The following is a brief guide to Rome, which, I hope, will help you to prepare for your visit to the Eternal City.
For more information about opening times of museums, visit the city's official website: www.turismoroma.it
Note: If a monument or museum is highlighted in red, please click on it for a link to the official website.
Walk Two: The Palatine > The Forum > The Colosseum (Three/Four Hours)
Walk Three: St Peter's Basilica > The Vatican (Three Hours)
Walk Four: San Clemente > Santi Quattro Coronati > San Giovanni in Laterano > Baths of Caracalla > Circus Maximus (Three Hours)
Walk Five: Jewish Ghetto > Isola Tiberina > Santa Cecilia > Santa Maria in Trastevere > San Pietro in Montorio > Aqua Paola (Two Hours)
Walk One: The Spanish Steps > Trevi Fountain > Pantheon > Santa Maria Sopra Minerva > Sant' Ivo > Piazza Navona (Three Hours)
The Spanish Steps
The Spanish Steps, which are probably the most famous flight of stairs in the world, were built to a design by Francesco di Sanctis, in the 1720s.
The French church of Santa Trinita dei Monti, which stands at the top of the steps was built at the beginning of the 16th century. The beautiful fountain, La Barcaccia, which sits at the bottom of the steps, was built a century later. It was long desired to create a flight of steps to link the two squares in which they stand. But it was not until the beginning of the 18th century, when a French ambassador died and bequeathed a sum of money expressly for their creation, that the project was set into motion.
At the foot of the steps are two embodiments of the English presence in Rome, namely, the Keats-Shelley Museum on one side and Babington's Tea Rooms on the other. On February 23rd, 1821, the poet, John Keats died in a room in the house overlooking the steps. He was only twenty-five years old.
At the end of the 19th century, two English spinsters, who were constantly searching for, but failing to find, a place which would serve them with a good cup of tea, set up their own tea rooms.
The Trevi Fountain
A short distance from the most famous staircase in the world lies the most famous fountain.
It was commissioned by Pope Clement XII (whose coats of arms we see at the top) and designed by Niccolo Salvi. Work started on the fountain in 1732 and dragged on for thirty years later. It was finally finished in 1762, by which time both the Pope and the designer were dead. 
In the centre of the fountain, we see Neptune, God of the sea, baton in hand. He is flanked by two Tritons, who hold the reigns to two horses. One horse rears wildly, while the other is placid and obedient. They symbolise the twin natures of the sea, which can veer so quickly between the two states.
The Pantheon
"Simple, erect, severe, austere, sublime" were the words Lord Byron used to describe the Pantheon. It was built (119-128) by the Emperor Hadrian to replace an earlier temple, which had been built by Marcus Agrippa, friend and right-hand man of the Emperor Augustus. For some reason, Hadrian retained the original inscription above the entrance to the temple, which ascribes the work to Marcus Agrippa.
Following the collapse of the Roman Empire in the west, the temple was given by the Byzantine emperor to Pope Boniface IV. It was the first pagan temple to be converted into a church, when, on November 1st, 609, it was re-christened Santa Maria ad Martyres. It is also known as Santa Maria Rotonda. 
For almost two thousand years the Pantheon boasted the widest vault in the world. The span is 43.3m, compared with 42.2m. at the Duomo in Florence and 42m. at St Peter's.
In the centre of the dome is a giant oculus or eye, 9m. wide. According to the Venerable Bede, this was created by the demons escaping from the temple was it was converted into a church.
In the 17th century, Bernini was commissioned to add a pair of bell towers to the temple/church. The Romans immediately nicknamed them the 'Ears of an Ass'. They were removed at the end of the 19th century.
For more information about this fascinating building see the Wikipedia article, to which I am a contributor: Pantheon
Santa Maria Sopra Minerva 7-19; Hol./Sun. 8-19.
The Dominican church of Santa Maria Sopra Minerva was built at the end of the 13th century on the site of a temple to the Egyptian goddess of fertility, Isis (wrongly thought to be a temple to Minerva, hence the name of the church). The church is the burial place of Saint Catherine of Siena, one of Italy's two patron saints (the other if St Francis).
Catherine Benincasa died in Rome in 1380, at the age of only thirty-three. Intensely devout, she was the first woman to receive the stigmata. She passionately wanted the Popes to return to Rome from Avignon, where they had resided since 1309. In 1377 she saw the return to Rome of Pope Gregory XI. This heralded the start of the great schism when the church had not one but two Popes.
The square in front of the church is dominated by a charming if unusual statue of an elephant standing on a pedestal with an obelisk on its back. The curious group was the product of long and close consultation between Pope Alexander VII (whose coat of arms we can see on top of the obelisk) and Rome's leading sculptor, Gian Lorenzo Bernini. Everything is explained in the Latin inscription: the obelisk symbolises wisdom, while the elephant symbolises strength. In other words always build your ideas on strong foundations.
The elephant was designed by Bernini, but carved by one of his pupils. The obelisk, which dates back to the 6th century and once belonged to the temple of Isis, had recently been unearthed in the cloister attached to the church.
The church is home to works of art by Michelangelo, Bernini and Filippino Lippi. It is also the burial place of Fra Angelico, who died in Rome in 1455, while working in the Vatican.
Michelangelo carved the statue, which stands at the foot of the steps to the choir, between 1514 and 1521. His portrayal of Christ Resurrected was originally nude, the bronze drapery was added in the 19th century. 
On the opposite side of the church lies the beautiful Carafa Chapel, which contains one of the finest Renaissance fresco cycles in Rome. Cardinal Oliviero Carafa commissioned the Florentine painter, Filippino Lippi, to decorate the chapel with frescoes of the Virgin and St Thomas Aquinas and an altarpiece of the Annunciation. Lippi, who dropped his work in the Strozzi Chapel in Florence to come here, excelled himself.
We can see the Cardinal being presented to the Virgin by St Thomas Aquinas.
Sant' Ivo alla Sapienza
The church was commissioned, in 1632, by Pope Urban VIII and designed by one of the most original talents in the history of Italian architecture, Francesco Borromini. The unique design is one of extreme ingenuity and based on two equilateral triangles which interpenetrate to form a six pointed star. Did Borromini have in mind the fact that such a star is the star of David, the accepted symbol of wisdom and therefore appropriate to the church of the Sapienza, which was the name for the University of Rome.
The spiral lantern of the church is one of the strangest sights on the Roman horizon. The Pope who commissioned Borromini was a member of the Barberini family, whose coat of arms is made up of three bees. And this had led many people to see the barbed sting of the bee as inspiring the design of the lantern.
If you are fortunate to find the church open you are in for a treat. The curiously shaped interior, made up of convex and concave forms, is full of light and almost devoid of colour. Borromini wanted nothing to distract the eye from the appreciation of the pure form of his creation.
Piazza Navona
The Piazza Navona sits at the heart of the centro storico, the historical centre, on the site of what was once the Stadium of Domitian. The emperor had the stadium built between 81 and 96 and the present piazza preserves the original shape, round at one end, square at the other. The seating reached a height of 40m. and was capable of holding 30,000 people. The stadium was essentially a venue for athletic competitions.
The ruins of the stadium remained until the second half of the 15th century when they were broken up to supply material for the many churches and palaces that were being built. Remnants of the stadium still still be seen in the cellars of the shops and restaurants, which surround the square.
For centuries, it became the practice to flood the square on Sundays in August, the hottest month of the year in Rome. 
In the centre of the piazza soars one of the greatest fountains in Rome (quite a claim given that the city boasts a grand total 2,000 fountains), that of the Four Rivers, designed by the incomparable Bernini.
The fountain was commissioned by Pope Innocent X, whose family had just moved into the square and were busy creating their own palace (now the Brazilian Embassy). An obelisk had recently been unearthed in the Circus Maxentius and the Pope wanted it to be incorporated into the design of the fountain. It is surmounted, not by a cross, but by a dove holding a sprig of olive, part of the Pope's coat of arms.
The four rivers are represented by four statues. The one which has a cloth wrapped around his head represents the river Nile, the only one of the four rivers whose source was still unknown.
Walk Two
