Capitoline Museum, Rome/Restaurants

Lunch recommendations: Alle Carrette for pizza in Monte. Another great local restaurant is Alfredo e Ada, but it’s in between Piazza Navona and Vatican area.
For dinner, my favorites are Osteria da Zi Umberto in Trastevere and La Taverna dei Fori Imperiali in Monte.
Another great casual lunch stop in Trastevere is Suppli Roma. They have the best suppli in Rome! And just down the street from there is Bar San Calisto...they have incredible granita.

Good luck and hope you find great places to remember!

For pizza in Trastevere, try Popi Popi. We really enjoyed it.

I've visited the Capitoline Museum a couple of times on my own and found that option to be just fine. I seem to recall that there's a tour in the RS guidebook I used on my first visit. There are only two buildings, and be sure to take the underpass between the buildings which has a passageway to a great overview of the Forum about midway.

In Monti I like Taverna Romana. Reservations for dinner are a must. My favorite lunchtime pizza in Rome is the original Buffetto near Piazza Navona (not the nearby Baffetto Due). It's traditional thin crust wood fired Roman pizza, and I think traditional Roman pizza is the best in Italy. If you prefer a more American style pizza, try Dar Poeta in Trastevere.

I've had many great dinners at Osteria Ponte Sisto in Trastevere, although it's not the only good restaurant in Trastevere. Just avoid all restaurants where a person is trying to lure you in.

Roberto (a native of Firenze) has a favorite restuarant for bistecca fiorentina just outside the city center. Hopefully he'll post the name, or do a seach of his past postings.

Would you consider a private guide for the Capitoline? We visited the museum with our RS tour in May and my personal impression was that it wasn’t packed, but we were there first thing in the morning. Time of day impacts crowds. We contacted Francesca Caruso ([email protected]; www.francescacaruso.com), who in turn referred to Sonia Tavoletta for a private guided tour. Both make memorable tours.

I had the bad luck to wait in a long ticket line at the Capitoline, but it didn't seem especially crowded when I got inside -- certainly not by Vatican/Louvre standards. It's big and spread over several floors and two buildings. The RS book has a good tour (probably the same on audio). There's a very nice restaurant, not over expensive, on the top floor, where I had a lunch break. The lower-level corridor between the two buildings overlooks the Forum, great views. I'd recommend this museum to anyone interested in Roman art or history. I'm sure there are ticket-line-avoiding strategies that eluded me.

Two restaurants in Trastevere - neither fine dining but I found the food at both very good on repeated visits:
Hostaria Capo de Fero and Ai Spaghettari (both on Via di S. Cosimato).

Some of the best Pizza I had in Rome was at a "Craft beer" pub/restaurant in Trastevere called "Bir and Fud" (it makes perfect sense if you pronounce it in an Italian way).

In Siena, the steak at Taverna di San Guiseppe has always been excellent (although it is a while since I last visited)

I went to the Capitoline on my own after completing a RS 7-day tour that did not include it. The RS guidebook has an excellent and easy-to-follow tour of the museum. I just ripped those pages out and carried them around with me. It gave clear directions for navigating the two buildings (taking the tunnel between them) and enough information about the most important/interesting pieces to satisfy me. I could go at my own pace and linger wherever I wanted.

I really liked this museum. The line to get in was not too bad, but a bit disorganized. Once in the museum, it was not crowded at all. This was mid-day in late February.

Thank you everyone for your excellent input! I think we will do the museum on our own with the RS Guide. The restaurant list will also be very helpful!

Hello All:
Thanks again for your input on our trip. We made it to some of the recommended restaurants and were beyond pleased with our meals. The others that you all recommended will stay on the list for the next trip. Several were closed when we were in the area so we missed out this time. My bag was lost in Paris so we had a bit of a delay which prevented us from getting to the Capitoline Museum during opening hours due to conflicts with other tours, etc. so that will be on the agenda for next trip as well.

We ate meals at Alfredo e Ada (the most amazing vegetable lasagna ever...), Ai Spaghettari in Trastevere and Taverna di San Giuseppe in Siena for Bisteca Florentina. We arrived at Buffetto in Piazza Novana area just as they were closing and ended up at a favorite of ours from a past trip, Navana Notte which was very good. Also arrived at Alle Carette at the wrong time, closed, and we tried to go to Osteria da Zi Umberto in Trastevere but it was locked up tight. A woman in an apartment nearby said they had been closed for a while due to some mechanical issue and she did not know when they would open back up. It was a fabulous trip! We spent three nights in Spoleto and had the best carbonara of our lives at Canasta inside the old town walls. Spoleto was amazingly beautiful and we were pleased with it as our base for Umbria for a few days. I hope to return to Italy in May. There is never enough time in Italy or enough trips! Ciao!