Rome offers much more than the average tourist will be able to take in during a classic three or four day visit to the city. Whilst we are not suggesting for a moment that visitors to the Italian capital should skip the tour of the Vatican or the Coliseum, for those who have already seen all the Eternal City's most famous monuments, or are staying in Rome for a longer period, a trip beyond the city walls becomes an absolute must.
This "alternative" tour of Rome starts just steps away from the city's trendy Testaccio district, at Porta San Paolo. Here, standing in a fork between the ancient Via Ostiense road and the modern Via della Marmorata, we find the Pryamid of Cestius. This Egyptian-inspired funeral shrine was commissioned by Gaius Cestius Epulo; a wealthy Roman magistrate and prominent member of the Septemviri Epulomum guild keen to make his debut in the after-life in true style. Epulo died and was duly buried in his pyramid in 12.B.C. The entrance to another of the city's famous burial sites sits right next to the ancient construction. Rome's Non Catholic Cemetery appears like a small garden dotted with grave stones and statues, one of the most beautiful of which has to be the incredibly poignant Angel of Grief by the American sculptor, William Wetman Story, buried here with his wife in 1895. Among the many illustrious personages buried in the cemetery, the poets John Keats and Percy Bysshe Shelley are perhaps the most venerated.
Continuing along Via Ostiense, we come to one of Christianity's most important houses of worship: the Basilica of San Paolo Fuori le Mura. Like San Pietro (St Peter's), Santa Maria Maggiore, and San Giovanni in Laterano; San Paolo Fuori le Mura is one of the city's four patriarchal basilicas, churches of the highest order all of which have a Porta Santa (opened by the Pope on the occasion of the Jubilee). The Basilica of San Paolo has had a turbulent past and the church which now stands before us is, in fact, a reconstruction of the building burnt to the ground in the devastating fire of 1823. Only the graceful cloisters, completed in 1241, survived the flames. St Paul's Basilica is situated in Rome's EUR zone. This residential area, the acronym of which means Esposizione Universale Roma, was built in preparation for the Universal Exhibition celebrating fascist Italy, an event which Mussolini had planned to hold in the capital in 1942 (and abandoned with the onset of World War 2). The imposing Palazzo della Civiltà del Lavoro (which the locals affectionately refer to as the square coliseum) dates back to this period and is a fine example of fascist architecture in the city.
Leaving the EUR district behind us, we move into another zone of Rome outside the city walls: that of Villa Borghese. Surrounding the enormous park designed for the Cardinal Scipione Borghese, there are a number of important museums and even a modern Biopark; created in what was once Rome's old zoological garden. In the Villa Borghese Gallery visitors can admire the magnificent private collection of the Borghese dynasty; a collection which includes Canova's statue of Paolina Bonaparte, sister of Napoleon, in the seductive guise of the goddess Venus. The statues of Pluto and Prosperina and Apollo and Daphne, were crafted by the great Bernini.
Not far from Villa Borghese, we find the 16th century Villa Giulia; now home to Rome's Etruscan Museum and a fascinating collection of artifacts discovered in the vicinity of Rome. Another important museum located in the Villa Giulia district of the city is the National Gallery of Modern Art, which contains artworks from the 19th century to the modern day, including paintings by Van Gogh and Cezanne and sculptures by Canova.
