A few people asked me to report back on our Sacro Bosco excursion, so here it is! As to whether it’s worth it, I can only tell you how it went for us.
On the front end, some blessed soul posted a link on how to avoid the ZTL leaving the garage at Termini Station. I could expound on the ensuing nonsense when we actually tried it, but due to no fault of the author of the instructions, following them and using google to avoid the ZTL were impossible for us though I spent upwards of 4 hours preparing and saving maps beforehand. After an hour of trying to avoid the ZTL with no confidence we were being successful, we put the GRA into google as our destination and drove out of town as quickly as possible. Google wanted us to take E35 , but I redirected it to SS2 for gentler and more scenic route. We had zero trouble following google to the park once we were out of the city. I will be watching the mail for a ticket though I went to great lengths to avoid it.
I had hoped to stop at Sutri or Villa Lante since we’d gone to all that trouble, but it took too long to get out of town and it also took nearly an hour to pick up the car due to difficult customers in front of us. We were very hungry by 1:30 pm so we stopped at a little sandwich shop (A Meta Strada) as we passed Sutri. It’s rated very highly and I thought it was fine. Not particularly delicious, even with being so hungry, but we may not have ordered the right thing. It did the trick and we were on our way in a short time. The owner(?) understood my Italian well enough to speak with me but still openly giggled over it which was pretty funny.
We went on a Wednesday and the weather was stunning. Sunny and in the low 60s. We got there later than I wanted, but that meant we were in the park for “magic hour”. My opinion is that the park could be enjoyed in an hour, or in 6+ hours. There were people laying on a hill on a blanket and a couple that hustled through, but we had the park to mostly to ourselves.
The first few things we saw were roped off or gated and I was really disappointed, thinking the whole park had changed from the cool photos I saw, but you can still go inside the mouth of the monster, sit on benches, climb turrets, go into the “crooked” house, etc… It's a photoshoot dream if that's your thing.
I think they’ve done well making it accessible without turning it into a sanitized theme park. You can imagine what it was like for guests in the 16th century.
I took my teen daughters and didn't tell them where we were going because I knew they'd google. Once we were in the park, they were interested and would even gasp or say "what?!" as we rounded another corner. They even voluntarily let me take a few photos of them, haha. It was their favorite thing we did in all of Italy, even edging out Cinque Terre, which they loved. They hated (HATED) the car ride due to anxiety, so it says a lot that they still loved it and thought it worth it. (To be clear, the car ride went quite nicely other than the ZTL and I got back to Rome easily enough. Our car was cute and comfortable. We rented through VIPcars.com and they had excellent customer service. They are just a broker, like booking.com and they booked us with Noleggiare for $36 for the day, but it was only $18 if you can drive a standard.)
We spent around $100 on the day after gas. That’s not little to us, but I do think that 33.00 a person was well worth it for the experience, especially since a guided day trip was running around $450 or more for 3 people. I always love guide trivia and I'd like to know more about the park, but I’m glad we took it at our own pace. Even though it was kind of spectacular in its way, it was also almost soothing.
The Colosseum is not to be missed, and it met my expectations, but it's almost surreal since it's so well known. Sacro Bosco was surreal because it was unusual and otherworldly. I would go to the trouble of going back to Sacro Bosco.