The Daily Telegraph - Saturday - Travel
Why this is the perfect time for a city break
With testing eased, prices low and crowds absent, my trip to Rome felt like a return to the 1970s, says Nick Trend
I have visited the Sistine Chapel a few times over the years and it has always been a rather surreal and not entirely satisfactory experience. You are admitted to one of the greatest sights of one of the greatest cities in the world and yet, most of the time, the crowd is so dense that it’s a struggle to appreciate fully what you are seeing.
Last time I visited, which was about five years ago, I chose a particularly bad moment. Visitors were essentially being herded through, shuffling forward in the press while trying to crane their necks to see Michelangelo’s ceiling as they inched towards the exit.
Not now. This week, while on a three-day trip to Rome, I had an entirely different kind of experience. It felt like time travel back to the days when mass tourism had an entirely different meaning, when cultural sights got busy, but were rarely overwhelmed. You could take your time, stand wherever you liked or find a seat on one of the side benches and spend as long as you wished contemplating the Creation of Man or the Last Judgment.
It was no surprise, then, to hear this week’s latest update on passenger numbers from Heathrow. Last year, the airport saw the lowest number of arrivals and departures since 1972. Things are already picking up, of course – especially with travellers from this country. My outbound and return flights from London were both nearly full. But there is a long way to go before overall tourist numbers are back to their pre-pandemic levels. It was clear from all the sights I went to that many of the visitors were Italian. Of the overseas visitors, there were very few from China or Asia, and I heard only the occasional American accent.
So, when it comes to tourism, we have indeed made the equivalent of a return to the 1970s. There were pinch points. One evening, I had to give up on a visit to the Pantheon because the guard was being so slow checking everyone’s Covid pass that a queue had built up right across the square. When I came back the next day, the queue had gone and the building was as empty as I have ever seen it.
Meanwhile, the Villa Farnesina – one of the most beautiful Renaissance buildings in Rome, with frescoes by Raphael and lovely box-hedged gardens – was virtually deserted. The Villa Borghese was also as quiet as I had ever seen it, as were the Forum and the Colosseum. And rarely have I felt so welcome, or so well looked after, in Rome’s trattorias.
As well as being transported back to the 1970s, I was also reminded of the sheer pleasure of heading that far south in early spring – when the nights are still cool, the sun is just beginning to warm up, the mimosa and magnolias are already flowering in the villa gardens and the city is shot through with an increasing sense of optimism.
As you may have guessed, I am trying to tempt you. Short of another Covid setback, we are not going to see a situation like this again in our lifetime.
If you can possibly make the time to arrange a spontaneous trip to Rome (or Venice, or Florence), this is an extraordinarily special moment to do so. Especially since, from Tuesday, Italy is expected to follow EU policy and ditch its testing requirements, so that arriving passengers who are fully vaccinated will no longer have to produce a negative test result (see our news story at telegraph.co.uk/tt-nopredep).
And if you manage to travel before Easter (or perhaps in early May), you will not only find that the sights are quiet, but prices are still suppressed, as well. When I checked rates for March, I found plenty of decent fourstar hotels for £120 a night. Despite being busy, flights are also still extraordinarily good value with lots of options for less than £100 return, even at weekends.*