Olga Golubeva
Roman Pizza Bianca Masterclass with a Master Pizzaiolo
Pizza in the Italian imagination is Neapolitan. The Romans, however, have a separate pizza tradition that pre-dates the Neapolitan version by a century — the pizza bianca, the long flat oil-and-salt bread that has been baked in Roman ovens since the 1880s and that, in its proper Roman form, is one of the great products … Read more
Amalfi Coast Premium One-Day From Rome (Positano · Ravello · Amalfi)
Doing the Amalfi Coast as a one-day trip from Rome is not, traditionally, recommended. Romans themselves treat the coast as a long weekend; tour operators present it as a two-day minimum; the guidebooks insist on three. We took the opposite position in 2019 — that with a 07:00 chauffeured departure, a high-speed run to the … Read more
Lake Nemi: Caligula’s Ships and Wild Strawberries
Lake Nemi — the smaller of the two volcanic crater lakes of the Castelli Romani, twenty-eight kilometres south of Rome — has been called the Mirror of Diana since the Augustan poets. The lake is a perfect circle, four hundred metres deep at its centre, ringed by holm-oak forest, and overlooked by the medieval village … Read more
Frascati Noble Villas Wine Day: Aldobrandini & Falconieri
Frascati, in the Roman imagination, is a white wine and a roadside trattoria. It is also — for those who can reach them — a small ring of the most extraordinary patrician summer villas of the seventeenth century, built by the Barberini, Aldobrandini, Borghese and Pamphili popes within sight of one another along a single … Read more
Castel Gandolfo & The Pope’s Summer Palace Gardens
Castel Gandolfo — a small medieval town twenty-five kilometres south of Rome, perched on the lip of the volcanic crater of Lake Albano — has been the summer residence of the popes since Urban VIII bought the medieval Castello Savelli in 1623. For three hundred and ninety years, the papal palace and its gardens were … Read more
The 3-Hour Rome Sprint: A Luxury Layover Itinerary
Travellers connecting through Rome with a four-hour layover at Fiumicino airport often dismiss the idea of seeing the city as impossible. They are wrong — but only by a narrow margin. The honest answer is that a Roman layover of less than four hours from gate to gate is impossible; a layover of four hours, … Read more
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