Uncover the city’s living history. Rione maps Rome’s ancient quarters dynamically — unlocking subterranean layers, hidden stories and local secrets right where you stand.
Dynamic, interactive boundaries of all of Rome’s historical rioni, colour-coded and tappable.
Every monument with photos, history and the stories beneath the stones.
Augustus began his own tomb in 28 BC, while still a young man consolidating power — a colossal circular drum of earth and travertine, 90 metres across, planted on top with cypresses and crowned by a bronze statue of the emperor. Inside, the ashes of the imperial family were laid in chambers around a central pillar that once bore the "Res Gestae", Augustus's first-person account of his own achievements.
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For travellers arriving from the north along the Via Flaminia, this vast oval was their first sight of Rome — the grand vestibule of the city. At its centre stands the Flaminio Obelisk, carved in Egypt for Pharaohs Seti I and Ramesses II around 1300 BC, brought to Rome by Augustus to decorate the Circus Maximus, and re-erected here in 1589.
The Spanish Steps are misnamed — they were paid for by the French. For decades the steep slope below the French-owned church of Trinità dei Monti was a muddy embarrassment; the dispute over how to monumentalise it (the French wanted an equestrian statue of Louis XIV, the popes objected) dragged on until 1725, when Francesco de Sanctis finally built the cascade of 135 steps that flows and divides like a Baroque stage set.
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