An easy walk up from the Colosseum, Villa Celimontana is a wonderful place to escape the crowds and take a timeout. The park, which surrounds a 16th-century villa housing the Italian Geographical Society, is blissfully quiet for much of the year but bursts into life in summer when it stages a much-loved season of jazz and swing concerts.
In the south of the park you'll find an Egyptian obelisk which is the subject of many urban legends. One holds that the globe on top contains the ashes of the emperor Augustus. Another tells how a workman lost his arm while erecting the monument and that his severed limb lies buried beneath its base.
