Walking Rome's Appia Antica: The Ancient Road Adventure Most Visitors Never Find
TheVoyageCo asked Eleonora for her local insights for Rome. This is what she said.
The Via Appia Antica is one of the oldest and most important roads in the ancient world, running south from Rome's walls into the countryside, lined with tombs and original Roman paving. Eleonora sends visitors there as the antidote to the queue at the Trevi Fountain. Pair it with the Colosseum and Vatican (booked in advance), an evening in Trastevere, supplì at a street counter, and carciofo alla giudia in the Jewish Ghetto. Mid to late March is her preferred window.
Eleonora Liuzzi
Hello everyone, I’m Eleonora — a former globetrotter, licensed tour guide, and travel designer based in Rome.Traveling has always been my way of understanding the world, and over time I’ve turned this passion into my work: helping others experience places in a deeper, more meaningful way.Rome is a c
Eleonora Liuzzi has walked the Via Appia Antica many times. She finds it remarkable that most visitors to Rome never find it. TheVoyageCo asked her for her honest advice on the city, the road, and what 48 hours are actually worth.
Eleonora lives in Rome and advises travellers through The Voyage Co.
A Sense of Rome
Eleonora describes Rome the way a long resident describes a city she has not stopped noticing: as a place where the past and present coexist, where an ordinary walk can feel like a journey through centuries.
Q. How would you describe Rome to a friend visiting for the first time?
Rome is a city where the past and present coexist, where an ordinary walk can feel like a journey through centuries. That is not hyperbole. In Rome it is simply what happens when you walk.
Q. What do you want people to understand about the city before they arrive?
That Rome rewards a particular kind of attention. Not the checklist attention of someone moving between landmarks at speed, but the slower, more open attention of someone willing to let the city come to them. The visitors who try to see the most leave having experienced the least.
Q. What tends to happen to travellers who treat Rome that way?
They are usually surprised by what stays with them. It is rarely the photograph of the Colosseum from the queue. It is the church they walked into on a side street with a Caravaggio above the altar. It is a Sunday lunch in a Trastevere trattoria that ran into the afternoon. It is the silence of the Appia Antica at nine in the morning.
Rome is a city where the past and present coexist. An ordinary walk can feel like a journey through centuries. In Rome, that is simply what happens when you walk.
Where do locals send friends in Rome?
The place Eleonora returns to most consistently is also one of the easiest to reach from the centre, which is part of what makes it remarkable that visitors miss it.
Q. What's a Rome hidden gem most tourists miss?
One place tourists often miss is the Via Appia Antica, the Appian Way. A peaceful ancient road where you can walk or cycle surrounded by history, far from the crowds of the city centre.
Q. What is the Appia Antica actually like to walk?
The Appia Antica is not far from central Rome, but it sits in a protected archaeological park where no through traffic is permitted on the most historic section. The atmosphere on a quiet morning is completely unlike anything in the tourist centre. You walk or cycle between ancient tombs, past the Circus of Maxentius, along stretches of original Roman paving that has been in place for over two thousand years. Cats sleep on warm stone. Cypresses line the road. The city feels distant.
Q. Why does almost nobody find it?
Not because it is hard to reach. Because nobody tells them it exists. The bus from Piazza Venezia goes there. The catacombs of San Callisto and San Sebastiano are right next to it. The walk from the Porta San Sebastiano gate of the Aurelian Walls drops you straight onto the road. It is one of the simplest morning detours in Rome, and one of the least known.
What Eleonora thinks about the Trevi Fountain
Eleonora is careful and honest about the famous sights. Not dismissive, just direct about what they are now.
Q. Is there anything in Rome that is famous but overrated?
The Trevi Fountain is undeniably beautiful, but it can feel a bit overrated due to the overwhelming crowds that make it hard to truly enjoy.
Q. So how should travellers approach it?
Either accept that the crowd is part of the current reality of the place, or arrive very early in the morning before the buses arrive. The fountain is extraordinary as architecture and as spectacle. The experience it deserves is not the one most visitors get, because they arrive at midday in summer and stand in a wall of phones. At six in the morning, it is a different fountain.
Q. And the broader point about Rome's famous sights?
Proportion. The Trevi Fountain is one thing to see in Rome. It is not Rome. The city is vast and layered, and it gives more the more time you spend in it. A morning at the Appia Antica followed by an afternoon in Trastevere will tell you more about what Rome actually is than any number of timed entries at crowded monuments.
How to Spend 48 Hours in Rome the Right Way
Eleonora's 48-hour framework is honest about the constraints, and even more honest about the limits.
Q. If someone only had 48 hours, how would you structure it?
Start with the essentials: the Colosseum and the Vatican. These are not optional. They represent something genuinely significant about the city and they are worth experiencing properly, which means booking in advance and arriving early.
Q. And the rest of the 48 hours?
Leave real time for Trastevere. The neighbourhood across the Tiber from the historic centre is where the city becomes something more personal. The streets are narrower, the pace is slower, and the sense of a neighbourhood with its own character is still visible. An evening there, wandering without a destination, eating in a restaurant that was not chosen from a list, is the experience that tends to stay with people. Day two morning: the Via Appia Antica or the catacombs on the Appian Way.
Q. What's the fundamental mistake you see visitors make?
Accepting the claim that Rome can be done in two days. Travellers are always told they can see Rome in 2 days, which is actually impossible. Rome is not a city you complete. It is a city you begin to know, and the beginning requires more than 48 hours to feel like anything.
Q. How much time should someone actually budget?
At least four nights. Five is better. The city has been continuously inhabited for nearly three thousand years and contains a density of historical significance found nowhere else in Europe. Two days is enough to visit the Colosseum, the Vatican, and one or two neighbourhoods. It is not enough to understand the city. Allow four or five, and anchor each day in one area rather than attempting to cover everything.
When to Come, and What to Eat
Eleonora's timing answer is one specific window most visitors overlook, and her food answer covers two ends of the Roman spectrum.
Q. What's the best time of year to visit Rome?
Mid to late March. The high season has not started, the crowds are manageable, and the weather in Rome in March is already warm enough for long days of walking. It is a window that many visitors overlook in favour of the obvious summer months, which in Rome means intense heat and the largest crowds of the year.
Q. What should travellers eat in Rome?
Two things between them represent very different ends of Roman eating. The first is the carciofo alla giudia, the deep-fried artichoke prepared in the Jewish style, which you find in the restaurants of the Jewish Ghetto and almost nowhere else done properly. The artichoke is opened like a flower, fried until the outer leaves are crisp and the heart is soft, and it is one of the most specific and unreplicable things you can eat in this city.
Q. And the other?
Supplì. Rome's great street food. The fried rice ball that Romans eat standing up at a counter, usually pulling it apart to reveal the mozzarella that stretches between the two halves. It costs almost nothing and it is one of the best things you can buy in this city for under three euros. The carciofo and the supplì between them tell you a lot about Rome: one is the formal dish of an old neighbourhood, the other is the everyday snack on a side street. Eat both.
Eleonora's Rome is the city you find when you stop following the visitor crowd. Walk the Appia Antica before nine in the morning. Cross the Tiber for a long Trastevere evening. Accept that two days is not enough and plan four. Eat the carciofo and the supplì. Come in March if you can. The Rome that opens up to a traveller who slows down is the one Eleonora has been walking for years, and it is the one worth coming back for.
Rome travel FAQ
Explore more Rome-specific insights to plan your next trip with locals.
