First trip · 4½ days, one in Florence · researched 6 Sept 2026

Rome and Florence, 18–23 September

One major attraction per day, placed on the day it is open and least crowded, with a handful of side items within walking distance. Saturday is a train day to Florence. No timings, no meal plans.

Arrive Fri 18 · 12:00 FCO
Depart Wed 23 · morning
Weather 24–26° highs, 14–16° nights
Sunset ≈ 19:05
Book ahead (timed, sells out) Ticket, but easy day-of Free or walk in

Book these now, in this order

Every window below is already open. Check the Colosseum first: its 30-day window for 18–22 September opened between 19 and 23 August, so the good morning slots may already be gone. Then the Vatican, then the Uffizi. The Florence trains never sell out; booking early only saves money.

SightPlannedWhere to bookPriceStatusBought
Colosseum + Forum + Palatine
Try “Full Experience” (arena floor + underground) first, fall back to the standard 24-hour ticket.		 Mon 21 · 08:30–09:30 ticketing.colosseo.it (official). If sold out: the Roma Pass pool on the same site, GetYourGuide’s allocation, or a guided tour with its own entry. €18 std · €24 full Check today
Vatican Museums + Sistine Chapel
Book the earliest slot (08:00). Only online; no door sales.		 Tue 22 · 08:00 tickets.museivaticani.va (official, 60-day window). Ignore look-alike sites. €20 + €5 fee Book today
Trains Rome ⇄ Florence
Frecciarossa or Italo, 1 h 25 min nonstop, Termini to Santa Maria Novella. Out around 07:00, back around 19:30–20:30. Seats are essentially never sold out, so this is a price question, not an availability one: advance fares from about €20, the walk-up Base fare about €55 per person each way. Book once the Uffizi slot is confirmed, and no later than a few days out.		 Sat 19 trenitalia.com or italotreno.it, whichever is cheaper for the departure you want. Seats are reserved, so a specific train. Buying at the station on the day also works. ≈ €20–55 each way Price only
Giotto’s Bell Tower
The dome climb is sold out for the 19th, so this is the climb: 414 steps, no lift, and the dome itself is in the view. No timed slot; you queue at the tower door. Buy the pass online to skip the ticket-office line.		 Sat 19 · any time tickets.duomo.firenze.it, “Giotto Pass” (bell tower + baptistery + museum + Santa Reparata crypt, 3 days). Also sold at the ticket office on the piazza. €20 Day-of
Uffizi Gallery
Botticelli’s Birth of Venus and Primavera, Leonardo, Michelangelo, Caravaggio. Timed, sells out by mid-morning on peak days. Take the earliest slot; the bell tower has no fixed time, so it fits around it.		 Sat 19 · 08:45–09:30 uffizi.it (official). If you would rather see David than a big painting museum, book the Accademia instead on the same site’s partner, B-ticket; it is a one-hour visit. €25 + €4 fee Book today
St Peter’s dome climb (optional)
551 steps, or lift + 320 steps. Walk-up ticket at the dome entrance normally works; online adds a reserved time.		 Tue 22 · after the Museums basilicasanpietro.va, or pay at the entrance. from €17 online Optional
Domus Aurea (optional)
Nero’s buried palace with VR headset tour. Open Fri–Sun only. Right next to the Colosseum.		 Sun 20 · any colosseo.it → Domus Aurea. €26 w/ tour Optional
Pantheon
Timed, named tickets, but plenty of same-day availability. Buy the morning of.		 Sun 20 · morning Musei Italiani app/site, or the ticket machines on site. €7 Day-of
Trevi Fountain basin
Since Feb 2026 the gated area by the water costs €2, 09:00–22:00. Viewing from the piazza is free, and the basin is free after 22:00.		 Fri 18 · evening Card machines at the entrance, or fontanaditrevi.roma.it. €2 or free Day-of

Day by day

One major attraction per day, chosen from the first-timer consensus list: Colosseum and Forum, Vatican and St Peter’s, Pantheon and Piazza Navona, Trevi Fountain and the Spanish Steps, and in Florence the Duomo. Florence takes Saturday, since its two big museums close on Mondays; the Roman centre keeps Sunday, when the Vatican Museums are closed anyway. No timings. Each day lists four or five side items within an easy walk of the major, so you can take them or leave them as the day unfolds.

Friday
18
Arrival evening in the Tridente
Half a day. Everything here is free and open late, so a delayed flight costs nothing.
Major · no booking needed

Trevi Fountain and the Spanish Steps

Two of Rome’s five signature sights, ten minutes apart, at their best after dark. Trevi is lit until late and the basin is free after 22:00; before that the €2 ticket from the card machines gets you to the water’s edge. Sitting on the Spanish Steps is fined, so look from the piazza below or climb to Trinità dei Monti for the view down Via Condotti.

Metro A Barberini or Spagna · Trevi fee hours 09:00–22:00, free otherwise · no closing time for either.

Close by

  • Via del Corso and Piazza Colonna · Marcus Aurelius’s column, halfway between the two. free
  • Capuchin Crypt · bone chapels, five minutes from Trevi, open until 19:00. €10
  • Santa Maria della Vittoria · Bernini’s Ecstasy of St Teresa, ten minutes past Barberini. free
  • Pincio terrace · up the steps and left along Villa Borghese to the view over Piazza del Popolo at sunset. free
  • Piazza del Popolo and Santa Maria del Popolo · two Caravaggios in the Cerasi Chapel, closes around 19:00. free
Ambitious alternative: the Vatican Museums stay open until 22:30 on Fridays through October and the evening slots are the quietest way to see the Sistine Chapel. Booking a 19:00 slot on arrival day is a gamble on your flight; only do it if you would rather free up Tuesday.
Saturday
19
Day trip to Florence
1 h 25 min by high-speed train. Out on a 07:00-ish departure, back on one around 20:00, gives eleven hours in the city. Everything below is inside a 20-minute walk of the station. Saturday is Florence’s busiest day, which is why the two timed bookings matter.
Major · book ahead

The Duomo and Giotto’s Bell Tower

The cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore, Giotto’s bell tower and the Baptistery in one marble-striped piazza, with Brunelleschi’s 1436 brick dome, still the largest ever built without steel, above it all. The dome climb is sold out for your date, so the climb is the bell tower: 414 steps up Giotto’s 1334 tower to a terrace level with the dome, which is the one view in Florence that has the dome in it. No timed slot; queue at the tower door, mornings are shortest. The cathedral floor is free to enter (Saturday roughly 10:15–15:45, one queue); the baptistery’s gold mosaic ceiling and the Opera del Duomo museum, with Ghiberti’s original Gates of Paradise, are on the same pass.

Giotto Pass €20, tickets.duomo.firenze.it or the piazza ticket office · bell tower Sat 08:15–18:45, no reservation · 10 minutes from Santa Maria Novella station.

Close by

  • Uffizi Gallery · the other must: Botticelli’s Venus and Primavera, Leonardo, Michelangelo’s Doni Tondo. Book the earliest slot and give it two to three hours; the bell tower can wait until after. book
  • Piazza della Signoria and Palazzo Vecchio · the civic square with the David copy, the Loggia dei Lanzi’s open-air sculptures and Neptune’s fountain, between the Duomo and the Uffizi. free
  • Ponte Vecchio and the Oltrarno · the medieval bridge lined with goldsmiths, two minutes from the Uffizi; cross it for the quieter side of the river. free
  • Piazzale Michelangelo · the postcard view of the dome and the Arno, 25 minutes uphill from Ponte Vecchio; best in the last hour before the train. free
  • Santa Croce · Michelangelo’s, Galileo’s and Machiavelli’s tombs and Giotto frescoes; Saturday 09:30–17:30, walk in. €10
  • San Lorenzo leather market · the open-air stalls around the Mercato Centrale, five minutes north of the Duomo, open Saturdays roughly 09:00–19:00. Haggle, and check the stitching; for the real thing, the Scuola del Cuoio workshop behind Santa Croce sells what it makes. free
Still want the dome? Cancelled slots reappear on tickets.duomo.firenze.it, mostly in the last few days; check the evening before. Guided tours on GetYourGuide or Viator also hold their own dome allocations at roughly double the price. On David: Michelangelo’s David is in the Accademia, a one-hour visit ten minutes north of the Duomo, timed and booked. Two booked museums is two fixed times in the day; with the bell tower untimed, that is still a loose day, so David is a reasonable add if you want him. The Mercato Centrale, ten minutes from the Duomo, is the one place to aim for at lunch: ground-floor market until 14:00, food hall upstairs all day.
Sunday
20
The Pantheon and the centro storico
Vatican Museums closed on Sundays, so the centre gets the day. Nothing here has a fixed time. Pantheon open 09:00–18:00; sightseeing pauses for 10:30 Mass.
Major · easy ticket, buy the same morning

The Pantheon and Piazza Navona

The best-preserved building of ancient Rome, still with its 2,000-year-old concrete dome and open oculus, and Raphael’s tomb inside. Piazza Navona, with Bernini’s Four Rivers fountain, is three minutes away on the footprint of Domitian’s stadium. The whole district between them is car-free lanes; this is the day to wander without a plan.

Pantheon €7, timed and named, buy on the Musei Italiani app or the machines on site · Navona free, always open.

Close by

  • San Luigi dei Francesi · Caravaggio’s three St Matthew paintings, last chapel on the left; Sunday hours 11:30–12:45 and 14:30–18:30. free
  • Sant’Agostino · Caravaggio’s Madonna of Loreto and a Raphael fresco, two minutes north of Navona. free
  • Campo de’ Fiori · the market is closed Sundays but the square and the lanes to Via Giulia are the best strolling in Rome. free
  • Largo di Torre Argentina · the ruins where Caesar was killed, now a cat sanctuary, with a walkway through the temples. free
  • Jewish Ghetto and Tiber Island · Portico d’Ottavia, the Turtle Fountain, and the island bridges; ten minutes south of Argentina. free
Sunday-only extras if you want a bigger day: the Pope’s Angelus at 12:00 in St Peter’s Square, free and no ticket (confirm on vatican.va that week); Domus Aurea has Sunday slots; and the Appian Way is car-free only on Sundays. Trastevere across the river is the natural evening.
Monday
21
Ancient Rome
Borghese and most palaces close Mondays; the archaeological sites never do. The whole day fits inside one square kilometre.
Major · book ahead

Colosseum, Roman Forum and Palatine Hill

The number-one sight in Rome, and the ticket covers all three for 24 hours. Take the earliest Colosseum entry you can get, then the Forum along the Via Sacra and up to the Palatine, where the emperors lived and the Farnese Gardens terrace looks back over everything. A Full Experience ticket adds the arena floor and the underground corridors. Photo ID matching the ticket name is checked at the gate.

Colosseum 08:30–19:15, last entry 18:15 · Forum and Palatine 09:00–19:15 · Metro B Colosseo · allow four to five hours across the three.

Close by

  • Capitoline Museums · Michelangelo’s piazza, the original Marcus Aurelius bronze, the she-wolf, and the Tabularium gallery that looks straight down the Forum. Walk in, open to 19:30. €15
  • Vittoriano terraces · the white monument at Piazza Venezia; the lower terraces are free, the lift to the roof costs a few euros. free
  • San Pietro in Vincoli · Michelangelo’s Moses, three minutes uphill from the Colosseum exit. free
  • San Clemente · a 12th-century church over a 4th-century one over a Roman Mithras temple; five minutes east of the Colosseum, underground closed 12:30–14:00. €10
  • Circus Maximus and the Aventine · walk the chariot track from the Palatine exit, then up to the Orange Garden, the keyhole and Santa Sabina for sunset. free
If Monday’s Colosseum is sold out: Sunday morning works; move the Pantheon day to Monday, since nothing on it is timed. If everything is gone, a guided tour with its own allocation is the reliable fallback, and the Forum Pass SUPER still gets you into the Forum and Palatine.
Tuesday
22
The Vatican
Tuesday is calmer than Monday, when Sunday’s closure pushes two days of visitors into one. Shoulders and knees covered for the Museums and the Basilica.
Major · book ahead

Vatican Museums, Sistine Chapel and St Peter’s Basilica

The other number-one sight. Book the earliest Museums slot, go straight to the Sistine Chapel while it is quiet, then loop back for the Raphael Rooms, the Gallery of Maps and the Pinacoteca. St Peter’s is free and only has a security line; the Pietà is on the right as you enter, Bernini’s baldachin stands under the dome, and the papal tombs are in the grottoes below. Without a tour you cannot use the chapel-to-basilica shortcut, so it is a 15-minute walk round the walls.

Museums Mon–Sat 08:00–20:00, last entry 18:00, only via tickets.museivaticani.va · Basilica 07:00–20:00, last entry 19:15 · Metro A Ottaviano.

Close by

  • St Peter’s dome climb · 551 steps, or lift plus 320; the best view in the city. Walk-up ticket at the dome entrance normally works. €17+
  • Castel Sant’Angelo · ten minutes down Via della Conciliazione; buy at the door or on CoopCulture that morning, open to 19:30. €16
  • Ponte Sant’Angelo · Bernini’s angels on the bridge, and the classic photo of the castle and dome from the far bank. free
  • Prati · the grid of streets east of the Vatican walls, Via Cola di Rienzo for shopping, where locals actually live. free
  • Gianicolo terrace and Trastevere · 25 minutes south along the ridge from the Vatican walls if you have not been yet. free
Wednesday
23
Depart
Morning

Airport

Book a taxi through the hotel the night before (€55 flat fare to Fiumicino from inside the old walls, up to four people with luggage), or the Leonardo Express from Termini every 15 minutes. Wednesday morning is the Papal Audience, so streets around the Vatican are busy from 08:00; that only matters if you are staying in Prati.

Side items to drop in anywhere

Grouped by neighbourhood so you can pair them with whichever headline you are near. Nothing here needs booking more than the morning of.

Centro storicoAround Navona and the Pantheon

  • San Luigi dei Francesi · Caravaggio’s St Matthew cycle. free10:00–12:30 and 16:00–19:00, closed Thu morning
  • Sant’Agostino · Caravaggio’s Madonna of Loreto, Raphael fresco. free
  • Campo de’ Fiori market · mornings Mon–Sat. free
  • Galleria Doria Pamphilj · closed Wednesdays, 30-minute online slots. €16
  • Largo di Torre Argentina · Caesar’s death site, cat sanctuary. free

Tridente and QuirinaleSpanish Steps to Barberini

  • Santa Maria della Vittoria · Bernini’s Ecstasy of St Teresa. freenear Repubblica, closes for lunch
  • Capuchin Crypt · 10:00–19:00, walk in. €10
  • Galleria Colonna · Fri and Sat mornings only, so not reachable this trip unless Florence moves. book
  • Galleria Borghese · Bernini and Caravaggio in Villa Borghese; strict 2-hour slots, no walk-ups, closed Mon. Worth it if a day frees up. book
  • Pincio terrace and Piazza del Popolo · sunset spot. free

Esquiline and LateranBehind Termini and the Colosseum

  • Santa Maria Maggiore · papal basilica, Pope Francis’s tomb in the left nave. free07:00–19:00
  • San Clemente · a 12th-century church over a 4th-century one over a Roman Mithras temple. €10underground Mon–Sat 09:00–12:30 and 14:00–18:00, Sun 12:00–18:00
  • St John Lateran and the Scala Santa · the cathedral of Rome. free
  • San Pietro in Vincoli · Michelangelo’s Moses, three minutes from the Colosseum. free
  • Domus Aurea · Fri–Sun only. book

Aventine, Testaccio and the GhettoSouth of the Capitoline

  • Orange Garden, the keyhole, Santa Sabina · one hilltop, best at sunset. free
  • Mouth of Truth · at Santa Maria in Cosmedin, small donation, queue for the photo. free
  • Circus Maximus · walk the track. free
  • Testaccio market · Mon–Sat mornings, best cheap lunch in Rome. free
  • Baths of Caracalla · 09:00–19:15, walk in. €8
  • Appian Way and Catacombs of San Callisto · car-free on Sundays, bikes at the park office; catacombs €10, guided every few minutes, closed Wed. Half a day by bus 118. €10
  • Jewish Ghetto and Tiber Island · Portico d’Ottavia, Turtle Fountain. free

Trastevere and the JaniculumAcross the river

  • Santa Maria in Trastevere · 12th-century mosaics. free
  • Gianicolo terrace · the widest view of the city, noon cannon. free
  • Villa Farnesina · Raphael frescoes, walk in, mornings Mon–Sat. €12
  • Santa Cecilia · Cavallini fresco, Roman house below. free

Vatican sideBorgo and Prati

  • St Peter’s Square and Basilica · free, security line only. free07:00–20:00, last entry 19:15
  • Castel Sant’Angelo · buy at the door or CoopCulture. €16
  • Sunday Angelus · 12:00 in the square when the Pope is in Rome. free
  • Via Cola di Rienzo · Prati’s shopping street. free

Practical notes

Named tickets, ID checked

Colosseum, Pantheon, Vatican and Uffizi tickets carry the visitor’s name, and train tickets are tied to a specific departure. Carry passports or a photo of them; the Colosseum enforces it at the turnstile.

Dress code

Shoulders and knees covered inside St Peter’s, the Vatican Museums and the papal basilicas. A light scarf solves it in September.

Getting around

Almost everything above is walkable; Metro A (Vatican, Spagna, Barberini) and B (Colosseo, Circo Massimo) cover the rest. Tap a contactless card at the gate; a single ride is €1.50 for 100 minutes.

Strikes

None fall on your dates. The next national rail strike runs the evening of Fri 25 into Sat 26, after you leave. Check the day before travel anyway; Italian strikes are announced with a few weeks’ notice.

Only these ticket sites

colosseo.it, museivaticani.va, galleriaborghese.cultura.gov.it and the Musei Italiani app are the officials. Everything else is a reseller with a markup, useful only when the official pool is empty.

Sunday closures

Vatican Museums closed. Campo de’ Fiori and Testaccio markets closed. The Pantheon pauses sightseeing for 10:30 Mass. Most churches restrict visits during morning services.

Heat and water

Late September is warm but not hot. The Forum and Appia have little shade. Refill from the “nasoni” street fountains; the water is excellent.

Coperto and tipping

Expect a €1–3 per-person cover charge. Tipping is not expected; round up if service was good.

Sources checked