I started at the Colosseum. From here you have to pay to get on top of the Palatine. There’s a ticket office just by the Arch of Constantine. I bought a ticket and walked up from here. The ticket is good for the Palatine Hill, including admission to the Museum, the Forum and the Colosseum, on any of which one could comfortably spend a whole day and another time I will. But I had other plans and just glanced at the Palatine Stadium and the House of Augustus, and crossed over to the Farnese Gardens and savoured the amazing view from here across the Forum. Round about this point it rained, suddenly, heavily and extremely briefly. I walked northeast across the Forum to the foot of the Capitoline Hill but there is no exit at this end and I had to double back a bit and exit onto the Via dei Fori imperiali and walk round to where a steep, wiggly road leads to the top of the Capitoline which is a rather grand square designed by a certain Michelangelo. I spent way too short a time in the Capitoline Museum but I thought I should at least say Hi to the wolf and her suckling babes. Only later did I realise that it was in this very same building, the Palazzo dei Conservatori, where, on 25th March, a famous treaty was signed by France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Bellgium and Luxembourg inaugurating a new institution called the European Economic Community. The fact seems a little poignant now, given what was happening back in the UK this same day, 23rd June, 2016.
Then I headed down the steps past the massive nude statues of Castor and Pollux and was soon round the corner in the Piazza Venezia. My next target was the Quirinal so I bore north and approached it up the big hill – the Quirinal is the highest of the seven - that is the Via della Ataria to reach the Piazza del Quirinale with its grand palace, home to countless Popes, kings and other bigwigs. Northwest from there down the Via del Quirinale past the park with its equestrian statue of Carlo Alberto then right down the Via della Quattro Fontane. Now I am on the Viminal, the lowest of the seven. Built up as it is, there is no real sense here of being on a hill at all. I walked round by the Piazza della Republica, the Teatro Opera, Termini Station and the Baslica di Santa Maria Maggiore down the Via Merulana and the Viale del Monte Oppio (Monte Oppio is the southern spur of the Equiline) past San Martino ai Monti to reach the Baths of Trajan in the Esquiline Park, hill number 5. Crossing this brought me back to the Colosseum where I had started.
These are not big mountains but little urban nodules so I didn’t expect this walk to be very challenging. It was however now quite absurdly, soul-meltingly hot, unmistakably up in the 30s Celsius and it was getting to feel like hard work. I thought, I must stop and have something to drink but somehow I never did and kept going down the Via Labicana, right into the Via dei Normanni and past the St Clement Basilica and up the long, climbing Via dei Santi Quattro to reach the grand and imposing Piazza di San Giovanni in Latero, home to the Mother of All Churches, on the Caelian Hill. Number Six. I descended the baking, shadeless Via Satno Stefano Rotondo and the Via di S. Paulo della Croce to come out on the Viale Aventino at the west end of the Circus Maximus. Viale Aventino, the clue is in the name. Nearly done. Down the Via del Circo Massimo as far as the massive Massini Monument then up onto the Via di Santa Sabrina where I looked into the Giardino degli Aranci with its fabulous view acrcoss towards St Peters. Then down into the Via Marmorata where I found a little cafe and stopped for a much needed cold drink. Finally round the corner on the Lungotavere Aventino, not feeling brave enough to face Rome’s terrifying and overcroded public transport I hailed a taxi back to my hotel.
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