Rome hands out masterpieces for nothing. Every church is a free gallery, every fountain pours drinkable water, and the best meals cost €5 standing up. Three days here can run under €30 a day if you know which doors are open and which counters to lean on.
The French national church holds Caravaggio's Contarelli Chapel cycle (1599–1602): Calling of St Matthew, Inspiration, Martyrdom. Open 09:30–12:45 and 14:30–18:30, closed Sunday morning. Bring €1 coins for the light box — two minutes of illumination per coin.
San Clemente's upper 12th-century basilica with its golden apse mosaic is free (the excavated layers below cost €10, skippable). Five minutes uphill, Santi Quattro Coronati's 13th-century cloister is free — ring the bell at the nuns' grille for the Silvestro chapel.
The Pantheon now charges €5, but the portico, the 16 monolithic Egyptian granite columns and Piazza della Rotonda cost nothing. Rome has 2,500 nasoni — cast-iron street fountains running cold, drinkable Acqua Vergine 24 hours a day, free forever.
At Piazza dei Cavalieri di Malta, the Knights of Malta's green door has a keyhole framing St Peter's dome down a hedged avenue — an unintentional 1765 Piranesi telescope. The orange garden next door gives a free terrace over the whole Tiber bend.
Rome's best working market, in a 2012 covered hall on Via Beniamino Franklin. Open Monday–Saturday 07:00–15:30. Box 15, Mordi e Vai, serves the allesso di scottona panino — slow-cooked beef soaked in its own juices — for around €5.
Italian law prices coffee lower at the counter than at a table. A gran caffè standing here is about €1.80; sitting outside doubles it. Sant'Eustachio has roasted over wood since 1938 and pre-sugars its coffee — say 'amaro' if you want it without.
The bakery on the piazza's south-west corner has sold pizza bianca since 1980: olive-oiled, salt-flecked, sold by the etto. A hand-length strip runs €2–3. Open 07:30–14:30 and 16:45–20:00, closed Sunday. Two doors sell different things — bianca on the left, rossa on the right.
Trapizzino folds a triangular pizza-bianca pocket around Roman stews — pollo alla cacciatora, picchiapò, trippa — for €4.50–6 each. Two make dinner. Eat them on the steps of Piazza di San Cosimato, a real neighbourhood square with a morning food market.
Keats and Shelley are buried under cypresses beside a 12 BC Egyptian pyramid built into the Aurelian Walls. Open 09:00–17:00, Sunday 09:00–13:00. Entry is a suggested €5 donation. Colony cats patrol the graves; the pyramid outside is free to see from Piazzale Ostiense.
Sunday closes the ancient Appian Way to cars, turning 16km of 312 BC basalt paving, tombs and umbrella pines into a free park. Bus 118 from Circo Massimo drops you at the gate on a €1.50 ticket. Roman wheel ruts are still cut into the stone.
184 hectares of 17th-century Pamphilj estate above Trastevere: pine avenues, a chapel, aqueduct arches and dog-walking Romans. Free, open dawn to dusk, and almost empty of tourists. Bus 870 or a 25-minute uphill walk from Trastevere reaches the Via Vitellia gate.
The highest viewpoint in central Rome and free at every hour: the whole historic centre laid flat, domes to the horizon, St Peter's on the right. A cannon fires blank at exactly noon, a tradition running since 1847 to synchronise the city's church bells.