There is a McDonald's 400 meters from the Colosseum. It sits on Via Cavour, a road that also contains: 3 panifici (bakeries) selling pizza al taglio for €3/slice, 2 bars serving espresso for €1, a forno with supplì (fried rice balls with mozzarella) for €2, and a trattoria where carbonara costs €10. The McDonald's Big Mac costs €5.90. The pizza + supplì + espresso costs €6 total — AND it's food that represents 1,000 years of Roman culinary evolution. This is not food snobbery. This is mathematics. And taste. And respect for one of the greatest food cultures in human history.
Plan my real food Italy →McDonald's Big Mac meal (Italy): €8.50-9.50. Burger + fries + drink. Identical to every McDonald's on Earth. Italian street food equivalent: Pizza al taglio (2 slices, €3-4) + supplì or arancino (€2) + espresso (€1) + nasone water (€0) = €6-7 total. Better food. Less money. And you didn't fly 9 hours to eat the same burger you eat at home.
The calorie equivalent if you're genuinely hungry: Panino con porchetta (€5 — slow-roasted pork, crackling skin, rosemary, the best sandwich in Roman history) + supplì (€2) + Coca-Cola from any bar (€2) = €9 total, same as a Big Mac meal, but the porchetta was slow-roasted for 8 hours by someone's uncle and the supplì was hand-rolled this morning.
Rome: Bonci pizza al taglio (€3-5), supplì trail (€2 each), trapizzino at Testaccio (€3.50 — pocket of pizza dough stuffed with Roman stews). Naples: Margherita pizza at Di Matteo (€4 — the pizza that invented pizza), cuoppo fritto (fried seafood cone, €5), sfogliatella at Pintauro (€2 — 200 layers of pastry). Florence: Lampredotto sandwich at Nerbone (€4), schiacciata at Antico Vinaio (€5-7). Milan: Panzerotto at Luini (€3 — fried dough stuffed with mozzarella + tomato). Sicily: Arancini (€2), granita + brioche (€4 — the Sicilian breakfast that makes cereal look like a crime against humanity).
Italy has the greatest street food culture in Europe. Every region, every city, every neighborhood has its fast, cheap, handheld specialty — developed over centuries by people who needed to eat quickly between work and church and market. These aren't "elevated" or "artisanal" — they're street food in the original sense: a nonna making supplì in a back kitchen, a pizzaiolo cutting slabs from a sheet pan, a fisherman frying today's catch on the dock. They cost the same as McDonald's because they ARE the local fast food. McDonald's exists in Italy because it's familiar to tourists and convenient for Italian teenagers. You are not an Italian teenager. You flew here to taste Italy. So taste Italy.
The McDonald's at Piazza di Spagna (Spanish Steps) is worth entering — not for the food, but because it's the most beautifully designed McDonald's in the world. Mario Botta architecture, marble interior, coffee bar with espresso that's actually decent. Enter, use the bathroom (the cleanest in tourist Rome), maybe grab an espresso, then walk 50 meters to the nearest panificio and eat real food.