your money in over a dozen different languages. I once got panhandled in Finnish because I was wearing a “Finland” t-shirt, but he immediately switched to English when he saw I didn’t understand.</p>

<p>Beware of pickpockets there too. In fact, beware of pickpockets all over Rome, especially gangs of little Gypsy kids. They will approach you waving things at you and making a lot of racket to distract you, while they surround you and one of them lifts your wallet. If you see a gang of Gypsy kids approaching, cross to the other side of the street. Do not let them get within 20 feet of you.</p>

<p>Food
You can get great Italian food pretty much anywhere in Rome. Be sure to try a pizza. They do the crust differently there. It’s very thin and crispy, almost like a cracker. Restaurants always give you a basket of great tasting bread called a rosetti - a loaf that is roughly flower-shaped. It is identical to the charred bread found still on the tables of Pompeii, served nearly 2000 years ago.</p>

<p>Also try the linguini in white clam sauce. It’s wonderful in Rome. I’ve searched in vain for years to find a US restaurant that makes it half so good as they make it in Rome. I’m not sure if it is still true, but when I was there it can be hard to find a restaurant open on Sundays. If your hotel doesn’t have food service, you could be pretty much staring at McDonalds. There is one in Piazza Di Spagna. They are probably all over the place by now. Order a “torta de melle calda” and you will get a McDonalds hot apple pie</p>

<p>I envy you for your trip. I love Rome.</p>

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<p>I travel to Italy once a year, but last June I spent a few weeks “dropping off” my two older kids for the summer - one in Rome and the other in Venice, with stops in Florence and a few other locations along the way, and it was great to slow down the pace and spend a little time revisiting places I had been to before. I love Florence, so I would suggest adding an extra day there. It is a quiet, refined city compared to Venice and Rome, so how much you’ll like it depends on your attitude. The crowds should not be too bad in March, depending on your specific dates. All of the above suggestions are great - I will add: </p>

<p>Florence: Along with the main sites - Uffizi, Pitti Palace, and Vasari corridor, visit the Palazzo Vecchio, Church of the Santa Maria Novella, the Bargello. </p>

<p>Venice: Take a vaporetto to Giudecca, and walk the length of the island, visit the Church of San Giorgio Maggiore, and Burano. You will probably get a little lost in all the narrow passageways, and as we found out, cellphone navigation doesn’t work very well in Venice!</p>

<p>Rome: All the usual sites, especially Piazza Navona, but also Castel San Angelo, Santa Maria della Concezione dei Cappuccini - where the bones of Capuchin monks decorate the crypt.</p>

<p>I highly recommend Context Travel for interesting and unique tours. They don’t do the typical tour with headsets, etc. Groups are limited to less than six - ours were mostly private or with another couple - guides are mostly college professors with expertise in the particular area. We did a private tour of the Vatican museums that was incredible. Tours are geared to your interest and level of prior knowledge. They also do walking tours, culinary tours, wine tours, etc., that end with lunch or dinner.</p>

<p>[Walking</a> tours for the intellectually curious | Context Travel](<a href=“http://www.contexttravel.com%5DWalking”>http://www.contexttravel.com)</p>

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<p>I’ve walked under the Arch of Titus. And since over 10% of the population of Rome at that time was Jewish, there were probably many Jews in the crowd celebrating the Roman victory over the rebels. And remember, something like 10% of the entire Roman Empire was Jewish, with most concentrated in the cities of the East - not in Palestine - and in Rome. I assume a large number would root for their Empire over rebels. (And I think the basic Roman dish is spaghetti cacio e pepe.) </p>

<p>My only comment about travel/visiting Italy is you can’t do it wrong because there is so much everywhere and the more you stay in one place the more you find in and around it. You could, for example, stay in Florence and never see Sienna (and the Piccolomini Library floor), never venture into the weird hill towns, never see San Gimignano, etc. And you could say the same thing about each region or part of each region. There is so much history, so much art. </p>

<p>I found the Vatican really tiring so a guide would be helpful. And wear comfortable shoes because it’s huge. An oddity of Italian life is hours still tend to be suggestions so you may find a crowd at the Uffizi or some other museum and then it will be open when it’s supposed to be closed and no one is there (or it’s closed when it’s supposed to be open, though that’s not happening as often). If you’re highly scheduled, you can’t really use this but if you’re walking around, you can sometimes poke your nose in a door and find something is open. On more than one occasion, I have been essentially the only person in a major museum because I wandered in. I remember one time there were lines to see a newly restored Botticelli at the Uffizi with crowds deep around it. But sometimes when I’d walk by the place was open when it was closed and I would be the only person in the room with it. A devotional moment akin in some ways to the first time I saw the mosaics in Ravenna - in San Vitale, if I remember correctly. </p>

<p>My favorite place in Venice may be the Scuola Grande di San Rocco. It’s on the less busy side of the Canal and contains some of Tintoretto’s best work, along with some other great paintings. I think you can compare Annunciations: Tintoretto’s bold, masculine one versus a delicate Titian upstairs. It’s a more sedate area if you wander. I also like the showrooms for glass on the same side of the canal, more toward St. Marks. Not saying don’t visit Murano, etc., but the showrooms are cool in a different way. I also recommend doing basic stuff like taking the vaporetto - water bus - around town.</p>

<p>I don’t know what matters but Venice & Florence are both walking-sized cities while Rome is enormous. I too love the Pantheon. </p>

<p>And anyone who thinks gays can’t be soldiers should study Roman emperors. Trajan adopted Hadrian who adopted Antoninus Pius who adopted Marcus Aurelius and all was good until Marcus - whom we remember fondly for his writing - let his idiot son Commodus become emperor. Given Roman morals, sex with men was fine if you were the penetrator - and the aspersion on Caesar was that he played the part of the woman - and all of these guys except perhaps Marcus had sexual relationships with men. And Trajan and Hadrian were warriors of the first order. Hadrian is held in relatively low regard because he either suppressed Christian (and Jewish, etc.) practices or, as more likely, required those to acknowledge Roman Gods as part of their ways. The latter was obviously unacceptable too. I think it’s important to realize how our views are shaped by how our traditions need to see the past.</p>

<p>Domitian has a similar problem in memory but exacerbated because he took on the Senate and some of the old families. The suggestion in history is his image has been written by his enemies, meaning the insider families, who wanted to portray him as the kind of person who insisted on being called God. It seems likely they had him killed so they had a real incentive to make him look bad. Given Domitian’s popularity with the citizenry, it seems unlikely he’d say he was God but it’s a great insult in traditional Roman thinking. Remember, in triumphs they would dress the hero general as a God and yet have a person assigned to whisper to him “You’re only a man”. Much of this history has to be read with an understanding of whose ax is being ground. </p>

<p>We see similar untrustworthy images in stories about Augustus seducing wives - or about a wife being a nymphomaniac - because Roman high class women were to a substantial degree secluded and their sexuality was viewed more as property so accusing Augustus, etc. was a powerful smear in the Roman mind. It meant you can’t trust an emperor, though he was never officially anything other than first citizen, because he’ll take your most intimate property. We see it as a confirmation of power but at the time it was meant to denigrate. Who’d say this? People who wanted the Republic, which remained as a sort of idealized memory for a long time after it expired from its own unwieldiness. And people from other clans who saw themselves permanently falling out of the traditional Roman competition for status. </p>

<p>It’s said, btw, that Augustus referred to himself as son of the deified one, divi filius, not as God or something like that but in reference to the deified Julius. That shows the kind of distinctions Romans would make: son of the deified one is not a claim to Godliness. So if you say Domitian insisted on being called God, that would be a direct, unfavorable comparison with Augustus’ careful divi filius. </p>

<p>And the story, true or not, is Octavian used the term when he was still a kid fighting for power and he thought the name would help. Remember Cicero’s word play, the thing that may have got him killed, was essentially “what should we do about the boy? We should praise him, we should raise him up”. There’s more to it but I don’t remember the Latin. The word play was that raising up also means to raise him to heaven, meaning kill him. And so Mark Antony had his hands cut off and nailed to the Senate doors. I expect Antony would have killed him anyway - they hated each other with the abiding passion of enemies who saw each other regularly - but it’s a neat story.</p>

<p>Sorry for running on.</p>

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<p>Have been to Italy twice. Our first trip was to Venice, Florence & Rome the last 2 weeks in March. (This was a family trip; D was in 10th grade, S in 7th.) Places were crowded! Agree that an extra night in Florence is worthwhile. In Rome we had a private tour guide for 1 day; we started at the Vatican Museum. With a guide you get to bypass the regular lines. The guide was someone recommended to H by a business associate and he was a great guide and great with our kids.</p>

<p>Our 2nd trip was at the end of October and into November for 2 weeks; just H & I. We started in Rome and then rented a car and went to Assisi, Siena, Lucca, Alba, and Milan, with stops in many hill towns and at wineries along the way. In Rome we did another guided tour of the Vatican Museum with “Through Eternity” tours. It was a very small group;our guide was an American grad student who had been in Rome for several years. This tour also went into St. Peter’s. He was excellent! One tip in Rome is to buy a combo ticket for Palatine Hill, the Colosseum, and the Forum at the Palatine Hill ticket office. The line here is much shorter than the lines at the Colosseum. On this 2nd trip we figured out the buses, and it was pretty easy to get around the city.</p>

<p>Rick Steves guides and podcasts are very helpful.</p>

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<p>In Rome, don’t miss the Villa Borghese: the Bernini sculptures inside are breathtaking, as are the gardens outside.</p>

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<p>We booked our if uffuzi tickets and Vatican tickets online before we went. Skip the lines. I would do three days Florence and 4 rome. We did the exact trip and followed it with Greece. Loved it all. Be sure and know the Vatican and any church’s dress codes. Saw several pickpockets on metro and in rome by tourist attractions. You will have a great time!!</p>

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<p>Carnivale in Venice is over on March 4. If you have been checking for hotels before the 4th you will probably notice that if they are not already fully booked, then they are extremely costly. If you arrive after the 4th, you are in luck. Venice empties out the day after and it’s a great time to be there.</p>

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<p>We started in Rome and ended in Venice. Been a few years–SO MUCH FUN.
Ditto for 3 in Florence, 4 in Rome–what is your transportation from Venice to Rome? We rented a car (hell in Rome but fine elsewhere). So much in between!</p>

<p>Colosseum–get a guide–they’re standing right outside. Turned out the same price and no lines. We gave the guide (he took a group of 20 or so) our money–he went to the tour guide line, bought all the tickets and in we went (the tour guide line vs a 3 hour line)–great tour too. We could stay as long as we wanted after the tour. Plus we got a cheesy picture with some costumed Roman gladiators:). </p>

<p>The Vatican is the same way–in fact we went with same tour company. We met EARLY the next morning (otherwise we wouldn’t get in) and he trotted us to the Vatican and in we went (again tour guides had a special line for their tickets). In fact, I think it was the ONLY way to actually see the Vatican in any timely way at all. We didn’t book on-line. A lot of things at the Vatican were set up specifically for tour guides–displays, maps etc. Someone outside a group couldn’t get near them. And again–the price was about the same as going on your own and much more informative.</p>

<p>Florence–we did NOT spend nearly enough time here! We’re going back! Absolutely get your tickets on-line for museums BEFORE you go! You’ll get a time stamp entrance. I don’t know how March is but in our case we would not have been able to go if we hadn’t already had the tickets.</p>

<p>Italy–learn the differences between trattorias, restaurants. ostaria. Learn the rules about sitting at tables vs at the bar. Tipping. Don’t know if it’s changed but it’s not the USA for sure. And pizza is not the same as ours either.</p>

<p>And pickpockets are rampant. Especially Rome. You won’t be mugged but unless you know and remain very aware–you will be a victim. Do some study on scams–you’ll see them in action. Wear a waist belt–everyone in your group and don’t allow anyone to say no to it. Watch getting on and off escalators, trains, subways.</p>

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<p>And buy leather in Florence. Don’t know if it’s changed but we found that the closer you were to where something was made the price was definitely better. In Rome, the price of leather could be 3 times that of Florence. Same with Venetian glass. Find out what a region is famous for and plan to buy it there.</p>

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<p>Also planning a trip next fall. This is great information. I have been to Rome/Foggia/Florence/Milan in March in the 1970’s and then lived in Florence for 4 months on another trip in the 70’s that was from March-June. I like traveling when it is not too hot and the summer crowds not yet there.
Thanks for this post. We want to see Sicily, small towns, Florence, Venice this next time.
Will early Sept. still be hot?</p>

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<p>Still enjoying all the feedback - thanks! I’ve learned so much already. </p>

<p>Venice - we will be there for Carnivale (the very end of it) and currently have reservations at 2 hotels - just need to decide which one. I booked those first, knowing about Carnivale and the pricing isn’t as bad as I was expecting.</p>

<p>I think I will increase our Florence stay to 3 nights, it seems to make a lot of sense.</p>

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<p>dwhite, thanks for starting this thread! We will be in Italy in March as well, but a little later in the month. While we have been once before, I am anxious to thoroughly digest all of the advice you have already been given.</p>

<p>oregon101, we were in Italy at the end of September, 2012, and the weather was delightful. Mid-70’s most days. Obviously, the further south, the warmer it’ll be.</p>