Rome blog for Bed & Breakfast Chaplin Hostel

This Rome information blog about the Ara Pacis museum was written for the guests of the hostel Chaplin Bed and Breakfast.

Ara Pacis Opening hours

Tue-Sun 9am-7pm; Dec 24,31 9am-2pm (the ticket office closes an hour before closing time)

Closed

Monday, Jan 1, May 1, Dec 25

Ticket prices

Full price € 6,50; Reduced price € 4,50 (for European citizens beteen the ages of 18 and 25).

European citizens under 18 and over 65 years of age do not pay. Handicapped citizens of the European Union and one assistant or family member have free entry.
During special events or exhibitions the tickets prices may vary.

Booking

Booking can either be done online at www.ticketclic.it or by phone (+39-(0)60608) from 9am to 10.30pm. Individuals pay a 1 Euro booking fee.

Reservations are obligatory, but free for schools. Other groups (of a minimum of 12 people) pay a 25 Euro booking fee. Booking for those groups is obligatory on Saturdays and public holidays. Groups cannot book online.

How to reach the Ara Pacis from Rome Termini and B&B Chaplin Hostel.

The address of the Ara Pace Museum in Rome is: Lungotevere in Augusta - 00100 Roma. Take metro line A, get off at Flaminio and walk down the Via Ripetta. Or, get off at Spagna, walk down the Via Condotti, and continue down the Via Tomacelli till you come to the river Tiber.

Vatican Museums – Practical Information

This Rome information blog about the Vatican Museums is written for the Rome Bed and Breakfast Chaplin Hostel.

Opening hours

The opening hours of the Vatican Museums and the Sistine Chapel have finally become slightly more visitor-friendly. The following are the hours for 2008:

On weekdays and Saturdays the Vatican Museums are open from 8.30am till 6pm. Last admission is at 4pm.

The Vatican Museums are closed on Sundays and holidays, except for the last Sunday of every month (unless this is a holiday), when they are open from 8.30am to 2pm. Last admission at noon.

The holidays are January 1,6; February 11; March 19,23,24; May 1; May 22; June 29; August 14,15; November 1, December 8, 25 and 26.

Entrance tickets to the Vatican Museums and the Sistine Chapel

Tickets are valid only on the date of purchase and are not refundable. Within 5 days from this date, with this same ticket one can visit the Vatican Historical Museum in the Noble Apartment of the Lateran Apostolic Palace. The price of a ticket is 13 Euros, except on the last Sunday of the month, when admission to the Vatican Museums and the Sistine Chapel is free.

Directions for the Vatican Museums

From the Chaplin B&B Rome take the metro line A to the stop Ottaviano-San Pietro. Take the first exit on your left and follow the crowds. There is a stop called Cipro-Musei Vaticani, but this is actually further from the entrance to the Museums.

8 Porta Portese Tips

This Rome information blog about the Porta Portese fleamarket in Trastevere is written for the guests of the B&B Chaplin Hostel Rome and the Bed and Breakfast Little Italy.

The Porta Portese flea market: Big crowds in small spaces, pickpockets, gypsies, aggressive stallholders, chaos… Here follow some tips on how to best visit Rome’s liveliest Sunday morning spot.

1. Get up early and avoid the biggest tourist crowds.

2. Bargain! The word “tourist” is written in large letters on your forehead so the price of things doubles as soon as the stallholder lays his eye on you. Getting something for less than half of the original asking price is not exceptional in Porta Portese.

3. Before starting to bargain, try to figure out for yourself how much you would be willing to pay for an object. Unless you are an expert, you will not know its real anyway, so just, so begin by using your own common sense.

4. Speak English. Being friendly and using your humble and respectful mouthful of Italian just puts you at a disadvantage and increases your chances of being humbly and respectfully taken for a ride.

5. Be extremely careful for pickpockets, especially after 10am, the peak time of the Porta Portese flea market. Like most streets in the ancient part of Rome, the ones in Trastevere are extremely narrow and you will be forced to shuffle rather than walk through the crowds: a paradise for pickpockets and gypsies.

6. Do not keep your wallets in your back pockets, keep your backpack and phot camera in front of you where you can see them, and hide your valuable possessions underneath your clothes, or leave them in the room of your hotel, hostel or bed and breakfast.

7. Obvious, but still: nothing, really nothing offerd for sale at the Porta Portese flea market dates from ancient Roman times.

8. Buying a fake Louis Voutton-bag or Rayban-sunglasses can get you fined. This is rare, but when it happens, play the dumb and humble tourist game.

9. Do not be afraid, be careful, otherwise you might forget to enjoy the market and Porta Portese is well worth it.

This Rome information blog about the Porta Portese fleamarket in Trastevere is written for the guests of the B&B Chaplin Hostel Rome.

Porta Portese, the biggest and most colourful flea market of Rome and Italy, is held every Sunday, in the quarter of Trastevere, around the Via Portuense and the Via Ippolito Nievo.

Over two thousand dealers have stalls at Porta Portese and you can buy anything at the flea market, from antique wardrobes to the tiniest and most banal household goods.

There is an atmosphere of semi-illegality at Porta Portese: Between the official market stalls the “vu-comprà”, in the past mostly Africans, nowadays also many Chinese and Bangladeshi immigrants, have set up their blankets and cardboard boxes with fake sunglasses, CD’s, DVD’s, hand bags and cheap jewelry.

Professional thieves are meanwhile trying to sell the cell phones and photo cameras they stole in the course of the week in the center of Rome or on the same day at the market itself.

Officially the Porta Portese flea market starts at 5am every Sunday morning and continues till more or less 2pm, but in reality many stalls start packing up 1 or 2 hours earlier than that, especially when it rains or during the hot Rome summer months when the Romans abandon the Eternal City in droves.

Both the crowds and the, sometimes rather aggressive, stallholders can be quite overwhelming, so in a separate Porta Portese blog entry I have written some tips on how to deal with the market.

From the Chaplin Bed and Breakfast the Porta Portese market can be reached by taking the 64 bus from Termini to Largo di Torre Argentina, and then taking the number 8 streetcar.

This Rome information blog is written for the guests of the Chaplin Bed & Breakfast in Rome.

From the 19th of February until the 18th of May the exhibition “China in the 21^st Century. Art between identity and transformation”, organized by Zhu Qi and Morgan Morris, will occupy one floor of the Palazzo delle Esposizioni in Rome.

The Chinese artists of the “post ‘89” generation exhibit a series of paintings, installations, videos and photographs, showing a wide variety of interpretations of Chinese society ranging from Pop Art to a new way of using the symbols of Communist China.

While the exhibition is going on, in one of the Palaexpo’s rooms, the painter Liu Xiaodong will realize a new work, to be named “Eat First”, a kind of “Last Supper” depicting 13 people eating Mediterranean food.

There is also space for cinema and literature. From February 21^st until May 18^th in the Sala Cinema and the Auditorium of the Palazzo delle Exposizioni there will be documentaries, shorts, full-length movies and discussions.

Various writers like Mian Mian (March 20th), Wang Shuo (April 22nd) and Su Tong (May 7^th) will read from their works in the Auditorium of the Palaexpo.

For practical information about opening hours, admission costs and directions to the Palazzo delle Esposizioni as well as about the duration of the exhibition visit the Rome blog contemporary exhibition page.

This Rome information blog is written for the guests of the Chaplin Hostel Rome and the Bed and Breakfast Little Italy.

Via Clodia - history

The Via Clodia was probably built by the Romans on top of an earlier, Etruscan road. Unlike most other roads it was built for commercial rather than military goals.

The Via Clodia starts just north of Rome as a side street of the Via Cassia (near La Storta) and meanders through the northern part of the province of Lazio to end in Tuscany, not far from the town of Grosseto. The Via Clodia was seen as the main connection between the Via Cassia and the Via Aurelia.

The Via Clodia is named after a Roman magistrate during the republican era.

Another name for the Via Clodia was the Via delle Terme, because of the abundance of wells that could be found along it.

During the Middle Ages the Via Clodia, which was already paved 225 b.C., was a main road for the pilgrims coming to Rome. The road runs along the lakes of Bracciano and Bolsena (Europe’s largest lake of volcanic origin).

As soon as one leaves Rome one can already spot the Castello Orsini in the distance, nowadays as well as in the past a place where the rich and famous go to enjoy themselves.

Marta, on the banks of Lake Bolsena, is a picturesque fishing village. Another beautiful village is Castro, though it cannot be found on the map of the province of Lazio anymore, since it was systematically destroyed, stone by stone, by pope Innocenzo X Pamphili. At the moment they are trying to restore the little bit that is left of Castro

Other splendid villages one drives through are Anguillara Sabazia, Santa Maria di Galeria and Blera.

The forest of Lamone near Rome

The Via Clodia runs through the nature reserve of Lamone, the oldest wild forest of central Italy. On foot or by bicycle, one can follow several paths through the forest, the most famous of which is the Sentiero dei Briganti (the Robber’s Path). At the edge of the Lamone reserve lies the medieval borough of Farnese, in Italy known especially because in the early seventies the movie Pinocchio was filmed here.

Also Tuscania, which owes its importance mainly to the construction of the Via Clodia is worth a visit, for the Etruscan remains and the church of San Pietro towering above the village.

At Norchia, along the old pilgrim’s road, the Via Francigena, the tufo stone, much used in Rome, was won. From the city itself one has a splendid view over one of the largest Etruscan burial places.

From Roccarespampani, called thus after the Rocca Medievale (medieval rock), which one can only visit accompanied by a guide, one reaches the Ponte di Fra’ Cirillo (over the river Traponzo). The bridge, which has an altar built in it, was built by Cirillo, according to legend in one night only. Cirillo’s spirit is also said to still hover around the bridge. Experience in Italy learns that the second is a more credible legend than the first.