Villa Farnesina and Trastevere, Privately

Most Trastevere walks stay in the streets. This one starts inside a villa that almost nobody books. Villa Farnesina was built by the banker Agostino Chigi in the early 16th century, on the river, to be seen. Raphael and his workshop painted the ground floor, and what they painted was propaganda: a rich man's account of his own taste and connections, done by the best painter alive. Chigi held banquets here and had the plates thrown into the Tiber afterwards, which tells you the register. The tour reads the decoration for what it was doing, and what the life of an artist attached to a patron like that actually involved. Raphael's mistress lived in this district, which is one of the reasons he was in it so often. After the villa the walk goes through the neighbourhood to Santa Maria in Trastevere, the first church in Rome dedicated to the Virgin, for the 13th-century mosaics, and on to Santa Cecilia. Whether the crypt and the Roman rooms beneath it can be seen depends on the nuns who run the building, so it is included when possible and not promised.