The Spanish Steps and Trinità dei Monti are the bottom and the top of the same staircase. The bottom is where the crowd is. The top is where the view is. From Trinità dei Monti you look down the 135 steps over the rooftops of the centre, and a level six-minute walk takes you on to the Pincio terrace. We bring guests to the top every day and to the bottom almost never.
The same monument, from two ends
At the bottom, in Piazza di Spagna, you have Bernini's boat fountain, the Keats-Shelley house, and via Condotti running off to the west. Between eleven in the morning and seven in the evening it is one of the densest points in Rome, and the view is of the staircase itself: impressive, and pointed away from the city.
At the top, in front of the church with its two bell towers and the obelisk before it, you look back down and out. Rooftops, terraces, television aerials, and the dome of St Peter's on the horizon on a clear day.
Same monument, rotated 180 degrees, and a completely different photograph.
One thing has changed the calculation since 2019. You cannot sit on the steps. Sitting is prohibited and officers move people on, sometimes with a fine. What used to be the best place in Rome to rest for twenty minutes is now somewhere you pass through.
Three ways up
| Route | Effort | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| The 135 steps | 4–6 min, real climb | Flights with landings. Warm work in July, and hard on knees and hips |
| Spagna Metro lift | Minutes, no climbing | Rises to Villa Borghese level and puts you out on the Pincio side. Check it is in service |
| By road, viale della Trinità dei Monti | None | How a vehicle reaches the top terrace. You arrive level with the church |
The third is what we do. There is no cleverness in it. It is a road that goes to the top, and most visitors never learn it exists because they arrive from the shopping streets below.
Don't stop when you get there
Almost everybody gets this part wrong: they climb, they photograph, and then they go straight back down the way they came.
From Trinità dei Monti the road runs level along the edge of the hill to the Pincio terrace, about six minutes on a gentle rise. From the balustrade you look straight down onto Piazza del Popolo: the obelisk, the twin churches, the oval of the square, with the dome of St Peter's beyond. In the hour before sunset it is the best free view in this half of Rome, and there are benches.
Keep going and you are in Villa Borghese, which is shaded, quiet and has real seating. Turn down instead and you come out in Piazza del Popolo itself, from which the only way out for a vehicle is via di Ripetta. Not a preference on our part: a rule of the road.
The hour matters more than the route
- Before 09:00. The steps are close to empty and the light comes from the east onto the church front.
- 11:00–19:00. The densest hours, and the bottom of the steps is the densest part of it.
- Around sunset. The Pincio at its best. Arrive thirty minutes before, not after.
- After 22:00. Thin crowd, church lit, stone still warm from the day. In August this is the only civilised hour to be here.
Why we never go down to the square
Two reasons, and neither is that the square is not worth seeing.
The first is arithmetic. Piazza di Spagna is pedestrian and its approaches are restricted, so a vehicle stops several minutes away regardless. Going down means a walk in, a crowd, a walk back and a climb: twenty-five minutes to stand somewhere you are not allowed to sit.
The second is that the better version is already at the top. In the same twenty-five minutes from the upper terrace you get Trinità dei Monti, the Pincio and the descent to Piazza del Popolo, which is three viewpoints in the time the other version spends on one crowd.
That sequence, top of the steps to Pincio to Popolo and out along via di Ripetta, is the spine of most of our afternoon routes, which is why guests do not arrive at the terrace out of breath.
When the bottom is the right answer
If via Condotti and the shopping are part of your day, start at the bottom. That is where the shops are, and walking up at seven in the morning is genuinely pleasant.
If you want the Keats-Shelley house, it sits at the foot of the steps on the right, and it is a good small museum that almost nobody enters.
And if you have never seen the staircase from below, see it once. It is a great piece of eighteenth-century theatre, and the view from the top does not replace it. Just do not attempt it at two in the afternoon in July with a bad knee.
One thing worth knowing while you stand there
The obelisk in front of the church is Roman, not Egyptian: a Roman copy carved in imitation of the Egyptian ones, moved here later. Rome has thirteen ancient obelisks standing, more than any city in the world including Cairo, and several of them were made by Romans who liked the originals enough to produce their own.
Details like that change what you are looking at, and supplying them is most of what a driver is for.
The short version
The Spanish Steps are the monument. Trinità dei Monti is the view. If you can only manage one, take the top, and then keep walking to the Pincio.
If you are staying nearby, the pick-up logistics in this quarter are their own subject: tours from Piazza di Spagna sets out which corners a vehicle can actually use.
Trinità dei Monti, the Pincio and Piazza del Popolo in one level sequence, without the 135 steps. €390 for one to three guests, €490 for four or five, €590 for six or seven.