What a ride!

Explore Rome via romantic Vespa

AS

the old adage goes: When in Rome, do as the Romans do. That means rent a Vespa and rule the road.

Former New Yorker Annie Ojile runs Scooteroma, which offers cinematic, foodie or general tours of the city (from about $158 per person;

Scooteroma.com). Ojile turns heads on the ancient cobblestones, astride her fire engine-red Vespa scooter with a bright stars-and-stripes helmet.

She manages a team of expert guides who will safely squire helmeted riders around the city on their own rented scooters or on the backs of theirs (if you’re less confident about your chances against Rome’s other Vespisti, aka scooter fanatics).

I join one of the movie-centric tours. Our first stop was Piazza del Popolo, Rome’s biggest and most stunning urban square. Film fanatics can sip Campari or cappuccino at nearby

Rosati, where Federico Fellini, who directed “La Dolce Vita,” pondered street life. He lived not far away on Via

Margutta. At No. 110, his former home, we pull up our scooters to inspect a tile bearing a cartoon of him in a hat and overcoat.

Also on Via Margutta is the apartment where Gregory Peck’s character Joe lived in “Roman Holiday,” and the narrow staircase to his home where fictional Princess Ann skipped her way to freedom for a day. Opera virtuoso Giacomo Puccini and cubism pioneer Pablo Picasso lived down this quiet alley, too.

Accelerating up this via, down that corso, and around another piazza at a buzzy 30 mph, we rev past medieval fountains, Egyptian obelisks and Hellenistic-inspired temples.

We head to a grittier Roman neighborhood, Pigneto — the Bushwick of Rome. We stop in what used to be slums to dive into Italian film’s neorealism movement, which produced documenta- ry-style films about societal issues and everyday workers. Murdered director Pier Paolo Pasolini filmed “Accattone,” or “The Beggar,” here.

We nudge our kickstands into park mode one more time outside Pasolini’s favorite bar, Necci dal 1924 (68 Via Fanfulla da Lodi), lined with blackand-white photos of movie stars. Here, twentysomething hipsters sip Aperol, an orange aperitif. They’re impossibly cool. And now — Vespa keys dangling from your wrist — so are you.