Olga Golubeva
VIP Helicopter Tour Over Rome’s Volcanic Lakes
An hour and forty minutes from central Rome by helicopter takes you the length of Lake Bracciano, across the Cimini Mountains, over the crater of Lake Vico, and back down the Etruscan valleys of Tuscia — a circuit that, by car, would take two days and miss most of what the air gives. The flight … Read more
Rome’s Rooftop Aperitivo Trail: 5 Exclusive Hotel Terraces
Rome’s most discreet luxury at the moment of golden hour is not a tasting menu or a private museum opening — it is the four to five hotel rooftop terraces that open between 18:30 and 19:30, are reserved for hotel guests and a small ring of in-the-know Romans, and overlook the city from heights that … Read more
Vatican Gardens by Private Golf Cart: A Hidden Eden
The Vatican Gardens occupy fifty-five hectares of the Vatican Hill — fountains by Bramante and Vignola, the four niche-statues of the Casina of Pius IV, a working vegetable garden that supplies the Apostolic Palace, the medieval Tower of John VIII, the modern Lourdes Grotto presented by France in 1902, and the small Ethiopian seminary garden … Read more
Palazzo Doria Pamphilj: A Living Princely Collection
Of all Rome’s great galleries, the Palazzo Doria Pamphilj is the only one whose owners still live above it. The Doria Pamphilj — an extraordinary patrician dynasty descended from the Genoese admiral Andrea Doria and from Pope Innocent X — open the four wings of their family palace to visitors every morning from 09:00, and … Read more
Casino Pallavicini’s Aurora: Guido Reni’s Ceiling Open One Day a Month
There is a Roman ceiling that ranks, in the small canon of European Baroque painting, alongside the Sistine and the Galleria Farnese — and that opens to the public exactly one morning a month, by appointment, for three hours. It is Guido Reni’s Aurora, painted between 1612 and 1614 on the ceiling of the small … Read more
Vicus Caprarius: The City Beneath Trevi
Nine metres below the Trevi Fountain, behind a small bronze door on the Vicolo del Puttarello, lies an entire fragment of Imperial Rome that almost no one above ground knows: the Vicus Caprarius, the «City of Water» — a four-storey Roman insula, an open cistern of the Acqua Vergine aqueduct, and a private museum that … Read more
Galleria Sciarra: Rome’s Secret Liberty Jewel
Ninety seconds on foot from the basin of the Trevi Fountain — through a narrow opening in a palazzo most visitors never look at twice — opens one of the strangest and most beautiful interiors in Rome: the Galleria Sciarra, a glass-roofed Liberty arcade decorated, ceiling to capital, with allegorical frescoes of the modern Italian … Read more
The Terrace of the Gods: Rome’s Highest Hidden Viewpoint
Almost every visitor to Rome photographs the Vittoriano — the white marble monument that closes Piazza Venezia like a wedding cake — and almost no one knows that you can ride a glass elevator to its roof and stand on the highest accessible terrace in the historic centre. Romans call it the Terrazza delle Quadrighe, … Read more
Ostia Antica vs Pompeii: Choosing Your Roman Archaeological Day
A guide’s honest comparison of Ostia Antica and Pompeii — the working imperial port versus the frozen provincial town. How to choose, how to combine, how to spend the day.
The Garden of Ninfa: Italy’s Most Romantic Hidden Garden
A privately arranged day at the Garden of Ninfa — 105 hectares of English Romantic planting through the ruins of a medieval city, eighty kilometres south of Rome.