Rome in Autumn

The season of private visits and long, perfect lunches — Rome in October, when the city's most demanding visitors come to take it slowly.

There is a particular October Saturday in Rome — somewhere in the second or third week, when the high summer has fully departed and the chill of late autumn has not yet arrived — that the experienced visitor recognises immediately as the Rome the city is, in its better self. The light is amber. The pines stand black against pale skies. The air is cool but unhurried. The Romans on the Via del Corso are dressed in jackets and unhurried. The trattorie are full of locals at the long lunch. The galleries are open and quiet. The temperature at three in the afternoon, on a sunny terrace at the Hotel de Russie, is twenty-three degrees, and the spritz arrives without ice. It is a Rome, in our reading, that the August visitor has never seen and would not recognise.

The Gift of October

October in Rome offers two specific advantages over the months that surround it. The first is meteorological: the temperatures are reliably between seventeen and twenty-five degrees, with limited rain (the autumn storms tend to arrive in November), and the famous Roman pines and cypresses are still fully foliated. The second is social: the Italian holiday calendar has settled, the schools have been back for over a month, and the city has resumed the rhythm of its working life. The result is a Rome that is busy in the right ways — full of Romans living in Rome — and quiet in the right ways: less full of visitors than at any major calendar moment of the year.

We propose Rome in October to clients who have either visited the city before in less ideal weeks and want to see what it can be, or who are coming for the first time and have been advised by experienced travellers that this is the month to come. The argument is rarely difficult to make.

Private Access at the Major Sites

The Vatican, the Colosseum, and the Borghese Gallery are the three major sites that benefit most from private arrangement in Rome, and October is, after January, the month at which these arrangements are most readily available. The after-hours opening of the Vatican Museums — the visit we have written about in the Easter piece in this series — is genuinely available in October on most weeks with a month's notice. The same is true of the early-morning private tour of the Colosseum and the Roman Forum, conducted by an archaeologist who can lead the visitor through the site before the public entry at half-past eight. The Borghese Gallery, with its time-slot booking system that fills weeks in advance during peak periods, has good availability in October with a few weeks' lead.

We arrange these visits as the spine of any October Roman week. The visitor who has stood alone in the Sistine Chapel at seven on a Wednesday evening, walked the Forum at half-past seven on a Friday morning, and had two hours alone with the Caravaggios at the Borghese in the late afternoon, has experienced a Rome that is, by some considerable distance, more memorable than the standard daytime version.

The Tables at Their Annual Peak

Rome's restaurant scene in October is in particularly good form. The summer staff turnover has settled. The new autumn menus have come in. The wine cellars, after the summer, have been replenished. The kitchens are at their most settled and least pressured. We arrange dinners at our institutional addresses — Pierluigi, Roscioli, Antico Arco, Glass Hostaria — with confidence that the kitchen will be at its proper standard. The bookings are easier than in May or September; a major table is generally available with a week's notice.

The lunch culture in Rome in October is among the city's quieter pleasures. The Roman Saturday lunch — long, slow, often at the home or at the country estate of a friend, occasionally at an exceptional trattoria like the Antica Pesa in Trastevere or Cecchino dal 1887 in Testaccio — is the social form that the Romans return to most readily once the summer has departed. We have arranged, for clients with the right introductions, lunches at private homes that we cannot describe in any detail. These are among the most distinctly Roman experiences our practice arranges.

Where to Stay, And the Walking Around It

Rome's hotel scene in October is at its annual best for both rate and availability. The Hotel de la Ville above the Spanish Steps, the Hotel de Russie behind the Piazza del Popolo, the Hassler at the top of the Spanish Steps, the Six Senses at Piazza di Pietra, the Bulgari Hotel and the recent Rosewood opening — all are typically available with reasonable notice in October, often at twenty to thirty per cent below the May rate. The suites that, in spring, require months of booking, are frequently available the same week.

Rome is a city that rewards walking, and October is the month at which the walking is most pleasant. We typically arrange a Rome week as a sequence of long mornings on foot — a morning in the Vatican, a morning at the Forum, a morning at the Borghese, a morning around the Pantheon and the Piazza Navona — punctuated by long lunches and afternoons at the hotel. The walks themselves, between the sites, are part of the experience.

To walk from the Campo de' Fiori to the Trevi Fountain at six in the evening on a Tuesday in mid-October, with the light falling across the travertine and the city in its working rhythm, is among the more affecting hours one can spend in any European city.

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