St. Peter’s Basilica overlooks one of the world’s most famous squares.
The film Roman Holiday stars the young and radiant Audrey Hepburn as a royal princess freed from her gilded cage and determined to make the most of her day in Rome. A cruise passenger spending a port day in Rome can do likewise. All you need is a pair of comfortable shoes and a walking map to guide you.
Piazza Navona is filled with beautiful baroque fountains.
Rome’s cruise port of Civitavecchia is an hour away by train and it’s possible to make your own way from the ship to the local station for boarding a train to Rome. However, to optimize my time in Rome, I prefer taking a ship’s transfer into the city. On a recent visit with my husband, we booked a shore excursion offered by Holland America Line that consisted of a motorcoach ride to the local railway station, where the group then boarded a private railcar for the journey into Rome.
The Pantheon’s famous dome.
Our Roman guide gave us some useful tips for what to see and do in Rome before we disembarked at a station near the Vatican. St. Peter’s Square was our rendezvous point and from there people in our group headed off in different directions to explore the streets of Rome independently. Six hours is hardly enough time to do Rome justice but we were able to complete a whirlwind tour of the major sights. The city core is easy to navigate on foot, its famous fountain-filled piazzas connected by winding streets.
A broad staircase ascends Capitoline Hill.
St. Peter’s Square was a busy place on that sunny August morning, with people lined up beneath Bellini’s sweeping arcade to enter St. Peter’s Basilica – the world’s largest church. Its spectacular dome was designed by Michelangelo, whose La Pieta sculpture is one of many masterpieces displayed inside the resplendent cathedral. The piazza itself contains two beautiful baroque fountains and an Egyptian obelisk brought to ancient Rome by the Emperor Caligula.
Castel Sant’Angelo can be seen from the bridges connecting the Vatican with central Rome.
From St. Peter’s Square we headed across the River Tiber, via Ponte Sant-Angelo, to visit more of Rome’s beautiful squares. First we stopped at Piazza Navona, lined with cafés and adorned with sculpture-filled fountains, then proceeded to Piazza Della Rotonda, which is dominated by the Pantheon, a domed temple from the early 2nd century AD and the best-preserved of imperial Rome’s surviving structures. Viewed from inside the temple, the massive coffered dome is a stunning sight with light streaming from the sky through its central round opening.
Our next destination was Piazza del Campidoglio, situated atop Capitoline Hill – the most famous of ancient Rome’s seven hills. A broad staircase leads to the Michelangelo-designed piazza, where former palaces are now museums. A replica of the 2nd-century statue of the emperor Marcus Aurelius, the only bronze equestrian statue to survive from imperial Rome, is mounted atop a pedestal in the centre of the piazza. The original work is displayed in the Capitoline Museum, which was remarkably quiet when we purchased our entry tickets and spent an hour wandering the magnificent exhibit halls.
Then it was time to head back across the River Tiber to St. Peter’s Square, where we reunited with our group and returned by train to the ship. Our day in Rome had been a holiday like no other.
About Anne Vipond
