Parioli: the green hills and the lake at Villa Ada
Rome's smartest residential streets, a vast park with a lake, and the catacombs beneath it. This is a Claude-drafted route awaiting the editor's walk.

1. Piazza Ungheria
Start in the calm centre of upper Parioli — bars, a newsstand, the unhurried morning of a wealthy quarter. Take a coffee here before climbing; the streets ahead run uphill through the smartest addresses in the city.

2. Viale Liegi & the villini
Walk the leafy avenue past the *villini* — the detached early-20th-century villas with gardens and gates that define Parioli. Read the brass plates; embassies and old families hide behind these hedges. The shade is continuous.

3. Villa Ada — the main gate
Enter Rome's second-largest park through the Via Salaria gate. The royal house of Savoy lived here; now it's bridle paths, pine woods and joggers. Strike north into the trees and the city noise drops away within minutes.

4. The lake (laghetto)
The park's small lake, ringed by reeds and willows, with turtles on the logs and herons if you're early. Walk the full circuit; this is the green heart of the whole walk and the reason to come in the morning before the heat.

5. Catacombe di Priscilla
On the park's western edge, an early-Christian burial network with some of the oldest known images of the Madonna. Guided visits only and underground, but worth timing the walk around if early Christian Rome interests you at all.

6. Villa Ada south meadows
Come back down through the open meadows on the park's southern slope — picnic ground in summer, the *Roma Incontra il Mondo* concerts here on warm evenings. Exit toward the city and walk back down to the metro at Bologna.

Parioli: the green hills and the lake at Villa Ada