Gianicolo Walk: what to see and tips

The Janiculum Promenade is the scenic road that climbs the hill above Trastevere, at 88 meters above sea level: two avenues of plane trees, a great belvedere with Rome at your feet, and statues, busts and plaques recalling the Risorgimento. It is one of the places with the finest view over the historic center, as far as the Alban Hills.

Every day, at noon sharp, a cannon fires a blank shot from the square. It is a habit going back to Pius IX, who introduced it in 1847 to bring the bells of Rome into agreement, each of them ringing by the time of its own sacristan. On the quietest days the bang can be heard as far as the Esquiline.

In 1849 the hill was the scene of the heroic defense of the Roman Republic against the French summoned by Pius IX. After Unification it became a large public park and a kind of memorial to the Risorgimento.

On the highest square stands the monument to Giuseppe Garibaldi on horseback, unveiled in 1895. A little farther on his wife Anita, on horseback too, gallops with a pistol in hand and her newborn son in her arms: her remains have rested beneath the monument since 1932.

Along the road that descends toward St. Peter's, 84 marble half-busts portray Garibaldi's men, from the Thousand to those who held out for weeks against the French, who were far more numerous and better armed. On many plaques towns and states remember their fallen, from Palermo to Montevideo.

On the belvedere, a balustrade carries the full text of the 1849 Constitution of the Roman Republic: it is the Wall of the Roman Republic, unveiled in 2011. At the southern end of the hill, Porta San Pancrazio houses the museum of the Roman Republic.

To the north is the Janiculum Lighthouse, a gift from the Italians of Buenos Aires for the fiftieth anniversary of Unification. Beside it grows an ombú, the Argentine tree, of which only two other specimens exist in Rome.

At the far end the road descends in hairpins toward Sant'Onofrio, where Torquato Tasso came to die. He spent the last months of his life in the convent; his oak, struck by lightning in 1843 and damaged by fire in 2011, remains as a memorial. Leopardi visited it in the early 1800s.

Don't miss
• The belvedere of Piazzale Garibaldi.
• The noon cannon.
• The monuments to Garibaldi and Anita.
• The Janiculum Lighthouse.

Did you know?
• According to tradition the Janiculum is named after the god Janus, but it is not one of Rome's seven hills.
• In 1904 the cannon arrived here from Castel Sant'Angelo, spending a few months at Monte Mario along the way.