Rome from the Pilgrims' Gate to the View of St Peter's

This walk follows a route with a shape: it starts where a pilgrim arriving from the north entered Rome and ends where that pilgrimage finished, in sight of St Peter's. The history along the way is the rise and collapse of a political system. The Roman Republic was among the first attempts at representative government anywhere, and the tour covers how it turned into an empire through a run of civil wars, why the empire outlasted every western rival, and why it eventually failed, leaving the peninsula to be fought over by everyone who came next. The route: the Porta del Popolo, the square behind it with its twin churches, worked on by Rainaldi, Bernini and Fontana, and the obelisk of Ramesses II. Then the tomb of Augustus, the Borghese palace, a gelato stop at a shop carrying over 150 flavours, the Pantheon with the tombs of Raphael and the first Italian royals, Piazza Navona in the shape of Domitian's stadium, and Via dei Coronari, which the pilgrims walked and which has barely changed since the Renaissance. Across the Ponte Sant'Angelo, past Castel Sant'Angelo, and it finishes looking down Via della Conciliazione at the basilica.