Rome: “one can…have a villa for each day of the week” he wrote, “there are more than the senses can handle, with their views, their sounds, their smells and the memories they bring back”. A glance at a map suggests escape lies only at Rome’s fringes, in the green girdle of parks on the city’s borders, the Villa Borghese or Villa Doria Pamphili. All else seems to be a thicket of roads or high walled exclusion –no easy entry into the Vatican’s extensive gardens, for example, or into the President’s hideaway behind the Quirinale Palace.
Even 30 years ago it was all very different. Then sheeps grazed under the city walls and grass still grew between the cobbles of the Colosseum’s side streets. Rome’s relentless growth, however, put paid to such luxuries, its suburbs sprouting and reaching out concrete tendrils into once virgin countryside. Gardens and small parks everywhere were choked with houses or apartments built without a whisper of planning permission wherever bricks could be squeezed. But a closer look at the map and a little exploration reveal a greener side to central Rome. Even in the ruins of the Forum you can find grassy patch and a few moments of quiet. Higher up, in the more secluded reaches of the Palatino, the Orti Farnesini are resplendent with wild flowers, delightful walkways and spring scented orange groves. Across the way, in the Colosseum’s shadow, the Colle Oppio spreads a full blown park over the slopes of the Esquiline Hill. Locals treat it as their own, but most tourists hardly know it.
South of the Colosseum a huge sanctuary of park, the Villa Celimontana, stretches away, all but untrodden by people unwilling to cross a busy road to reach it. Tucked off Trastevere’s popular jungle of streets is the Giardino Botanico, the world’s first botanical garden and one of its least visited. Behind its entrance off via della Lungara is a lush assortment of palms and secluded corners. Up by the Spanish Steps you can escape the bedlam and the shoppers with a quick dash to the Giardino del Pincio, Rome’s first public park. Even near St. Peter’s you can take time off in the gardens around the Castel Sant’Angelo. If you know where to look, every popular part of the city has his sanctuary. If you are ready to walk a little, Rome has its bona fide parks. Nowhere is more beautiful than the Villa Borghese, like most of the city’s parks created by popes or noble families around a summer house as complement to their urban building. Further afield, as beautiful, and if anything wilder, is the Villa Doria Pamphili, ranged over the slopes of Gianicolo, whose lower reaches (the Passeggiata del Gianicolo) offer a lovely, closer walk if the villa is too far.
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