Janiculum Hill

You reach the Janiculum Hill from Piazzale Giuseppe Garibaldi, on the ridge that separates Trastevere from the Vatican, in Municipio I and right next to rione XIII Trastevere. There is no ticket, no gates and no opening hours: the tree-lined promenade that runs along the ridge is open at any hour, free, every day of the year. The main pedestrian entrances are Via Garibaldi, which climbs up from Trastevere, and the Salita di Sant'Onofrio, which comes up from the Lungotevere. If you're coming from the center, take bus 23 along the river, get off at Trastevere and face about 20 minutes of uphill walking. If you drive up, you'll find parking along the promenade, limited and almost always full in the late afternoon. The cannon shot that announces noon can be heard every day from the terrace below the equestrian monument. For the sites that have their own hours and in some cases a ticket, from the Museo della Repubblica Romana inside Porta San Pancrazio to the Botanical Garden at the foot of the hill, the up-to-date conditions are on their official websites.

Within the perimeter that Romans simply call the Janiculum Hill there are at least eight different things: a viewpoint, a historic park, an equestrian monument, an ideal cemetery of busts, a lighthouse, a monumental fountain, a city gate turned into a museum and a small temple that architecture textbooks consider the birth certificate of the mature Renaissance. Whoever goes up for the sunset photo sees only one of them. It's worth seeing them all.

To get your bearings in the area, the pages on Santa Maria in Trastevere and on Villa Doria Pamphilj, which closes the ridge to the west, come in handy.

Where the Janiculum Hill is and how to really get there

The Janiculum Hill is the long rise on the right bank of the Tiber that begins above Trastevere and continues north to the back of the Vatican. The spot everyone calls the Janiculum Hill, though, is just one: Piazzale Giuseppe Garibaldi, the terrace overlooking the city, with the equestrian statue in the middle and the low parapet from which you look at Rome. Everything else is surroundings, and they are remarkable surroundings.

On foot from Trastevere to the Janiculum Hill

The classic climb starts from Piazza Santa Maria in Trastevere, takes Via della Paglia, touches Piazza Sant'Egidio and follows Via Garibaldi, which curves and climbs in wide switchbacks. It's a good 20 minutes, with a real slope: if you have delicate knees, know that before you go. Halfway up you pass San Pietro in Montorio Church with Bramante's Tempietto, and a little higher up the Fontana dell'Acqua Paola. My professional advice is not to treat the climb as a transfer: it's the best part of the visit, because the city opens up gradually behind you and the view builds piece by piece instead of arriving all at once.

The second climb, less traveled, is the Salita di Sant'Onofrio, which starts from the Lungotevere Gianicolense near the Bambino Gesù hospital and climbs very steeply to Sant'Onofrio Church. It's shorter and harder. In return it is almost always deserted and passes in front of one of the most beautiful loggias of the Roman 16th century.

By bus and public transport to the Janiculum Hill

There is no subway that serves the hill: the nearest station is far away and in any case leaves you down below, along the river. The workable solution is bus 23, which runs along the Lungotevere and lets you get off at Trastevere and then climb on foot. There are city lines that run along the promenade up on the ridge and connect the piazzale with the Vatican area. Routes and frequencies change with the service plans, and the source to check is the website of Rome's public transport company. On weekends the promenade is often closed to private traffic: checking beforehand saves you from driving up and then having to turn back.

The Janiculum Hill by car, scooter and taxi

The Janiculum Hill promenade is a real road, drivable, with parking along the two avenues. The scooter is what Romans use to go up and see the sunset, and the reason is simple: it parks anywhere. By car the problem isn't getting there, it's stopping. From April to October, between 18:00 and 20:00, free spots are very few and the line of people circling for a space moves slowly. A taxi solves the climb, but for the return trip you should call one: cruising by empty up there rarely happens. If you walk down toward Trastevere it takes a quarter of an hour and you'll find transport at any hour.

Accessibility of the Janiculum Hill for wheelchairs and strollers

Piazzale Garibaldi and the avenues of the promenade are flat, paved and wide: a wheelchair or a stroller gets around without difficulty, and the viewpoint parapet is low enough not to block the view for someone seated. The problem is getting there: the two pedestrian climbs have demanding slopes and cobblestone stretches. If you have mobility needs, do the last stretch by car or taxi and keep the promenade as your area to move around. The stretch between the Garibaldi monument and the lighthouse is the most comfortable and the most scenic.

Why the Janiculum Hill is not one of the seven hills of Rome

It's the question that always comes up, and the answer is geographical before it is historical. The seven hills of ancient Rome are all on the left bank of the Tiber: Palatine, Capitoline, Aventine, Caelian, Esquiline, Viminal, Quirinal. The Janiculum Hill is on the right bank, together with the Vatican and Monte Mario. It is part of the city, and always has been, but it belongs to another bank and another logic: it is not a hill you live on, it is a hill from which you keep watch.

This difference explains everything else. On the Palatine they build imperial palaces. On the Janiculum Hill they build walls, bastions, emplacements. The city has always considered it its cover to the west, the high point from which you see whoever comes from outside arriving and the high point from which, if the hill falls, the center gets bombarded. In 1849 that is exactly what happened, and we'll get to it.

The height of the Janiculum Hill and what sets it apart from other viewpoints

The Janiculum Hill rises above 80 meters above sea level, more than any hill on the left bank: the Capitoline, by comparison, reaches a little more than half. That is the reason why from the Janiculum Hill you see the city from above while from the Capitoline Hill you see the city from inside. The Pincio looks at Rome from the north and cuts across it at an angle. Monte Mario is higher still but too far away and flattens everything into a carpet of roofs. The Janiculum Hill is at the right distance: high enough to dominate, close enough to recognize the individual bell towers.

The ancient occupation of the hill and the bridgehead

Roman tradition attributes the occupation of the Janiculum Hill to King Ancus Marcius. The reason, recounted by the ancients with military sobriety, is that the hill formed the natural bridgehead on the right bank of the Tiber, facing the Pons Sublicius: without the Janiculum Hill in their own hands, the oldest wooden bridge in Rome would have been indefensible. Whoever holds the Janiculum Hill holds the river crossing. This character also emerges from a very ancient custom: a flag was raised on the hill as a safety signal when the assemblies were held in the Campus Martius, outside the walls. As long as the banner was up, voting went on. Once the banner was lowered, the assembly broke up.

It's a detail that says a lot about the relationship between Rome and this rise: not a place of leisure, but a guard post with a view. The fact that today people go up to kiss at sunset is one of the most successful ironies of Roman topography.

The name of the Janiculum Hill: Janus, the gate and the golden mountain

The hill was sacred to Janus, and that is where the name comes from. Tradition holds that the god had founded his own city there and had dedicated to it as many altars as there were months in the year: 12, one per month, in a stone calendar laid out along the ridge.

Two-faced Janus, god of passages

Janus is the two-faced god, the one who looks forward and backward at the same time. In Roman religion he ruled over every place of passage, and the name itself declares it: Janus comes from the Latin ianus, that is, gate, doorway, opening. The Janiculum Hill symbolically served as the city's gate to the outside, the threshold beyond which Rome ended and Etruria began. Placing the cult of Janus there is not an antiquarians' fantasy: it is a choice consistent to the point of pedantry.

It's worth pausing for a moment on this idea, because it changes the way you look at the view. From the parapet of the piazzale you see the city spread out. But the spot you are leaning on did not belong to the city: it was its limit, its entrance, its face turned outward. The Janiculum Hill is the gate of Rome seen from outside, and Romans have always known it.

The Janiculum Hill called Montorio, the golden mountain

In the Middle Ages and beyond, the hill was also called Montorio, that is, Monte d'Oro, because of the yellow sand it is made of, the so-called mica aurea. It is fine, golden sand that lights up the cuts in the terrain and the embankments in the afternoon sun. The name survived in the title of the church that dominates the climb: San Pietro in Montorio, that is, Saint Peter on the golden mountain. When you read that plaque, you are reading a geological description disguised as a place name.

The metal gate and the statues of the Pantheon

Among the medieval legends tied to the hill there is one that deserves to be told in full, because it is a small masterpiece of political imagination. Under the Janiculum Hill, it was said, there was a metal gate that opened by itself every time a Roman province rebelled. The Romans, having noticed that the gate was open, ran to the Pantheon, where all the statues representing the provinces of the empire were placed: the one they found turned with its back showed the province in revolt, and so they knew where to send the legions.

As an intelligence system it is unbeatable: zero costs, zero informers, zero delays. As a story it says something true about the Roman Middle Ages, namely that the city lived surrounded by the remains of a machine it no longer understood and to which it attributed automatic powers. The Pantheon still standing, the lost provinces, a magic gate under the hill: this is the Rome that explains its own ruins to itself.

Who was buried on the Janiculum Hill

Remarkable figures were buried on the Janiculum Hill. Tradition places there the tomb of the mythical King Numa Pompilius, the second king of Rome, the one who gave the city its religious laws and the calendar. And it places there the burials of two archaic Latin poets: Ennius, the father of Latin epic, and Caecilius Statius, a comic playwright of Gallic origin. These are items of tradition, not of excavation: none of these tombs has ever been identified on the ground. But the persistence of the story says that the hill was considered a fitting place for those who had given Rome words and rites, not battles.

The Janiculum Hill Promenade, the park that runs along the ridge

The Janiculum Hill Promenade is the system of tree-lined avenues that runs along the ridge and that constitutes, to all effects, a historic park of the city. It consists of two large avenues of plane trees that run alongside Villa Aurelia and join in Piazzale Garibaldi. The layout dates from the second half of the 19th century, covers about 3.5 hectares and has its entrances on Via Garibaldi and on the Salita di Sant'Onofrio. Administratively it is in Municipio I, rione XIII Trastevere.

The plane trees of the Janiculum Hill Promenade

The plane trees are the reason you can be up there even in August. They are big trees, with wide crowns, planted in a double row, and they produce a continuous shade that lowers the perceived temperature by several degrees compared with the asphalt of the piazzale. If you go up in July at three in the afternoon, do this: don't stay on the terrace, walk under the plane trees toward the lighthouse. In half an hour of walking in the shade you see more of the Janiculum Hill than in half an hour of photos in the sun.

Villa Aurelia and the upper edge of the promenade

The two avenues run alongside Villa Aurelia, the 17th-century residence that occupies the highest point of the ridge and that today belongs to the American Academy in Rome. It cannot be visited freely and you see it from outside, over the boundary wall: the opening conditions, when there are public events, are communicated by the institution that manages it. The position of the villa is not accidental. In 1849 that point was the height to be held at all costs, and whoever knows the story of the siege looks at that wall with different eyes.

The Janiculum Hill as an urban park: benches, drinking fountains, shade

The promenade works as a neighborhood park for Trastevere and Monteverde. There are benches along the avenues, drinking fountains with a continuous flow, a kiosk, play areas for children, people running early in the morning and older men reading the newspaper in mid-morning. The crowd changes three times a day: families and runners in the morning, tourists and school groups around noon for the cannon, couples and young people from late afternoon on. If you are looking for a quiet Janiculum Hill, the only window is between nine and 11 in the morning.

Piazzale Giuseppe Garibaldi and Emilio Gallori's equestrian monument

Piazzale Giuseppe Garibaldi is the point where the two avenues join and where the hill becomes a terrace. In the center, on a tall base, stands the great equestrian statue of Giuseppe Garibaldi, the work of the Florentine sculptor Emilio Gallori, unveiled in 1895. It is one of the few Roman Risorgimento monuments that still holds up under the gaze of a non-patriotic public: it works as sculpture, regardless of what you think of the rhetoric that generated it.

How to look at Gallori's Garibaldi

The first thing to notice is that the general is not charging. The horse is still, almost planted, and Garibaldi is turned: he looks toward the Vatican, not toward the city. The gesture is restrained, the body is heavy, the cloak falls in long folds. Gallori chose the pause instead of the assault, and made a precise dramatic choice: this is not the Garibaldi who wins, it is the Garibaldi who has just lost Rome and is looking at it from above, knowing he will return.

The second thing to notice is the orientation. An equestrian monument is almost always placed on axis with an urban vista. Not here: here the statue is set on an edge, on the brink of the void, and whoever photographs it has to stand low and use the sky as a backdrop. That is the reason why photos of the Garibaldi on the Janiculum Hill almost always turn out well, even for people who don't know how to take photos.

The inscription O Roma o morte at the base of the monument

At the base is carved the phrase that accompanied Garibaldi on his two failed expeditions toward Rome: O Roma o morte. It is not a decorative caption. It is a declaration of a program that cost its author a wound at Aspromonte and imprisonment, and on the Janiculum Hill it sounds particular, because we are exactly in the place where in 1849 that alternative was put to the test for real.

The bronzes of the Garibaldi monument's base

Around the pedestal run four minor bronze groups, with battle scenes and allegorical figures. They are the part nobody looks at and the part worth the most to those who have time: you can recognize military episodes treated with a rough realism, fallen bodies, twisted horses, and next to them the 19th-century allegories of Europe and of liberty. The contrast between chronicle and symbol is the way the century told itself the story of war. Walk all the way around the base: it's four sides, two minutes, and they change your perception of the whole.

What you see from Piazzale Garibaldi

From the parapet, looking east, the city stretches from the northern quadrant to the southern quadrant. The foreground is Trastevere with its low roofs and Romanesque bell towers. Beyond the river you can make out the white bulk of the Vittoriano, the towers and domes of the center, the high green of the Pincio and Villa Borghese, and on clear days, in the background, the line of the Castelli Romani. To the right, toward the south, you can pick out the Aventine and the profile of the Alban Hills. The useful exercise is to identify three sure points first, then work by comparison: the Vittoriano, the dome of Sant'Andrea della Valle and the bell tower of Santa Maria in Trastevere. With those three in hand, the rest sorts itself out.

The Anita Garibaldi monument on the Janiculum Hill

A few dozen meters farther on, in Piazzale Anita Garibaldi, stands the other equestrian monument of the hill, and for many it is the more beautiful of the two. It represents Anita Garibaldi, the Brazilian companion of the hero of two worlds, and it is the work of the Palermo sculptor Mario Rutelli, erected in 1932.

A woman on horseback with a newborn and a pistol

The group is violent and beautiful. Anita is portrayed at a gallop, the horse rearing on its hind legs, her body twisted backward. With her left arm she holds her newborn son, with her right she grips a pistol. There is no other woman represented like this in Italian public statuary of the period: mother and fighter in the same gesture, without softening either one. Rutelli worked on the movement to the limit of static balance, and the result is a bronze that seems on the verge of falling forward.

If you have time for only one photo on the Janiculum Hill, take it here and not at the Garibaldi. The general's statue is imposing, this one is alive.

Anita's ashes inside the base

Inside the base of the monument lie Anita's ashes, moved from Nice in the same year it was erected. The monument is therefore also a tomb, and this explains the sobriety of the plaque and the fact that there are almost always flowers around the enclosure. Whoever passes by distracted sees an equestrian group. Whoever knows, takes off their hat.

Who Anita Garibaldi was

Anita Ribeiro da Silva met Garibaldi in Brazil, fought at his side in the South American wars, followed him to Europe and died in the summer of 1849, pregnant, during the retreat that followed the fall of the Roman Republic. The monument on the Janiculum Hill therefore returns her exactly above the battlefield that cost her her life as a direct consequence. The placement is not decorative: it is an act of restitution.

The noon cannon of the Janiculum Hill

According to a tradition now almost two centuries long, noon is announced in Rome by a cannon shot fired from the terrace of the Janiculum Hill. It is the most regular urban ritual in the city, and it takes place in exactly three seconds.

Why the noon cannon was established in 1847

The tradition goes back to the time of Pius IX, exactly to December 1, 1847, when the cannon shot fired from Castel Sant'Angelo was established to remedy the disorder that the differing pace of so many clocks in the Capital could often cause, as appears in the Diario di Roma of November 30, 1847. The bureaucratic phrasing hides a serious problem: before unified standard time, every Roman bell tower kept a slightly different time, and the bells overlapped in a confusion that made it impossible to arrange to meet. The shot served to bring everyone back into agreement: it was the signal that started the ringing of the bells of the Roman churches.

Note the logical inversion. Today the cannon looks like a picturesque folkloric leftover. In 1847 it was technology: an acoustic synchronization device covering the whole city, the 19th-century equivalent of the radio time signal.

From Castel Sant'Angelo to Monte Mario, and from 1904 to the Janiculum Hill

The cannon has changed position twice. From August 1, 1903 it fired from Monte Mario, from the spot where the hotel that occupies the summit of the hill now stands, and from January 24, 1904 from the Janiculum Hill, where it has stayed. The move followed the growth of the city: a position was needed that covered ever larger neighborhoods acoustically, and the Janiculum ridge was the natural pulpit.

How the accuracy of the shot is guaranteed

Today the exactness is determined by a system of links between the Capitoline Hill and the Janiculum Hill. In the past the link was with the astronomical Observatory of the Collegio Romano palazzo, which in turn gave the signal to the ball of Sant'Ignazio Church: a sphere that slid down a pole at exactly noon, visible from half the city. The system was optical and mechanical, and worked as a chain: observatory, ball, cannon, bells. A time distribution network built with ropes, lenses and gunpowder.

The piece of artillery that fires today from the Janiculum Hill

The cannon currently in service on the Janiculum Hill is a World War I howitzer with a movable barrel. The bang is produced by a blank cartridge: no projectile, only the propelling charge. Whoever arrives expecting a shiny parade piece is disappointed: it is a war tool, painted green, kept in working order with the maniacal care that gunners reserve for historic materiel.

How to watch the Janiculum Hill cannon without picking the wrong spot

The practical advice is simple and almost nobody follows it: arrive at 11:40 and take your place on the lower terrace, the one below the piazzale, on the parapet side. From there you see the piece, you see the crew's maneuver and you see the city in the background in the same frame. Whoever stays up above sees only heads. Whoever arrives at one minute to 12 doesn't get into the front row. Keep your mouth slightly open and don't stand right in front of the muzzle: the blast of air is real and it frightens small children. There is only one shot and it ends right away. The people who walk away disappointed after three seconds are the funniest constant of the morning.

Checco Durante's poem about the Janiculum Hill cannon

The great Roman actor Checco Durante dedicated a poem in dialect to the cannon that Romans of a certain age still know by heart:

The verses, in Romanesco, say that this custom that seemed lovely and dead has come back into fashion once again, that now noon is signaled to everyone by the cannon, and that when the author hears it a prayer rises from his heart: that the cannon may serve only to announce to humanity the hour of eating.

The final line explains why the tradition survived two wars and a change of regime: a cannon shot that calls you to the table instead of to arms is the most Roman form of pacifism possible.

The busts of the Garibaldians along the Janiculum Hill promenade

Walking along the avenues you come across dozens of marble busts on small columns, lined up among the plane trees. They are the fighters of the 1849 defense of Rome and, more generally, the Garibaldians: an ideal cemetery without tombs, built portrait by portrait along the ridge where those people fought.

Why the busts are right on the Janiculum Hill

The choice of place is not celebratory in the abstract: it is topographical. The bastions of the Janiculum Hill were the defense line of the Roman Republic, and the avenues of the promenade run on top of or next to those positions. Putting the portraits there means placing each one on their own battlefield. The result is an open-air gallery that you read as you walk, and that over the years has grown by successive additions, with gifts from committees, associations and private individuals.

How to read the Janiculum Hill busts without getting bored

Reading them all one by one is an exercise that tires anyone, and the names blur together. The method that works is another: look at the dates under the names. You'll find 20-year-olds who died in June 1849, men who survived into the 1890s, foreigners who came to fight for a republic that wasn't theirs. In those two engraved numbers is the whole history of the defense of Rome, compressed. The second method is to look at the faces: many busts are modest works by local sculptors, but some have a surprising portrait quality, and you can recognize them at a glance by the rendering of the eyes and the beard.

The women among the Janiculum Hill busts

Female figures also appear among the portraits, which is a rare presence in Italian public statuary of the 19th and early 20th centuries. Women took part in the defense of Rome as nurses, couriers and fighters, and some of them have their own bust on the ridge. Point them out to kids: the question that comes from it is worth more than any explanation.

The state of preservation of the busts

Many busts show abrasions, rebuilt noses, traces of spray paint and restorations from different periods. Over the decades they have been targets of vandalism and of restoration campaigns. Some marbles are in bad shape, and that's a pity: it's public heritage and it costs little to keep it decent. Visitors should notice this without being scandalized, because it is also proof that those marbles are not in a museum but on a street, where the city uses them.

The Janiculum Hill Lighthouse, a gift from the Italians of Argentina

At the north end of the promenade, on a spur that juts out toward the river, stands a real lighthouse: a cylindrical tower with a lantern, entirely like the maritime ones, planted on top of a hill dozens of kilometers from the sea. It is the Janiculum Hill Lighthouse, also called the Lighthouse of the Italians of Argentina because it was donated to the city by the Italian community that had emigrated to Argentina.

Why a lighthouse above Rome

The meaning is symbolic and moving, if you take it seriously. Those who had left Italy for South America had known lighthouses as the last signal of the land they were leaving and the first signal of the land they were reaching. Giving the capital a lighthouse meant giving it their own point of reference: a light that says where you return to. The lantern emits beams in the three colors of the Italian flag, and on the evenings when it is lit, green, white and red revolve above Trastevere.

The lighthouse is not always lit and the lightings follow a calendar that depends on the administration and on anniversaries. If it matters to you, check beforehand: arriving and finding it off happens often.

The lighthouse viewpoint, the best on the hill

This is the practical part that almost no guide mentions. Piazzale Garibaldi is the famous viewpoint, the lighthouse is the best viewpoint. From the terrace at the foot of the tower the view opens onto a wider arc, includes the Vatican on the left and puts the curve of the Tiber in the foreground. There are fewer people, fewer vendors, less noise, and in the late afternoon the light comes in from the side instead of from the front. If you go up as a couple and want a quiet spot, go to the lighthouse.

The Fontana dell'Acqua Paola, the Fontanone of the Janiculum Hill

Going down from Via Garibaldi toward Trastevere, just below the piazzale, you come to the monumental mostra that Romans simply call the Fontanone: the Acqua Paola Fountain. It is the travertine and marble backdrop with five arches, granite columns and a large basin, which closes the climb with a stroke of theater.

What a water mostra is and why one was needed here

In the Roman lexicon a mostra is the terminal point of an aqueduct, the place where the water shows itself to the city after kilometers of invisible conduit. The Fontana dell'Acqua Paola is the mostra of the aqueduct commissioned by Pope Paul V Borghese, who put back into operation the old Trajan conduit fed by Lake Bracciano. The mills of the Janiculum Hill, the fountains of Trastevere and the supply of an entire quadrant of the city depended on that water. The grandeur of the facade is not vanity: it is the signature on a hydraulic work that changed the lives of thousands of people.

The architecture of the Fontanone

The composition takes up the scheme of triumphal arches: order of columns, arcades, attic with a dedicatory inscription and heraldic crowning with eagles and dragons, that is, the emblems of the Borghese. The granite columns come from ancient buildings, following a practice of reuse constant in the Rome of the popes. The large basin in front was added later, and completes the effect: first the water fell into separate tubs, then into a single pool that doubles the facade by reflection.

The Fontanone in the movies

The Fontanone is one of the most recognizable backdrops of contemporary Roman cinema and entered the international imagination thanks to the night shots that open a famous Italian film awarded the Oscar. You therefore arrive with a double memory: that of the water and that of the shots. Go at night, when the lighting sets the travertine off from the dark: it is a different monument from the one at noon.

The viewpoint in front of the fountain

Opposite the fountain, on the other side of the street, there is a small piazza with a parapet: it is one of the places where Romans go to sit in the evening. The view is lower and closer than the one from Piazzale Garibaldi, and for that very reason it shows the roofs of Trastevere better. If you have little time and don't want to climb all the way to the top, you can stop here and lose almost nothing.

Porta San Pancrazio and the Museum of the Roman Republic on the Janiculum Hill

At the top of Via Garibaldi, where the road leaves the city circuit, stands Porta San Pancrazio. It is the only monumental gate on the Janiculum Hill side, and today it houses the Museum of the Roman Republic and of Garibaldian Memory, in Largo di Porta San Pancrazio.

The bastions of the Janiculum Hill commissioned by Urban VIII

The gate is part of the system of bastions that Pope Urban VIII had built in the 17th century to close the western front of the city. It is the last great bastioned circuit of Rome, designed for modern artillery: low, thick walls, orillons, curtain walls, a layout that derives from the military treatises of the Renaissance. Walking the promenade, you walk on top of and beside these works almost without noticing, because the greenery has absorbed them.

1849 and the defense of Rome on the Janiculum Hill

The Roman Republic proclaimed in 1849 lasted a few months and ended right here. The French troops sent to restore papal power attacked the city from the western quadrant, because whoever conquers the Janiculum Hill dominates Rome with cannons. The republicans led by Garibaldi, with Mazzini at the head of the government, resisted for weeks an army far superior in numbers and artillery, until they were overwhelmed. The villas that occupied the ridge were reduced to ruins, the gate was gutted by the shots and then rebuilt, and the upper neighborhood was a construction site of rubble for years.

The part that strikes you most, telling it on the spot, is the geography of the fighting: it is a few hundred meters of ground, held and retaken for days, in a space that today you cross in 10 minutes strolling with an ice cream in your hand.

What you see in the Museum of the Roman Republic

The museum tells the story of 1849 and Garibaldian memory with historical documents, works, multimedia displays and educational materials, in the rooms carved out inside the gate. It is a small, dense museum, suited to those who want to understand what happened on the ridge before walking on it. The institution offers guided visits, tactile and sensory itineraries, educational programs for schools and for universities, and belongs to the circuit of the annual card for Rome's civic museums. The phone contact is the city's single cultural information number, 060608. Admission is free and the up-to-date hours are published on the museum's official website.

The free walks on the Janiculum Hill bastions

The museum periodically organizes free guided walks along the bastions, lasting about 90 minutes, meeting at the museum's entrance. The route runs along the bastions commissioned by Urban VIII and reaches the walkways of the walls via Villa Sciarra, recounting the phases of the defense of Rome led by Garibaldi and Mazzini. Groups are limited and a phone reservation is recommended. It is the best thing you can do on the Janiculum Hill without spending a euro: if it falls on your dates, take it.

San Pietro in Montorio and Bramante's Tempietto on the Janiculum Hill

Halfway up the climb of Via Garibaldi, on a terrace overlooking the city, stands San Pietro in Montorio Church, with the 16th-century Franciscan convent that since 1873 has housed the Real Academia de España en Roma. The address is Piazza di San Pietro in Montorio 3.

Bramante's Tempietto, hours and admission

In the first cloister of the convent rises Donato Bramante's Tempietto, a circular building with Doric columns, a drum and a dome, a little taller than a two-story house and considered by critics the point at which Renaissance architecture reaches its complete classical formulation. Tradition links it to the spot of Saint Peter's martyrdom, and that is the reason for its existence: a commemorative monument, not a working church.

Access to the Tempietto and to the exhibitions of the Real Academia is free, Tuesday to Sunday from 10:00 to 18:00, with last entry at 17:30. The institution's phone number is 06 5812806. Whoever goes up to the Janiculum Hill in the afternoon therefore has the chance to see for free one of the five or six most studied buildings in the history of Western architecture, and nine times out of 10 walks past without knowing it. It's the most common mistake I see made on this hill.

How to look at the Tempietto

Enter the cloister and don't take photos right away. First walk all the way around the building keeping close to the perimeter wall: the Tempietto is designed to be walked around, and the sequence of the 16 columns that open and close is the real show. Then look at the Doric frieze: between the triglyphs run metopes carved with the instruments of the liturgy, not with the bucrania of ancient temples. This is how Bramante Christianizes the classical vocabulary without deforming it by a millimeter. Beneath the floor opens the crypt, decorated at a later date, which marks the spot venerated by tradition.

San Pietro in Montorio Church

The church next door deserves the time it requires, which is little. A single nave with side chapels, a sober two-order facade, a panoramic staircase in front. Inside are preserved high-level works of the Roman 16th and 17th centuries, including cycles and altarpieces commissioned by families of the papal court, and the chapel designed from a drawing by Gian Lorenzo Bernini for the banker Raimondi, where the light comes from a hidden source and strikes the relief of the altar from a calculated angle. The works and displays change with restorations: the visiting conditions of the church depend on the services and are posted at the entrance.

The terrace of San Pietro in Montorio

The churchyard is a viewpoint in its own right, lower than Piazzale Garibaldi and with a different cut on the city. Few people, a low wall, the double-ramp staircase. On spring afternoons it's the right place for those who have already seen the main view.

Bosco Parrasio and the Accademia dell'Arcadia on the Janiculum Hill

A little below the promenade, on the flank of the hill facing Trastevere, a terraced garden with steps, curved walls and hedges lies hidden: it is the Bosco Parrasio, historic seat of the Accademia dell'Arcadia, the literary assembly founded in Rome at the end of the 17th century in the cultural circle that had gravitated around Queen Christina of Sweden.

What Arcadia was

The Arcadians gave themselves the names of Greek shepherds, met outdoors and wrote verse that was meant to clean Italian poetry of the excesses of the baroque. It looks like a parlor game, and in part it was, but a large part of 18th-century Italian literary culture passed through that game, and Arcadian colonies multiplied across the peninsula. The Bosco Parrasio was their natural theater: a vegetal amphitheater built on the slope, with the audience on the steps and the poet below.

Visiting the Bosco Parrasio

The garden is not a public park and access depends on the institution that looks after it: special openings and visits on request are the rule, not the exception. From the outside, going up the ramp that starts from Via Garibaldi, you can make out its design beyond the gate. If you pass that way, look for it: it is one of the least frequented and most civilized places on the hill.

The Botanical Garden at the foot of the Janiculum Hill

At the foot of the hill, toward Trastevere, lies the Botanical Garden of Rome, the living museum of Sapienza University, set in the historic garden that belonged to Palazzo Corsini. It is the natural complement to the climb: whoever comes down from the Janiculum Hill can end the day inside an urban woodland instead of in the middle of traffic.

What you see in the Botanical Garden

The collections include a rose garden, a Japanese garden, a bamboo grove, the garden of medicinal and aromatic plants, the historic greenhouses linked to the name of the Corsini, a small fern valley and a Mediterranean woodland that climbs the slope until it grazes the promenade. The upper part of the garden is steep and wild, with stairs and paths. The lower part is flat and orderly around the monumental staircase with the fountains. The change in elevation between the two extremes is considerable, and in half an hour of walking you cross completely different plant environments.

Hours and tickets for the Botanical Garden

The Botanical Garden has an admission ticket, with discounts and free entry, and is open every day, Sundays and holidays included. The conditions change between the summer and winter periods and are updated on the official website of the university museum, which is the only source to consult before going. The entrance is from Largo Cristina di Svezia, just behind the palazzo on Via della Lungara.

Palazzo Corsini and Villa Farnesina, a stone's throw away

On the same street, facing each other, stand two buildings that are each worth an afternoon: Palazzo Corsini, with the picture gallery of the National Gallery of Ancient Art, and Villa Farnesina, with the frescoes of Raphael and his workshop. Whoever combines the Janiculum Hill in the morning, the Botanical Garden after lunch and the Farnesina in the afternoon has had one of the best-constructed Roman days there is, and has walked less than four kilometers.

The puppet theater of the Janiculum Hill

On the piazzale, in the shade of the plane trees, a small puppet theater with a painted booth and benches in front has been running for decades. It is one of the last open-air figure theaters left in Italy in a public square, and the tradition of Roman puppeteers keeps it alive through successive generations of the same family.

How the show works

The shows are short, repeat several times in the afternoon, are outdoors and have no ticket: you give something at the end, when the little plate goes around. The repertoire is the classic one of piazza comedy, with the stick, the blows, the crocodile and the devil. Children from three to nine have fun with no filters, and the remarkable thing is that foreign children who don't understand a word have fun too: figure theater works on rhythm, not on text.

When the shows are on

The days and hours depend on the season, the weather and the company's availability. In practice: on spring and autumn weekends, in the afternoon, the booth is almost always open. In summer it moves toward the late afternoon. There is no reliable printed calendar, and whoever goes with a child should allow for the possibility of finding it closed and falling back on the cannon and the gelato.

Tasso's oak and Sant'Onofrio, the Janiculum Hill of the poets

On the north side of the hill, along the Salita di Sant'Onofrio, you come to the Sant'Onofrio al Gianicolo complex, with the 15th-century church, the frescoed portico and the convent. It is the place where Torquato Tasso spent his last days and where he died in 1595, shortly before the poetic coronation on the Campidoglio that he did not live to receive.

Tasso's oak

A little higher up, on a panoramic clearing, survives the trunk of a monumental oak that tradition identifies as the tree under which the poet sat to look at Rome. Little remains of the original plant: lightning and centuries have reduced it to a supported and tended stump. The historicity of the link with Tasso belongs to tradition and not to documentation, but the viewpoint is authentic and the view from there, toward the river and the Vatican, explains by itself why a sick poet came to sit there.

The Janiculum Hill of men of letters

Next to the oak is the space that hosts open-air performances in summer, one of the historic venues of Rome's seasonal theater. The hill has had this double destiny for centuries: line of defense on one side, literary retreat on the other. Tasso at Sant'Onofrio, the Arcadians at the Bosco Parrasio, the foreign painters who came up to draw the panorama, the directors who shot half of Italian cinema here. The Janiculum Hill is the place from which Rome looks at itself and tells its own story, and this holds from the 16th century to last night.

The view from the Janiculum Hill: what you can recognize, and when

The panorama is the reason most people come up here, and it's worth learning it instead of just looking at it.

The domes you can see from the Janiculum Hill

From the parapet, with a little patience, you can pick out the domes of the center: the big, flattened one of Sant'Andrea della Valle, the one of the Gesù, the one of Sant'Ivo alla Sapienza with its spiral lantern, the tiburium of Santa Maria in Aracoeli, the bell towers of Santa Maria Maggiore far off to the right. In the foreground the Romanesque bell tower of Santa Maria in Trastevere and, farther south, that of Santa Cecilia. The river is almost never visible, because it runs sunk between the embankment walls: you sense it from the line of plane trees on the lungotevere and from the arches of the bridges toward the Tiber Island.

Sunset at the Janiculum Hill

The sunset is famous and needs to be explained correctly, because the sun sets behind the viewer, not in front. From the Janiculum Hill you don't see the sun go down over the city: you see the city light up orange while the light arrives from behind your back. It is a reflected sunset, and for that reason it works better than a frontal one: the roofs turn red, the travertine turns pink, the domes stand out from the background. The good moment starts about 40 minutes before the sun goes down and lasts until about 20 minutes after, when the city lights come on and the sky is still blue. That is the right window, and whoever arrives in the dark has missed everything.

Sunrise at the Janiculum Hill, the unpopular choice

I'll say something you rarely read: sunrise at the Janiculum Hill is better than sunset. The sun rises in front of the viewer, so the city stands out backlit, with black domes against the brightening sky. There is nobody. The air is clean and the haze lies low over the river. Six in the morning in summer, seven 30 in winter. Whoever is jet-lagged after a long flight has the perfect chance to take advantage of it.

The best days for the panorama

Visibility toward the Castelli Romani and the mountains depends on the wind. The good days are those of tramontana in winter, cold and clear, and the days following a summer thunderstorm. On scirocco days the haze erases everything beyond three kilometers and the panorama is reduced to Trastevere. Look at the sky before going up: if the outline of the mountains to the east is sharp, it's the right day.

A curiosity about the Janiculum Hill

The best curiosity of the hill is not the cannon and not the panorama: it is the fact that on the Janiculum Hill there is a working maritime lighthouse 40 kilometers from the sea, and that the lighthouse was not built by the city but was given to it by people who had left. The Italian emigrants in Argentina, who had grown rich or had simply organized themselves into associations of fellow countrymen, decided that the right way to say something to the homeland they had left was to give it a lantern. Not a monument to a king, not a bronze statue with the list of benefactors: a lighthouse, that is, the instrument by which sailors recognize the coast of home.

The tower is cylindrical, in light-colored masonry, with the lantern on top and a gallery: anyone who has seen a lighthouse at sea recognizes it instantly and is thrown by the context. The beam of light is tricolor, green, white and red, and on lighting evenings it revolves above the roofs of Trastevere, alternately illuminating the emptiness above the city. The gesture has a symbolic precision that contemporary architects can only dream of: whoever leaves port looks for the lighthouse on the horizon, and whoever returns looks for it still.

There is also a less poetic side that is just as interesting. A lighthouse on an urban hill serves no navigation, so its only function is to be seen by the city and by the countryside around. It is, technically, a monument that you look at at night, in an era when public lighting was still a novelty and seeing a rotating light in the sky of Rome meant seeing the future. The second, minor curiosity is that almost none of the Romans who go up the Janiculum Hill for the sunset make it all the way to the lighthouse: it's 300 more meters along the plane trees, and one in 20 does it. Do it.

Something nobody tells you about the Janiculum Hill

That Bramante's Tempietto, one of the most important buildings in the history of world architecture, can be visited for free Tuesday to Sunday between 10:00 and 18:00, and that the entrance is in the cloister of the convent next to San Pietro in Montorio Church, on the same Via Garibaldi that everyone walks to go up to the piazzale. Last entry is at 17:30. There is no ticket office, no line, no reservation: you go in through the main door of the Spanish Academy and ask for the Tempietto.

The practical result is paradoxical. Every day hundreds of people pass 20 meters from a building that occupies an entire chapter in university textbooks, ignore it because it has no signs, and continue toward a panoramic terrace that is beautiful but teaches nothing. This is the information that really changes a visit to the Janiculum Hill, and you won't find it written on road signs.

The second thing almost nobody says concerns timing. The Janiculum Hill is sold as a 20-minute stop between Trastevere and the Vatican, and in 20 minutes you take a photo and leave. Done properly, the hill is half a day: San Pietro in Montorio and the Tempietto, the Fontana dell'Acqua Paola, Porta San Pancrazio and the museum, the piazzale with the noon cannon, the busts, the lighthouse, the descent toward the Botanical Garden. That's four or five full hours, all outdoors, with a total expense that can stay close to zero. Very few Roman itineraries offer a similar ratio between what you see and what you pay.

Third thing, the most prosaic: on the Janiculum Hill the water is drinkable. The continuous-flow drinking fountains along the avenues dispense potable, cold water, and in August this detail is worth more than any cultural advice. Bring an empty water bottle and fill it up there.

The advice I give you for visiting the Janiculum Hill

Walk up from Trastevere and come down the other side. This is the structure I recommend to anyone with working legs, and the reason is that the Janiculum Hill climbed and descended by the same road loses half its meaning, while crossed from one side to the other it becomes a complete itinerary.

Concretely: set out from Piazza Santa Maria in Trastevere around 10 in the morning, take Via Garibaldi, stop at San Pietro in Montorio and the Tempietto, continue to the Fontana dell'Acqua Paola, go through Porta San Pancrazio and take a look at the museum inside the gate. Reach Piazzale Garibaldi around 11:40, take the good spot on the lower terrace and wait for the cannon. After noon walk toward the lighthouse under the plane trees, unhurried, reading the busts. Then go down by the Salita di Sant'Onofrio toward the Lungotevere, or head back toward Trastevere by the lane that leads to the Botanical Garden and go into the garden.

Second recommendation: don't drive up in the late afternoon in summer. It sounds like trivial advice, but it's the mistake I see made most often. Between 18:00 and 20:00, from May to September, traffic along the promenade is slow and the parking spaces are taken. You spend half an hour circling and arrive on edge just when the light would be perfect. A scooter or your legs solve the problem.

Third: wear real shoes. Via Garibaldi has sloping cobblestone stretches, the Salita di Sant'Onofrio is steep and the ground of the promenade is compact gravel. Whoever goes up in beach sandals pays for it.

Frequently asked questions about the Janiculum Hill

How much does it cost to enter the Janiculum Hill?

Janiculum Hill has no entrance fee: Piazzale Garibaldi, the Passeggiata, the belvedere and the outdoor monuments are public and free to access at any hour. A ticket is needed only for the enclosed sites located inside or next to the hill, such as the Botanical Garden at its foot, while the Museum of the Roman Republic inside Porta San Pancrazio is free to enter.

What time does the Janiculum Hill cannon fire?

The Janiculum Hill cannon fires at exactly noon, every day, from the terrace above Trastevere. The tradition goes back to December 1, 1847, the era of Pius IX, and it is now the most regular urban ritual in Rome, with the shot dying out in a few clean seconds.

How do you walk to Janiculum Hill from Trastevere?

The most direct way to reach Janiculum Hill on foot is to start from Trastevere and go up Via Garibaldi, the street that leads from Piazza Santa Maria in Trastevere to Piazzale Giuseppe Garibaldi. It is a continuous climb, but a manageable one, and along the way it passes San Pietro in Montorio Church and Porta San Pancrazio.

Is Bramante's Tempietto on Janiculum Hill free to visit?

Yes, Bramante's Tempietto, inside the convent next to San Pietro in Montorio Church on Janiculum Hill, is free to visit from Tuesday to Sunday between 10:00 and 18:00, with last entry at 17:30. There is no ticket office, there is no line, and you don't need to book.

Is Janiculum Hill good for children?

Yes, Janiculum Hill is one of the places in Rome that works best with small children, because you stay outdoors, there are no tickets, and there is room to run, along with the puppet theater and the noon cannon. The cannon shot is loud: children under four are often frightened, while those over five often find it fun.

Where do you eat on Janiculum Hill?

On the Janiculum Hill square the choices are deliberately few: there are kiosks with drinks, gelato and sandwiches, fine for a short stop and nothing more. If you want to eat properly, go down to Trastevere, a few minutes' walk away, or head toward Monteverde, where the neighborhood trattorias work mostly for the residents.

When should you go to Janiculum Hill?

The best seasons to visit Janiculum Hill are April, May, October and the first days of November, when the temperature on the climb is manageable and the plane trees are in new or yellow leaf. July and August are doable only early in the morning or after 19:00, because the climb up Via Garibaldi under the midday August sun is very tiring.

Why isn't Janiculum Hill one of the seven hills of Rome?

Janiculum Hill is not among the seven hills of Rome for a geographical reason: the seven hills, Palatine, Capitoline, Aventine, Caelian, Esquiline, Viminal and Quirinal, are all on the left bank of the Tiber, while Janiculum Hill is on the right bank, together with the Vatican and Monte Mario. It has always been part of the city, but it belongs to another bank.

Fourth, for those traveling with a guide or who want to be accompanied: Janiculum Hill is a place that multiplies with storytelling, because almost everything worth knowing is invisible to the naked eye. If you prefer private visits and professional accompaniment, you can contact the team at TourLeaderPro, which organizes private tours in the city and in Lazio.

Another well-known fact, yet rarely mentioned

That Janiculum Hill is the place where modern Rome was born and was defeated in the same month. Everyone knows it, in the abstract, because school teaches that the Roman Republic of 1849 fell under French blows. What almost nobody brings into focus is the scale of the event: the front on which the political destiny of Italy was decided for the following 20 years was only a few hundred meters long, and it corresponded exactly to the avenues where people walk their dogs today.

The rarely mentioned detail is this. The patrician villas that occupied the ridge, with their gardens, fishponds and pleasure pavilions, were destroyed by artillery in a few weeks. The upper district of Janiculum Hill, before 1849, was a belt of aristocratic residences with a view. After 1849 it was a stretch of ruins. The 19th-century promenade we walk today was also born as an operation to stitch that disaster back together: a double row of plane trees was planted over a battlefield, and busts of the fallen were placed among the trees. It is a cemetery turned into a public garden, and it works so well that almost nobody notices.

Second well-known and rarely told fact: the cannon has not fired uninterruptedly since 1847. The tradition was suspended and then restored during the 1900s, and the Romanesco poems that celebrate it say so explicitly, speaking of a custom that seemed lovely and dead and that came back into fashion. Whoever hears the noon shot today is hearing a recovered tradition, not an unbroken chain: and the recovery, in a city that has thrown away a lot, is a fact that deserved more talk.

The right photo to take on Janiculum Hill

The photo everyone takes is the panorama from the parapet of Piazzale Garibaldi, with the domes in a row. It is a photo that almost always works out and that is indistinguishable from 10,000 other identical shots. If you want to take home an image that is worth something, here are the three that work.

Garibaldi against the sky

Stand at the foot of the base, on the side opposite the city, and frame the equestrian statue from below, using the sky as the only backdrop. In the late afternoon the bronze stands out black against the orange and the horse's profile becomes a silhouette. No distracting elements, no crowd in the frame, because the crowd is on the other side looking at the panorama.

Anita at a gallop, three-quarter view

Rutelli's group should be taken from three-quarters, from the side where you see the arm with the pistol and the arm with the child together. It is the only angle that conveys the twist of the body. It also photographs well in full daylight, because the dark bronze holds up against the harsh light.

The cannon at the instant of firing

Difficult and satisfying. Position yourself on the lower terrace, off to the side of the piece, with a lens that holds the cannon and the city in the background together, and shoot in burst mode starting a couple of seconds before noon. The white smoke coming out of the muzzle with Rome behind it is the emblematic image of the hill, and you get it once in three attempts.

The three rules that save any photo on Janiculum Hill

First: don't photograph the panorama at noon, because the overhead light flattens the roofs and kills the volumes. Second: always include an element in the foreground, a plane tree branch, the parapet, a small column with a bust, otherwise the image becomes a postcard with no depth. Third: the best photo of Janiculum Hill is taken by turning your back on the panorama and framing the people looking at it. The crowd at the parapet backlit at sunset is a much more interesting subject than the domes.

Some important events that happened here in history

Janiculum Hill has a density of events that few Roman places can match, and almost all of them have to do with the defense of the city.

The bridgehead and the flag of the assemblies

The occupation of the hill in archaic Rome, attributed by tradition to King Ancus Marcius, answers a precise military need: to protect the Sublician Bridge on the right bank. From that garrison comes the very ancient custom of raising a banner on Janiculum Hill as a safety signal during the assemblies in the Campus Martius. It was a visual alarm system covering the whole city: as long as the flag was raised, no enemy was in sight and the assembly could deliberate.

The building of the bastions of Urban VIII

In the 1600s Pope Urban VIII had the entire western front fortified with a modern bastioned wall, suited to the artillery of the time. It is the last great fortification work in the history of Rome, and it still draws the edge of the neighborhood today: Porta San Pancrazio, the high walls, the walkways found around Villa Sciarra are that system.

The French siege and the fall of the Roman Republic in 1849

The decisive event. In 1849 the Roman Republic, with Mazzini in government and Garibaldi in charge of the defense, faced the French expeditionary force sent to restore the temporal power of the pope. The attack concentrated on Janiculum Hill, because from there artillery dominates the center. The republicans held out for weeks against superior forces, contesting the positions villa by villa along the ridge, until they were overwhelmed. Garibaldi left the city with a column of volunteers, and Anita died during the retreat. The military defeat became the political capital on which the Risorgimento built the following 20 years, and the equestrian statue inaugurated in 1895 on this same ridge is the receipt of that process.

The establishment of the cannon shot and its transfer

On December 1, 1847, Pius IX established the noon shot, fired from Castel Sant'Angelo, to synchronize the clocks of the capital. On August 1, 1903, the station moved to Monte Mario, and on January 24, 1904, to Janiculum Hill, where it still is. These are small, concrete dates, and they trace the acoustic growth of the city.

The monuments as events

The inauguration of Emilio Gallori's monument to Garibaldi in 1895 and that of Mario Rutelli's monument to Anita in 1932, with the transfer of her ashes from Nice in the same year, are two public events that filled the square with crowds and fixed the image of the hill forever. Between the two dates there are 37 years and two different Italys: the first celebrates a republican hero who had recently died, the second annexes his companion to the rhetoric of a regime. Looking at the two monuments knowing this makes the walk far less innocent.

Who passed through Janiculum Hill

The list of people who have left a documented trace on this hill is long, and it spans 20 centuries.

Torquato Tasso

The poet of Gerusalemme liberata arrived at the convent of Sant'Onofrio on Janiculum Hill sick and tired, and died there in 1595, a few days before the ceremony of poetic coronation on the Capitoline that was supposed to consecrate him and that he did not live to receive. His tomb is in the church. The convent preserves the memory of his last days, and popular tradition has added the panoramic oak a little farther up.

Donato Bramante

The Lombard architect who rewrote the vocabulary of architecture in Rome left on Janiculum Hill his most studied work: the Tempietto in the cloister of San Pietro in Montorio. Anyone who has studied architecture anywhere in the world has drawn that central plan at least once.

Gian Lorenzo Bernini

The greatest sculptor and architect of the Roman Baroque worked in San Pietro in Montorio Church with the design of the Raimondi Chapel, where he experimented with the use of natural light coming from a source invisible to the viewer. It is one of the workshops where he refined the language he would later use in his major works.

Paul V Borghese

The pope who had the aqueduct and the monumental fountain of the Acqua Paola built, giving the western quarter of the city a stable water supply again. His coat of arms, with the eagle and the dragon, crowns the fountain and appears on half of Rome.

Urban VIII Barberini

The pope who fortified Janiculum Hill with the 17th-century bastions, drawing the defensive perimeter that would be used in earnest, for the first and last time, two centuries later.

Giuseppe Garibaldi, Anita and Giuseppe Mazzini

The three names of the defense of 1849. Garibaldi commanded the operations on the ridge, Mazzini led the government of the Republic, Anita fought and died in the retreat. The hill remembers them with two equestrian monuments, a museum inside a city gate and dozens of busts among the trees.

Queen Christina of Sweden and the Arcadians

The cultural circle of Queen Christina, who lived in Rome at Palazzo Corsini on Via della Lungara, at the foot of the hill, was the environment from which the Accademia dell'Arcadia was born, which had its Bosco Parrasio on Janiculum Hill. Palace, garden and grove are lined up on the same slope: a piece of Italian literary history laid out along a climb.

Emilio Gallori and Mario Rutelli

The two sculptors of the equestrian monuments. Gallori, from Florence, signed the Garibaldi of 1895. Rutelli, from Palermo, signed the Anita of 1932. If you are looking for a quick way to show someone how Italian public sculpture changes between the 1800s and the 1900s, take them from one to the other: it is 200 meters.

The film directors and the photographers

Janiculum Hill and the Fontanone are among the most frequented sets of Italian cinema, and the Fontana dell'Acqua Paola entered international visual memory with the night shots of one of the most awarded Italian films of recent years. Generations of foreign photographers have passed through, from the view painters who drew the panorama on the Grand Tour to the reporters of the 1900s.

What to see around Janiculum Hill within a 10-minute walk

The hill is surrounded by serious things, and anyone who treats it as an isolated stop wastes the opportunity.

Trastevere, below Janiculum Hill

Going down Via Garibaldi, you reach the old part of the rione in 15 minutes, with its churches: the Basilica of Santa Maria in Trastevere with its apse mosaics, Santa Cecilia Church with Arnolfo's Ciborium and Cavallini's fresco in the nuns' choir, the workshops and the alleys. The combination of Janiculum Hill in the morning and Trastevere in the afternoon is the classic Roman day on the right bank.

Villa Doria Pamphilj, on the other side of the gate

Going out through Porta San Pancrazio and continuing west, you reach the entrance of Villa Doria Pamphilj, the largest public park in Rome. If you want to really walk, and not just stroll, you will find kilometers of avenues, lawns, pine groves and the Casino del Bel Respiro there. It is the natural complement to Janiculum Hill for a morning outdoors.

Via della Lungara: Farnesina, Corsini, Botanical Garden

At the foot of the north slope runs Via della Lungara, the straight street laid out in the Renaissance between the Vatican and Trastevere. On one side is Villa Farnesina with the Loggia of Galatea and the Loggia of Cupid and Psyche, on the other Palazzo Corsini with its painting gallery and, behind it, the Botanical Garden. Three visits in 200 meters.

The Vatican, behind the hill

From the north slope of Janiculum Hill you go down toward the Borgo and St. Peter's Basilica in about 20 minutes. It is the connection that almost no tourist itinerary uses, and that works very well instead: you avoid the river, you walk downhill and you reach the basilica from an unusual side.

When to go to Janiculum Hill

The best seasons

April, May, October and the first days of November are the months when the hill pays off the most: manageable temperature on the climb, low light from the afternoon on, plane trees in new leaf and in yellow leaf respectively. July and August are doable only early in the morning or after 19:00. The climb up Via Garibaldi under the midday August sun is an ordeal I don't recommend to anyone. Winter has the advantage of clarity: on days with the tramontana wind the panorama reaches the mountains and there is nobody on the terrace.

The best times of day

From 9:00 to 11:00 the hill belongs to the residents and it is quiet. At 12:00 there is the cannon and the terrace fills up. Early afternoon is the worst moment, with flat light and heat. From 17:00 on, the good window for photography and for the walk begins, and until an hour after sunset the place is the best in the city. Late in the evening the Passeggiata is still frequented but becomes poorly lit in the stretches between the square and the lighthouse: if you are alone, stay on the main road.

The dates when Janiculum Hill changes face

On the anniversaries tied to the Risorgimento and the Roman Republic, the hill hosts ceremonies, wreath layings and commemorations, and Piazzale Garibaldi becomes a civic space instead of a tourist one. The dates and programs are published by the organizing bodies: whoever happens to be there on one of those mornings sees a different Rome, with the flags and the veterans of the associations.

Janiculum Hill with children

It is one of the places in Rome that works best with small children in tow, and for very concrete reasons: you stay outdoors, there are no tickets, there is room to run, the puppet theater, a cannon that fires and drinking fountains to wet your head.

The cannon seen by a child

The noon shot is loud. Children under four are almost always frightened, while those over five find it the best moment of the Roman day. The method that works is to explain beforehand what will happen, stand about 20 meters from the piece and not take them by surprise. A pair of earplugs is not an exaggeration.

The puppets and the breaks

The puppet booth is on the square, the shows are short and free, and foreign children laugh anyway. Around it there are benches in the shade and kiosks for water and gelato. It is the spot where you can stop a tired family without anyone protesting.

Strollers and slopes

On the Passeggiata the stroller is perfectly fine. Getting there, no: Via Garibaldi is steep and the Salita di Sant'Onofrio is worse. If you have a small child and no desire to push uphill, go up by taxi and walk down.

Eating and drinking on Janiculum Hill

On the hill the choices are deliberately few, and that is good news: it means there are no tourist-trap restaurants. On the square there are kiosks with drinks, gelato and sandwiches, fine for a stop and nothing more. If you want to eat properly, go down to Trastevere or head toward Monteverde, where the neighborhood trattorias work mostly for the residents. My advice: have your aperitivo on the hill with what you find at the kiosk, watching the sunset, and book dinner down below, a 15-minute walk down. The ratio of price to quality improves drastically as soon as you lose 50 meters of altitude.

Janiculum Hill for those planning a trip to Rome

Anyone building a two- or three-day itinerary would do well to place Janiculum Hill at the end of the Trastevere day or the Vatican day, not as an isolated item. If you are planning from abroad and thinking in English, you will find the overview of things to see in the city on ItalyPlanner, and an already structured three-day itinerary in the three-day Rome guide on the same site. For an accompanied visit, with licensed guides and tour leaders, the reference is TourLeaderPro.

Quick questions about Janiculum Hill

How much does it cost to enter Janiculum Hill

Nothing. Janiculum Hill is a public area of the city: Piazzale Garibaldi, the Passeggiata, the belvedere and the monuments have no ticket and are accessible at any hour. Only the enclosed sites located inside or next to it have a cost, such as the Botanical Garden, while the museum inside Porta San Pancrazio is free to enter.

What time does the Janiculum Hill cannon fire

At exactly noon, every day. To see it well, it's best to be on site by 11:40.

Why does the Janiculum Hill cannon fire

Because in 1847 Pius IX established a daily blank shot to synchronize the city's clocks and to start the ringing of the bells. The piece fired from Castel Sant'Angelo, then from Monte Mario from 1903, and from January 24, 1904, from Janiculum Hill.

Can you drive up to Janiculum Hill

Yes, the Passeggiata can be driven and there is parking along the avenues, but in the late afternoon from spring to early fall they are almost always full. On some holidays traffic is restricted.

How do you get to Janiculum Hill from the center of Rome

Bus 23 along the Tiber to Trastevere and about 20 minutes of climbing on foot up Via Garibaldi. Alternatively, a taxi to the square, or the climb up the Salita di Sant'Onofrio from the Lungotevere.

How long does it take to visit Janiculum Hill

20 minutes for the panoramic photo alone, one hour for the square and the monuments, half a day to do the hill as it deserves: Tempietto, Fontana dell'Acqua Paola, gate and museum, cannon, busts, lighthouse, descent to the Botanical Garden.

Is Janiculum Hill wheelchair accessible

The high-level Passeggiata is: it is flat, wide and paved with asphalt, and the parapet of the belvedere is low. The pedestrian climbs that lead up there are not, because they are steep and partly cobbled with sanpietrini. It's best to arrive by car or taxi.

Is Janiculum Hill one of the seven hills of Rome

No. The seven hills are all on the left bank of the Tiber. Janiculum Hill is on the right, like the Vatican and Monte Mario, and it is higher than all of them.

Where does the name Janiculum come from

From the god Janus, to whom the hill was sacred. Janus ruled over passages and his name comes from the Latin ianus, meaning gate: the hill was the symbolic gate of the city toward the west.

What can you see from the Janiculum Hill belvedere

The roofs of Trastevere in the foreground, then the historic center with the domes, the Vittoriano, the medieval towers, the greenery of the Pincio and Villa Borghese, and on clear days the line of the Castelli Romani in the background.

What is the best time for sunset at Janiculum Hill

The window that runs from about 40 minutes before sunset to 20 minutes after, when the city lights come on and the sky is still blue. The sun sets behind the viewer: the city lights up by reflection.

Is Janiculum Hill safe in the evening

The square and the frequented stretches are quiet until late, because there are always people. The stretches between the square and the lighthouse are poorly lit: if you are alone, stay on the main road and use common sense, as in any urban park.

Can you have a picnic on Janiculum Hill

On the Passeggiata there are benches, lawns and the shade of the plane trees, and the habit of eating something while seated is tolerated. The common rules of public parks apply: no fires, no litter left on the ground.

Is Bramante's Tempietto free to visit

Yes. Access to the Tempietto and to the exhibitions of the Real Academia de España is free, Tuesday to Sunday from 10:00 to 18:00, with last entry at 17:30. The entrance is at Piazza di San Pietro in Montorio 3.

What is the Fontanone of Janiculum Hill

It is the Fontana dell'Acqua Paola, the terminal display of the aqueduct commissioned by Paul V Borghese, with five arches, reused granite columns and a large basin. It is on Via Garibaldi, just below the square.

Where is the Museum of the Roman Republic

Inside Porta San Pancrazio, in Largo di Porta San Pancrazio, at the top of Via Garibaldi. It tells the story of the Roman Republic of 1849 and the Garibaldian memory with documents, works and multimedia displays. Entry is free and the hours are on the museum's official site. The information number is 060608.

Who made the statue of Garibaldi on Janiculum Hill

The Florentine sculptor Emilio Gallori. The equestrian monument was inaugurated in 1895 and bears at its base the phrase O Roma o morte. Around the pedestal there are four bronze groups with battle scenes and allegorical figures.

Who made the statue of Anita Garibaldi

The Palermo-born sculptor Mario Rutelli. The monument was erected in 1932 in Piazzale Anita Garibaldi and Anita's ashes, transferred from Nice in the same year, are placed inside the base.

Why are there so many busts on Janiculum Hill

Because the ridge was the defense line of the Roman Republic in 1849. The busts portray the Garibaldian fighters and were placed along the avenues over decades, with donations from committees and associations. It is an ideal cemetery without tombs.

What is the Janiculum Hill lighthouse

A tower with a lantern donated to the city by the Italian community that emigrated to Argentina, at the northern end of the Passeggiata. The light is in the three colors of the Italian flag and is lit on certain occasions. The terrace at its foot is the quietest viewpoint on the hill.

Are there puppets on Janiculum Hill

Yes, on the square there is a small open-air puppet theater, with short free shows and a voluntary donation at the end. The days and hours depend on the season and the weather.

Is Janiculum Hill good for children

Very. Room to run, puppets, the noon cannon, drinking fountains, gelato, no tickets. The only caution concerns the noise of the shot for the youngest.

How high is Janiculum Hill

It exceeds 80 meters above sea level, more than any hill on the left bank of the Tiber. That is the reason the panorama dominates the historic center instead of looking at it sideways.

What is the difference between Janiculum Hill and the Pincio

The Pincio looks at Rome from the north, frames Piazza del Popolo and cuts it diagonally. Janiculum Hill looks at Rome from the west, takes it head-on and shows it all together, from higher up. The Pincio is a city garden, Janiculum Hill is a ridge.

Can you go to Janiculum Hill with a dog

Yes, the Passeggiata is one of the favorite spots of the neighborhood's dog owners. Leashes and the common rules of public parks apply. Inside the museum sites and the Botanical Garden the rules are different and should be checked.

When is Janiculum Hill open

Always. It is not a fenced area and has no hours: you enter and leave at any hour of the day and night. The enclosed sites along the route do have hours.

One last thing. Janiculum Hill is not the place where you take the photo and leave: it is the place where you sit down. Pick a bench under the plane trees in the stretch between the monument to Anita and the lighthouse, stay there half an hour without your phone and see how much city fits into a single glance. Then, if you still have time, go see the Tempietto. Of everything you can do for free in Rome in a morning, this is the best thing I know.

Article written by the team at TourLeaderPro, contact them for Private/Corporate/V.I.P. Tours and Experiences.

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