Power & Sins: Rome Behind the Scenes Audio Walk

Power & Sins is a self-guided audio walk through Rome, where palaces, churches and fountains tell you how power puts itself on display. Start whenever you like in Campo de' Fiori, with the audio playing on your own phone. Around you are voices, the smell of warm bread and the hooded figure of Giordano Bruno: a different presence in a square that feels lighthearted. Look at Palazzo Farnese as a statement of ambition. Alessandro Farnese, the future Pope Paul III, wanted more than a home, and the palace gives that ambition a shape you can still stand before. At the Temple of Hadrian, the columns speak for an emperor who became a god. You begin to read the city through what its powerful figures wanted others to see, and what they built to make that image last. There is room for quieter details, too. Beside the grand scene of the Trevi Fountain, the Lovers' Fountain has two simple spouts, crossing streams and a small stone basin. As you walk towards the Pantheon, let those changes in scale draw your attention: Rome can command a whole square, or ask you to look a little closer.