Private Walk of the Rione Ponte with a Roman Storyteller

A private walk, your group alone, through the quarter where pilgrims arriving in Rome used to land. The Rione Ponte takes its name from the bridge, and for centuries it was the first part of the city travellers reached after crossing the river. That history is still legible in the streets: Via dei Coronari was named for the rosary sellers who worked the pilgrim route along it, and much of the sixteenth-century fabric is still standing. The route works through Bramante's cloister, Santa Maria dell'Anima, which is the German and Austrian church in Rome, and Piazza Navona, where a pope turned the outline of a Roman stadium into a square with fountains and an obelisk. Two stops are the kind you would never find alone. In the basement of an old Roman restaurant there is a piece of the ancient stadium still standing, and Sant'Ivo alla Sapienza, the first university of Rome, now holds a historic library open on weekdays. The walk ends at the Palazzo Venezia, with its hidden garden. The guide was born in Rome, which on this route is the qualification that matters.