You cannot ride into the heart of Rome with any dignity, but you can arrive in a way that does the city justice. Come in by the Appian Way, the Via Appia Antica, laid down in 312 BC by the censor Appius Claudius and later called the queen of roads, and the approach tells you who built this city and what they wanted from it. The old stone surface, with its basalt blocks, still runs for miles south of the walls, between pines, tombs and lonely arches of aqueduct. Closer to the centre the road joins the real city, with the Colosseum, the Forum and the imperial fora lined up like a geology of power, the Pantheon with its famous open oculus, and then Baroque Rome, with Bernini fountains in squares that seem to appear around every corner.
The historic centre has been inhabited for nearly three thousand years, and the layers show. The Tiber bends around it, the seven hills rise above it, and the Vatican, a state of its own, sits just across the river. Rome is tangled and noisy and beautiful in the way that very old cities are, and the best way to see it is on foot with a good map and no plan.
For a rider, the city is a test of nerve and patience. The centre is a limited-traffic zone with cameras at its gates, so bikes without a permit can be fined if they enter at the wrong time. Locals zigzag past on scooters, buses and taxis share narrow lanes, and the setts, the small square cobbles known as sampietrini, turn greasy in rain and can throw a bike sideways. Park outside, in one of the paid car parks or on the streets beyond the walls, and take a bus, tram or your own two feet. Evenings are better than midday, when the heat and the tourists peak together.
Outside the city the ride picks up. The Alban Hills to the south-east have winding roads through chestnut woods and lakes in old volcanic craters, and the road to Tivoli and Villa d'Este, with its fountains, is an easy morning's run. The ring road is fast and crowded, with petrol stations at regular intervals on the outskirts. Anywhere in the city, you are never far from a decent coffee, a supplì, or a bowl of cacio e pepe.