Rome in the Winter is Magic
Around this time of year I awaken one morning in Rome, and notice that there is a change. The light has taken on another quality. It is a softening, as though the gold of the summer light has stepped aside and invited in its friend, silver, to take over for some months.
This is usually the morning when there is a decided slight chill to the air. While the market still displays late summer delicacies — tomatoes, the eggplants (small ones now) and the small intensely-flavored purple figs — I note that my neighbors’ tans are fading, and that sweaters are nearly always worn outside in the morning. 
And that the pumpkins, pears and brassica vegetables have arrived.
Roman restaurants have taken in a few of their summer tables. The lines in front of the Colosseum are suddenly reduced by a third. I can, if I go at the right time of day, enter the Pantheon with barely any wait, and find myself gloriously for a minute beneath the oculus, looking up to the sky, all on my own.
Two weeks after this, there will be chestnuts on sale in the market, ready to be roasted in the fireplace or the oven. Also, two weeks after this, the lines at the Vatican museum will be half what they were in August. Two weeks after this, I can walk through Piazza Navona of an afternoon in the company of Roman children on tricycles, Roman couples wandering hand in hand, and Romans cutting across the square to get to offices, shops and homes.
I can begin to enjoy Rome as it must be enjoyed, on its own terms, not contorted by unsustainable peak high-season international tourism.
From Easter through October, the square below, Santa Maria Sopra Minerva, is full of jesters, hawkers and tourist swarms. In winter local children turn this perfect piazza into a soccer field.
This is how it was in my childhood.
This is the Rome that I love to share with you.
My single favorite Renaissance palazzo in Rome, below, first designed in 1517 for the Farnese family, has a building history that involved some of the most prominent Italian architects of the 16th century, including Michelangelo, Jacopo Barozzi da Vignola and Giacomo della Porta. Crowds make it nearly impossible to enjoy Palazzo Farnese as you can in the winter.
The piazza below is one that in summer is like a bazaar, awash in tourists and trinket stands. Three Romans are here on a November day, and one of them is my daughter.
In my Rome, there is the space to enjoy the world’s most remarkable city as a resident, not as one of the tourist hordes.
When were you last in Rome for winter week in Rome ? When did you last allow yourselves Rome in November, December, January, February or March ?
The legendary Roman winter weather is generally mild. Most days are sunny, and on any given day you have an excellent chance of casting off your coat for at least a few hours.
When did you last visit the Golden House of Nero, or ever see the Domus Transitoria, Nero’s original palace, on the Palatine ?
When did you last spend a half day shopping in the most perfect of Roman markets, and then cook privately for several hours with a passionate teacher whom you won’t wish to say goodbye to after a most succulent Roman lunch ? When did you last visit the Sistine Chapel when you could move about freely, sit down, sketch or gaze with binoculars, and not feel the surge of tourists at your back ?
When did you spend as long as you wanted entirely alone in a room with one of the most sublime bronzes of all time, the Spinario, a Greco-Roman boy removing a thorn from his foot ? For six months of the year, this room is so full that neither you or the boy can breathe. 
Newer museum additions are here to engage you — for example, the splendid Roman history rooms at the Capitoline collection and that museum’s Galleria Lapidaria, one of the single best places to for self education, through the 130 inscriptions on display, on ancient Rome.
During a winter week in Rome, you can take a picnic to Ostia Antica, my favorite of all Roman sites, and wander for hours mostly on your own, under umbrella pines, admiring villas, mosaics, stores, apartment houses, fountains, toilet rooms, theatres, synagogues, temples, inns… ingenious urban planning of Rome’s port city.
You can by train in just a little over an hour be in Gaeta, gateway to the south, a half moon coastal town backed by mountains and renowned for its black olives and lovely sand beaches and coves, perfect for an outdoor southern lunch and soaking up the winter sun.
And a dance on the beach.
During your winter week in Rome, you can be in Naples in under an hour. In Naples’ untouristed winter streets and squares, you will find that this precarious, compassionate, multi-cultured city has a unique effect on you. 
As we craft your Roman winter week, we will provide you with wonderful maps, our reading and movie lists, and the full programs of our personal docents. Because all of our clients love to learn, tours are a highlight, are private, and include specialized themed walks and extraordinarily informative site visits to the Vatican Museums, Forum, Colosseum and other renown sites in a thoughtful, intelligent tour that is less a lecture and more a conversation. In Rome, as everywhere in Italy, we rely on very special guides to unlock deeper stories about the cultures, histories, and people that make a place. And there is no time better than winter to take our Roman culinary tours, because the best eating of the year is when the tourists are not here. Artichokes, mushrooms, winter greens, puntarelle… delicacies central to the Roman table, but enjoyed only by those who visit off season.
And of course prices. Our hotel and apartment favorites slash their prices in winter, and rooms with views like this cost half of what they would in June or September.
We often book accommodation with terrace, affordable in winter, but not so in summer. And in winter as in summer, we always book accommodations by room number and ensure that you will arrive at a hotel and be warmly welcomed, with personal attention throughout your stay.
Everyone loves Rome at Christmas, and not only because the commercialism is just a fraction of that we find during American holiday time.
There are no less than six special holiday meals to enjoy. Churches draw you in with imaginative Christmas presepi (crêches), store windows are interesting, artisan fairs flourish and the sense of countrywide celebration is palpable in every way.
Andiamo ! Rome says : don’t wait. Please be in touch with us, completing our no obligation survey (https://www.insidersitaly.com/travel-planning-survey/) or emailing us to set up a time to talk.
I cannot wait to plan your Roman Winter Holiday.. and to see you in Rome this winter !
