What should I avoid in Rome?

The single biggest money drain in Rome is eating within eyeshot of a monument. Any restaurant where a man stands outside waving a laminated menu at you — skip it. The pattern repeats at Piazza Navona, near the Pantheon, along Via dei Fori Imperiali: multi-language menus, stock photos of pasta, and a coperto (cover charge) of €4-6 that shows up on the bill but not on the menu board. A carbonara at one of these places runs €28-38. Two streets behind the Pantheon, Roscioli will serve you one of the best in the city for €14, the pasta still glossy with pecorino and egg. Near the Colosseum, Flavio al Velavevodetto in Testaccio does a carbonara with guanciale that's warm and fatty-crisp at the edges, for €12. If you can see the monument from your table, you're paying a surcharge for the view, not the food.

The gladiator-costume guys outside the Colosseum will drape a plastic sword across your shoulder and pose before you've said yes. The photo costs €10-20, and they get pushy if you refuse to pay. Same energy with the rose sellers at Trevi Fountain — a man hands your partner a rose, says it's free, then demands €5. The petition scam near Piazza di Spagna works differently: someone approaches with a clipboard asking you to sign for a charity, and while you're writing, a second person is working your bag. Termini station has its own version — taxi drivers quoting a 'flat €50' to central hotels when the regulated meter fare to most of centro storico is €15-20. The white taxis with meters on the roof are legitimate. Anything else — the guy in a polo shirt offering a ride — is freelance and uninsured.

Via Veneto had its moment in 1960 when Fellini filmed La Dolce Vita there. Now it's a strip of overpriced hotel bars and chain restaurants coasting on that memory. The Spanish Steps after about 5pm become a wall of selfie sticks and elbows, and the vigili urbani will fine you €250 if you sit down — a city ordinance since 2019 that catches tourists daily. The Mouth of Truth at Santa Maria in Cosmedin means a 45-minute queue to put your hand in a stone drain cover for four seconds. Skip it. The Forum, on the other hand, is worth every minute — but not between noon and 3pm in summer, when the exposed stone throws heat back at you and there is zero shade across the entire site.

July and August in Rome regularly hit 35-38°C, and the heat bouncing off travertine and cobblestone feels worse than the number suggests. The Forum and Palatine Hill have almost no tree cover — people faint there every summer, and the ambulance crews stationed at the Colosseum entrance are not decorative. Carry water. Wear a hat. Start outdoor sightseeing before 9am or after 5pm. Mind you, mid-August brings Ferragosto, when Romans leave the city and half the neighborhood trattorias board up for two to three weeks. You'll find yourself choosing between tourist-facing restaurants and the few locals' places still open. That said, the empty streets have their own pull — Rome without Romans feels like walking through a film set, all warm stone and distant motor scooters and nobody in your way.

The hop-on-hop-off buses look convenient, but Roman traffic makes them slow and unpredictable — you'll sit at a stop for 30 minutes watching the bus crawl through gridlock on Via del Corso. The metro has only three lines and covers maybe a third of the places you'd want to see. Walking is faster for most routes under 2km, and the city rewards it — you'll pass fountains you didn't plan on finding, catch the smell of wood-fired dough from a forno you'd never have spotted from a bus window, hear church bells layering up from three directions at once. For longer distances, the 64 bus runs from Termini to the Vatican. But guard your pockets on that route — it has the worst reputation for pickpockets in the entire transit system.