Rome is the most literarily documented city in the history of Western writing — from Cicero and Virgil through to Henry James, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Gore Vidal, almost every major figure in Western literature either lived in Rome, visited Rome, or set their most important work there. The specific literary Rome circuit focuses on the 18th-19th century Northern European writers — the 'Grand Tour' generation for whom Rome was the essential civilising experience, the terminal destination, and in several cases the final city. Keats, Shelley, Goethe, Byron, Hans Christian Andersen, Henrik Ibsen, and Henry James all lived in the streets between the Spanish Steps and the Testaccio — the specific Anglo-American and German literary Rome of the 18th-19th century that produced some of the defining works of Romantic and Victorian literature. Rome guide
Plan my Italy trip →Keats-Shelley House: Piazza di Spagna 26; EUR 5; where Keats died 1821 | Goethe Museum: Via del Corso 18; EUR 5; Goethe's Rome apartment 1786-88 | Non-Catholic Cemetery: Via Caio Cestio, Testaccio; free/donation; Keats + Shelley buried here | Babington's Tea Room: Piazza di Spagna 23; open since 1893; the English writers' tearoom | Antico Caffè Greco: Via Condotti 86; open since 1760; Goethe, Keats, Byron all drank here
The Keats-Shelley House (Piazza di Spagna 26, Rome — EUR 5; open Monday-Saturday 10am-1pm and 2pm-6pm; the right-hand corner building directly at the foot of the Spanish Steps, looking at the steps from the Barcaccia fountain) is the apartment where John Keats died on February 23, 1821, at the age of 25. Keats had come to Rome in November 1820 with his friend the painter Joseph Severn, on the advice of his doctors who believed the mild Roman winter would arrest the tuberculosis that had been progressing since 1818. The apartment: two rooms on the second floor, with the window of the main room looking out directly onto the Spanish Steps — the specific view that Keats could observe from his sickbed without leaving the apartment. Keats spent his final months in this view, unable to speak (the tuberculosis was in his lungs; he could whisper only). His final request for his gravestone: 'Here lies one whose name was writ in water' — the most famous epitaph in English literary history, expressing his conviction that his work would be forgotten. The gravestone at the Non-Catholic Cemetery (Testaccio, 20 minutes walk or one metro stop from the Spanish Steps) adds, by permission of his friends, 'Young English Poet' above the requested epitaph. The museum: the Keats-Shelley House preserves the room where he died, his death mask, a lock of his hair, letters, and a substantial library of Romantic-period literature. The adjacent rooms document Shelley, Byron, and the wider Romantic circle's Roman connections. Rome guide
The Cimitero Acattolico (the Non-Catholic Cemetery of Rome, also called the Protestant Cemetery or the Cemetery of Artists and Poets — Via Caio Cestio 6, Testaccio, Rome; open Monday-Saturday 9am-5pm, Sunday 9am-1pm; free entry, donation requested; the most atmospheric cemetery in Rome and the specific destination of the Rome literary walk): Percy Bysshe Shelley is buried here (Shelley drowned in the Bay of Spezia in July 1822 at 29, a year after Keats; his body was cremated on the beach at Viareggio in the presence of Byron and Trelawny — the specific detail: Edward Trelawny plunged his hand into the funeral pyre to retrieve Shelley's heart, which was not burning because of its calcification from a childhood tuberculosis attack; the heart was eventually buried separately at Bournemouth). Shelley's grave in the Non-Catholic Cemetery has the Latin inscription from Shakespeare's 'The Tempest' that Shelley had chosen for himself: 'Cor Cordium' (Heart of Hearts) plus 'Nothing of him that doth fade / But doth suffer a sea-change / Into something rich and strange.' John Keats is also buried in the cemetery — his grave is in the older section (the 'Old Cemetery'), Shelley's in the newer section. Goethe's Rome: Johann Wolfgang von Goethe arrived in Rome on November 1, 1786, travelling incognito as a merchant (he had been working at the Weimar court and left without telling his patron Duke Karl August, overwhelmed by the need to see Italy). He stayed in a rented room at Via del Corso 18 (now the Casa di Goethe — EUR 5; open Tuesday-Sunday 10am-6pm; the museum documenting Goethe's Roman years through his own sketches, letters, and the specific Roman social circle) for two years, during which he wrote the key sections of Faust, Iphigenie auf Tauris, and the Römische Elegien (the erotic elegies addressed to his Roman lover Faustina). Goethe's own description of arriving in Rome: 'I count a second birthday, a true rebirth, from the day I entered Rome.'
The Keats-Shelley House (Piazza di Spagna 26, Rome — EUR 5; open Monday-Saturday 10am-1pm and 2pm-6pm) is the apartment where John Keats died on February 23, 1821, at age 25. The building at the foot of the Spanish Steps (left-hand side as you face the steps) houses the two rooms where Keats spent his final months — he could see the Spanish Steps from his sickbed window. The museum preserves his death mask, a lock of hair, letters, and a Romantic-period library. Keats's gravestone inscription ('Here lies one whose name was writ in water') was his own request, expressing his fear his work would be forgotten.
John Keats is buried in the Cimitero Acattolico (the Non-Catholic Cemetery, Via Caio Cestio 6, Testaccio — open Monday-Saturday 9am-5pm, Sunday 9am-1pm; free, donation requested; accessible via Metro B to Piramide or bus to Via Marmorata). His grave is in the Old Cemetery section (the older of the two sections). The gravestone reads 'Here lies one whose name was writ in water' (his own requested epitaph) plus 'Young English Poet' added by his friends. Percy Bysshe Shelley is buried in the New Cemetery section, with the 'Cor Cordium' inscription. Antonio Gramsci (the Italian Marxist philosopher) is also buried here.
The Casa di Goethe (Via del Corso 18, Rome — EUR 5; open Tuesday-Sunday 10am-6pm) is the apartment where Johann Wolfgang von Goethe lived from November 1786 to April 1788 — the two years he spent in Rome after leaving the Weimar court incognito. The museum documents Goethe's Roman circle (the German artists' colony of late 18th-century Rome, including the painter Tischbein who painted the famous Goethe in the Roman Campagna portrait), his own drawings and sketches made in Rome, and the Römische Elegien (the erotic elegies written to his Roman lover Faustina). Goethe's own words on arriving: 'I count a second birthday, a true rebirth, from the day I entered Rome.'
The Antico Caffè Greco (Via Condotti 86, Rome — open daily from 9am; the prices are tourist-level: EUR 5-8 for espresso at a table; no requirement to sit at a table if drinking at the bar at EUR 2-3) has been operating at the same location since 1760 — the oldest continuously operating café in Rome and one of the oldest in the world. The documented literary patrons: Goethe (during his 1786-1788 Rome stay, a regular at the Caffè Greco for the specific German intellectual social circle that gathered there); Lord Byron, John Keats, Percy Shelley, and Hans Christian Andersen (all documented in the café's own historical records and in the letters of the period). The interior: the 19th-century red velvet and mirror décor, the specific corridor of small rooms leading to the main saloon, and the collection of 19th-century paintings and busts (including portraits of the famous patrons) create the most specifically preserved 18th-century café interior in Rome.
The Rome literary walk route (approximately 5 km, 4-5 hours with stops): start at the Antico Caffè Greco (Via Condotti 86 — the 1760 literary café); walk to the Piazza di Spagna and the Barcaccia fountain (the Spanish Steps approach); visit the Keats-Shelley House (Piazza di Spagna 26 — EUR 5, 45 minutes); walk the Spanish Steps; continue along the Via del Corso to the Casa di Goethe (Via del Corso 18 — EUR 5, 45 minutes); walk south through the Trastevere to the Testaccio neighbourhood; visit the Non-Catholic Cemetery (Via Caio Cestio 6 — free, 30 minutes; Keats and Shelley graves); the nearby Pyramid of Cestius provides the specific Romantic-Rome visual backdrop that Byron and Shelley both described in their letters. Return by Metro B from Piramide station.
Antico Caffè Greco 1760 + Keats-Shelley House EUR 5 + Spanish Steps no sitting + Goethe Via del Corso + Non-Catholic Cemetery Testaccio Keats + Shelley.
Plan my trip →The Non-Catholic Cemetery (Cimitero Acattolico, Via Caio Cestio 6, Testaccio — open Monday-Saturday 9am-5pm, Sunday 9am-1pm; free, donation requested) contains: John Keats (Old Cemetery section — 'Here lies one whose name was writ in water'); Percy Bysshe Shelley (New Cemetery section — 'Cor Cordium'; 'Nothing of him that doth fade / But doth suffer a sea-change'); Antonio Gramsci (the Italian Marxist philosopher and founder of the Italian Communist Party, who died in a Fascist prison in 1937 — the grave is in the New Cemetery and is the most visited grave in the cemetery by Italian visitors); and the painter Karl Briullov and the Russian romantic poets, who form a distinct Russian section of the New Cemetery. The cemetery's also known as the 'Cemetery of Poets and Artists' — the informal name recognises the specific cultural significance of its non-Catholic (Protestant, Orthodox, Jewish, and secular) international population.
Goethe's Rome writings: the Italienische Reise (Italian Journey — written 1813-1816 from the journals and letters of his 1786-1788 Italy journey; the most influential travel book about Italy in the German tradition) documents the specific Roman experience that transformed Goethe's life: the liberation from the obligations of the Weimar court, the immersion in classical antiquity, the Roman social freedom, and the erotic relationships. The specific Roman Goethe diary: 'Here I am at last in this city, the capital of the world... to have once seen it is worth an eternity.' The Römische Elegien (Roman Elegies — written 1788-1790, published 1795 after heavy editing to remove the most erotic passages): 24 elegies addressed to Faustina, his Roman lover, in the specific Latin elegiac metre of Ovid and Tibullus — the only surviving major German Enlightenment erotic poetry in classical Latin form.
Rome literary connections beyond the Romantic period: Henry James lived at the Via Gregoriana 46 (2 minutes walk from the top of the Spanish Steps) in 1869-1870 and used the specific Rome experience for Daisy Miller (1878) and Roderick Hudson (1875 — the American sculptor who destroys himself in Rome, the most specifically Rome-as-danger James novel); Nathaniel Hawthorne lived in Rome 1858-1859 while writing The Marble Faun (1860, published in Britain as Transformation) — the novel's plot is set almost entirely in the specific Rome locations Hawthorne visited (the Capitoline Hill, the Catacombs of San Callisto, the Villa Borghese); and Gore Vidal lived in the Palazzo Origo on the Via Fontanella Borghese in Rome from the 1960s to his death in 2012 — his home became one of the most important American literary salons in Rome for 50 years.
The Grand Tour (the specific 17th-18th century custom of Northern European upper-class young men travelling to Italy as the final stage of their formal education, with Rome as the essential terminus): Rome was the Grand Tour destination because it was simultaneously the capital of antiquity (the ruins of the Forum, the Pantheon, the Colosseum), the capital of the Catholic Church (which Northern European Protestants visited with a mixture of fascination and theological disapproval), and the capital of the visual arts (the specific Roman collections — the Farnese, the Borghese, the papal galleries — were the most accessible to the non-specialist of any European art concentrations). The Grand Tour typically lasted 2-3 years in the 17th-18th century; Rome occupied 2-6 months of this period. The specific Grand Tour Rome circuit: the ruins (the Forum, the Palatine), the churches (St. Peter's, Santa Maria Maggiore, San Giovanni in Laterano), and the art collections (the Borghese Gallery, the Vatican Museums). Goethe's Italian Journey is the most influential single Grand Tour memoir; Edward Gibbon developed the idea for the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire while sitting among the ruins of the Forum in 1764.