The Aventine is the quietest hill in Rome — no queues, no tour buses, just a medieval knights' garden with a perfect keyhole view of the Vatican, a Benedictine monastery where monks still make their own jam, and orange trees planted by Mussolini.

The Roman Forum is overwhelming if you don't know what you're looking at. I do a 2-hour tour that strips it down to the 8 things that actually matter — and I'll stand in the exact spot where Julius Caesar was cremated.

Rome has 3,000 years of city stacked on top of itself. We go down — into a 1st-century apartment building under a medieval church, through a Mithraic temple under a basilica, and into a layer of Rome that most people don't know exists.