In the Eternal City, Walk in a Roman's Sandals

On one visit, after I had been gone for about two years, I had barely crossed the threshold when one of the brothers greeted me with a reproachful "We're out of pizza bianca, Miss. You should have called us from the plane!"

I usually take my pizza break on the low wall next to the Pantheon (Piazza della Rotonda), marveling at perhaps the best-preserved monument of ancient Rome. This perfectly proportioned, vast dome-topped structure has been a temple for 1,900 years, the last 1,400 as a Christian church.

Armed with ice cream from a nearby gelateria, I amble through the contorted medieval streets, past Renaissance and baroque palaces, all in the earthy ocher and golden tones of Rome, until I make my way to the most annoyingly tourist-thronged attraction of all, Fontana di Trevi (the Trevi Fountain, in the Piazza di Trevi).

Poor Neptune, sculpted in 1762, had to stand by as Anita Ekberg epically bathed in the large fountain in front of him in Fellini's "La Dolce Vita," and he continues to tolerate the ritual that I can't resist: Tossing in a coin, said to ensure a prompt return to Rome. There's more "sweet life" down the street at the inordinately expensive boutiques lining Via dei Condotti: I recently gawked at a golf-ball-size sapphire pendant in a Bulgari window. The street ends at the masterpiece of 18th-century theatricality, the voluptuously shaped Spanish Steps (in the Piazza di Spagna). Walk up them and a few hundred yards along the road, into the Villa Borghese park, to the terrace on the Pincio hill, overlooking vast Piazza del Popolo.

It's the best place to watch the sunset, as the red and golden light infuses the umbrella pines, the marble arches and the ornate church domes, including St. Peter's, in the panorama of Rome at your feet.

For dinner, I head back south to any of the restaurants along Via del Governo Vecchio, ranging from hip wine bars to no-sign, no-menu holes in the wall. The crowds wolfing down fiery pasta all'amatriciana (with pancetta) or cacio e pepe (pecorino cheese and black pepper) include as few tourists as you're likely to find in Rome's historic center, even though they're steps away from one of the most overrun marvels, the Piazza Navona.

Wait for the night to stroll to this exquisite elliptical square, which was a stadium for chariot races in Roman times and since 1651 has been the backdrop for one of the most flamboyant baroque sculptures, Gian Lorenzo Bernini's Fountain of the Four Rivers.

· Cradle of Christianity: On the second day of my two-day tour, I head to the Vatican along my favorite route: crossing the Tiber River across to Castel Sant'Angelo, a mausoleum built in A.D. 135, later transformed into a fortress. I then walk down the modern Via della Conciliazione into Piazza San Pietro. It was sculptor Bernini's genius to create the two embracing semicircles of gigantic columns that seem to welcome you into the heart of Christianity.

Check that your shoulders and knees are covered -- the dress code is strictly enforced here -- and walk into St. Peter's. (I got bounced once for a modest skirt.) The sheer immensity of the basilica is just as breathtaking as the treasures it contains, including Michelangelo's Pieta.

But the Renaissance master's defining work is a short walk away along the Vatican state's walls, inside the Vatican Museums' Sistine Chapel. In their grandiose, vibrant affirmation of life, Michelangelo's mid-16th-century "Genesis" and "Last Judgment" frescoes revolutionized how humanity related to divinity.

The Vatican Museums are like the Louvre or New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art: you could spend way more than two days alone among their Raphael paintings and classical Greek sculpture. Instead, back across the Tiber, I find the time to drop in at one of two churches, San Luigi dei Francesi (Via S. Giovanna D'Arco 5) or Sant'Agostino (Piazza S. Agostino), to see how Caravaggio transformed Western art again a mere 60 years after the Sistine frescoes.

The first church has his three canvases telling Saint Matthew's story, the other his Madonna dei Pellegrini, and both are still jolting in the unsparing realism with which holy figures are depicted. I love how Mary leans against a doorway holding baby Jesus to the adoration of a couple of dirty-footed pilgrims, with all the slightly bored insouciance of any matron chatting with the neighbors. Michelangelo had made faith majestically human; Caravaggio made it humbly real: Rome's own paradoxical combination.

Time for aperitivo. I like to have mine in any of the outdoor bars a few blocks away in Campo dei Fiori, a broad square lined by Renaissance palaces, followed by dinner in the packed trattorias and pizzerias in the surrounding streets.

My last visit to Rome ended a few blocks to the southeast on the Isola Tiberina, the tiny island in the middle of the river with bars and music stands during summer months. It was past 2 a.m., and I couldn't bear to tear myself away, hypnotized by the Tiber that flows under bridge after floodlit bridge, carrying the memories of millennia of civilization. Then I thought of my penny lying on the shining white marble bottom of the Trevi fountain. I will always come back to what is, after all, la citta eterna, the eternal city.