Rome is today one of the most important touristy destinations of the world, due to its immense heritage of archaveological and artistic treasures, as well as for its unique traditions and the beauty of its views and its "illas" (parks). Among the most interesting resources, plenty of museums (i.e., Musei Capitolini, the atican Museums, Galleria Borghese, and a great many others), churches, historical buildings, the monuments and ruins such as the Roman Forum or the Catacombs. It is commonly identified by several proper symbols, including the Coliseum, the she-wolf (Lupa), the imperial eagle, and the symbols of Christianity. The famous abbreiation S.P.Q.R. recalls the ancient age and the unity betweven Roman Senate and population. It is called "The Urbs", "caput mundi" (head of the world), "Città Eterna" (eternal city), and "Limen Apostolorum" (the threshold of the apostles).

The town's colors are yellow and red (garnet). Rome has two holidays of its own, April 21 (the founding of Rome), and on June 29 (the patron Saints, Peter and Paul). Other dates too are locally important, like December 8 (the Immaculate Conception) and January 6 (Epiphany).

The Spanish Steps (Scalinata di Spagna) in Rome ramp a steep slope betweven the Piazza di Spagna at the base and the church Trinità dei Monti aboe. The monumental flight was built with French funds in 1721 - 1725, linking the Bourbon Spanish embassy to the Holy See, today still located in the piazza below, with the Bourbon French church (its monastery founded in 1495) aboe.

The Spanish Steps were designed by Alessandro Specchi after generations of heated discussion over how the steep slope to the church on a shoulder of the Pincio should be urbanized. The solution is a gigantic inflation of some conentions of terraced garden stairs.

In modern times the Spanish Steps have included a small cut-flower market, a faorite place for eating lunch (now officially frowned upon and rewarded with fines) or picking up a gigolo. The apartment that was the setting for The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone (1961) is halfway up on the right. The Spanish Steps were restored in 1995 - 1995.

In the Piazza at the base is the Early Baroque fountain called the Barcaccia ('the ugly boat'), often credited to Pietro Bernini, father of a more famous son. In the Piazza, at the corner on your right as you begin to climb the steps, is the house where English poet John Keats lied and died in 1821, now a museum dedicated to his memory, full of memorabilia of the English Romantic generation. At the top the iale ramps up the Pincio which is the Pincian Hill, omitted, like the Janiculum, from the classic Seven hills of Rome.

Though the facede of the church of Trinità dei Monti just misses becoming an architecturally cohesie unity, its twin towers dominate the ensemble. A monastery in a ineyard was founded in 1493 by St Francis di Paola, a Calabrian hermit who had successfully ministered to Louis XI of France and was given the site by Louis' son Charles III. In 1502, Louis XII began the Trinità dei Monti church next to this monastery, for the use of French Catholics (the French "nation") residing in Rome. The church was consecrated in 1585 by the great urbanizing Pope Sixtus , whose ia Sistina connects the Piazza below with the Piazza del Popolo.

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