The Celio: the quiet hill behind the Colosseum
A leafy hill two minutes from the Colosseum, with a round church almost nobody enters. This is a Claude-drafted route awaiting the editor's walk.

1. Villa Celimontana
Up from the Colosseum into a park most visitors never climb to — palm avenues, an Egyptian obelisk, and a 16th-century villa. Find a bench. On a summer evening the gardens host a jazz season, but by day it's prams and dog-walkers and silence.

2. Santo Stefano Rotondo
One of the oldest round churches in the world, a 5th-century drum of columns. Then the walls: a ring of 16th-century frescoes of martyrdoms, painted in unflinching detail. Unsettling, half-empty, and not easily shaken off. Check it's open before you climb up.

3. Santi Giovanni e Paolo and the Clivo di Scauro
Walk down the *Clivo di Scauro*, a Roman lane spanned by brick buttresses, to the basilica built over a Roman house. Below it, the Case Romane preserve painted rooms of the city that stood here. The street alone is worth the detour.

4. San Gregorio Magno al Celio
The church Gregory the Great sent monks from to convert England, set back behind a grand baroque stair. Climb the steps for the facade and the calm forecourt; the three little chapels in the garden to the side are the quiet draw.

5. Arco di Dolabella
A plain Roman arch from AD 10, later carrying Nero's aqueduct up to the Palatine, now standing over a quiet lane by the park gate. Easy to walk straight past. Don't.

6. Circo Massimo overlook
Drop down the western slope toward the Circus Maximus, the long green hollow where the chariots ran. Walk the rim rather than the floor; the Palatine palaces rise on the far side. The Metro B entrance is at the near end.

The Celio: the quiet hill behind the Colosseum