Rome Travel Forum

Hi, could someone help with these questions.
1. If staying in Rome West, is it easy to still get to all the major tourist attractions? What transportation is available from this area to those sites?
2. Does anyone know about a tour that takes you under the Vatican to where the burial place of St. Peter is? I read somewhere about this and was wondering if it did exist?

Rome has an excellent public transport system (bus/metro/tram) but 'Rome West' is a bit vague. If you can be more specific people will be able to give you the relevant transport info.

I think you may mean the 'necropolis' under the Basilica? Details here:

http://www.saintpetersbasilica.org/Necropolis/Scavi.htm

http://www.saintpetersbasilica.org/Necropolis/ScaviTour.htm

You have to reserve a place through the Vatican office (in writing);

http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/institutions_connected/uffscavi/documents/rc_ic_uffscavi_doc_gen-information_20040112_en.html

I don't know what 'Rome West' means either, unless you mean 'Trastevere' (but no one ever calls it Rome West), so some more detail would be good.

J (leics) has given you the details for the Scavi Tour...the only better thing to do would be to contact a friend of a friend (if you have one) who might be studying or living in Rome to arrange the tickets for you...in our case, our nephew who was studying in Rome for a year knew some seminarians at the North American College (a seminary in Rome for North American men studying for the priesthood), and some of these seminarians arranged for the tour. It was easy, because the seminarians from several schools who speak various languages (English, of course, at the North American College) often volunteer to lead these tours. For this reason, a given tour is in a given language (English, Italian, German, etc.) and when you make the reservation, you have to specify the language...

Now, you probably don't know any insiders like this (but I thought I would mention it), but if you are Catholic, it might be worth your while to contact your local diocesan office and ask if they know anything arranging tickets to Papal audiences and the Scavi Tour. If they do, then the requests should be better handled by their office, but if they don't, then use the links that J gave you...

Bill