Up the Roman Spiral Ramp to the Hall of Urns, in Two Hours

The best thing in this building is the way you move through it. Hadrian's architects built a ramp that spirals up through the solid mass of the drum, and it is still the route you take. It was made for a funeral procession: a slow, continuous climb in near-darkness, curving right the whole way, with the floor rising under you and no steps to break the rhythm. Two thousand years later it does exactly what it was designed to do. At the top of it is the Hall of Urns, where the ashes of Hadrian were kept. From there the tour continues into the papal residence built by Paul III, through rooms painted with frescoes and with the grotesques that Renaissance decorators borrowed from the buried Roman interiors they had begun to explore. Each room was decorated for a purpose and the guide explains which. Then the courtyard where executions were once carried out, and the terrace at the top, which is where the cameras come out. Two hours, with skip-the-line entry. The group forms at the far end of the bridge, by the last statue on the right.