From the Cloaca Maxima to Saint Peter in Chains: The Palatine and Circus Maximus on Foot

Most visitors meet ancient Rome as a crowd around the Colosseum. This walk spends its half day on the quieter ground to the south and east of it, the part of the city that came first: a drain, a racetrack, a hill of palaces, a victory arch, an emperor's buried villa and a sculpture that has outlasted all of them.

The route starts low, by the river, climbs onto the Palatine, and ends on the Oppian Hill. Wear shoes you can walk on stone in. The Palatine and the Domus Aurea are the two places where you spend real time, so start early and keep the rest loose.

Start by the Tiber, where the Cloaca Maxima still empties near the Ponte Rotto and the Ponte Palatino. Tradition dates the first channel to around 600 BC, when it drained the marshy ground between the hills so that markets and temples could stand there. Later builders, Agrippa among them, rebuilt much of it.

Look for the arched outfall in the river wall and the old stonework around it, then turn your back on the river and walk up towards the open grass of the Circus Maximus.

The Circus Maximus looks like a long, empty park, and that is the point. The valley between the Aventine and the Palatine held Rome's biggest chariot track, about 620 metres long, with room for well over 100,000 spectators by modern estimates. Augustus set Rome's first obelisk on the central barrier.

The original track lies some six metres below the grass, but excavations have uncovered a stretch of seating, the curved end and part of the barrier. Walk the length of the park, find the medieval tower on the site, and notice how the Palatine rises right above the old stands. That slope is where the emperors watched.

Climb to the Palatine Hill from the Circus Maximus side. Tradition places Romulus's founding of the city here, and excavated huts show people lived on the hill from the 9th century BC. Augustus began building his house from 27 BC, and later emperors added palaces until the hill belonged to them. The English word palace comes from this hill's name.

Give it time. Look for the remains of Domitian's palace, the House of Augustus and the House of Livia, and the Farnese Gardens, laid out in the sixteenth century over the Domus Tiberiana. The Palatine Museum sits in a former convent. From the hill's edge you see the Forum below, and the path down leads to the next stop.

Leave the Palatine towards the Forum end and you meet the Arch of Titus on the Via Sacra. Domitian built it around 81 AD, after the death of his brother Titus, to mark Titus's deification and the victory over the Jewish revolt in Judaea.

Stand under the opening and read the two panels on the inside. One shows Titus in his chariot in the triumph of 71 AD, crowned by Victory. The other shows soldiers carrying the spoils of the Temple in Jerusalem, with the golden menorah in deep relief. Giuseppe Valadier restored the arch in 1821 and used plain travertine for the new parts, so you can tell the added stone from the original marble.

From the arch, climb to the Oppian Hill, where the Domus Aurea lies under a park. Nero began it after the fire of 64 AD. After his death the rooms were filled with earth and the Baths of Trajan were built on top, which kept the painted walls safe.

In the late fifteenth century people found the rooms by dropping in from above, and artists climbed down on ropes to copy the painted designs. Those designs, later called grotesques, fed into Raphael's work. Inside, look for the octagonal dining room with its round opening in the dome.

Walk a few minutes north along the hill to the church of Saint Peter in Chains, built in the fifth century for the chains said to have bound Saint Peter. They are kept in a reliquary under the high altar.

But the reason to come is the Moses, which Michelangelo finished around 1515 for the tomb of Pope Julius II. It was meant for a far larger monument. Stand in front of it and look at the horns on his head, an old way of showing rays of light, then at the strong set of the arms and the beard. The church is also the burial place of Antonio del Pollaiuolo.

You have followed Rome from a drain to a racetrack to the first palace, then watched the empire's victory told in stone and its most notorious villa buried. The last stop shows what the city made of its own past after the empire fell. From the church the Colosseum is a short walk back down the hill, and the Cavour metro station is nearby.