Curated Itinerary
Rationalism in Rome: A Walking Tour of EUR
Five buildings of the EUR district on foot: the Salone delle Fontane, the former INA/INPS building, Libera’s Palazzo dei Congressi, the Palazzo della Civiltà Italiana and the Museum of Roman Civilization.
Take this route into Google Maps
From Salone delle Fontane to Museum of Roman Civilization – Virtual Tour 360°, in the order we curated them.
➤ Turn on the navigator in Google MapsIt opens in the Google Maps app with every stop already loaded, in the order we put them in. From there the route is yours: pick how you travel — on foot, by bike, by public transport or by car — change where you start and where you end, drag the stops into a different order, and add places of your own along the way.
EUR was planned for the 1942 world fair that never opened, and then built anyway. Its rationalist buildings stand around the artificial lake and the axes of the original plan, within a kilometre and a half of each other.
What you see
The walk begins among the buildings of the administrative front, the Salone delle Fontane and the former INA/INPS ministry, and reaches Adalberto Libera’s Palazzo dei Congressi, a 45-metre travertine cube designed in 1937 for the cancelled fair and completed in 1954.
Then the Palazzo della Civiltà Italiana, the square colosseum begun in 1938, and the Museum of Roman Civilization, where concrete vaults hold casts, models and reconstructions of the Roman world.
How to do it
On foot, five stops, 3.9 kilometres measured on the streets, about three hours. Metro B to EUR Palasport or EUR Fermi; the district is flat and the pavements are wide.
When to go
Spring and autumn. In summer the district has almost no shade and the travertine throws the light back.
Read the article
The magazine has a longer piece on this walk, with a photograph of each building and the history behind it: Rationalism in Rome, five buildings in EUR.
Step by step
Salone delle Fontane
A 1940s rationalist event space in Rome's EUR district, designed by Gaetano Minnucci with mosaic fountains, colonnades and sculptural gardens.
Building of the former INA/INPS – Ministry of Education, University and Research – Virtual Tour 360°
A 1928 rationalist masterpiece by Cesare Bazzani, this Rome government building housed the Ministry of National Education and is now undergoing redevelopment.
Palazzo dei Congressi — EUR by Adalberto Libera
Adalberto Libera’s winning entry for the 1937 EUR 42 competition is a 45-metre travertine cube wrapped around a single luminous void: an Italian rationalist…
Palazzo della Civiltà Italiana – Virtual Tour 360°
Italian Rationalism at its most theatrical scale: a travertine cube of 216 arches in Rome EUR, finished 1943 for an exposition that never opened.
Museum of Roman Civilization – Virtual Tour 360°
The Museum of Roman Civilization (Museo della Civiltà Romana) is a large-scale exhibition complex in the EUR district of Rome devoted entirely to the…
Download for tour navigation
PDF is the stop list with GPS, to print or keep on the phone. GPX for Garmin / Komoot / OsmAnd. KML for Google Earth and Maps.
Walk it with the navigator on
It opens in the Google Maps app with every stop already loaded, in the order we put them in. From there the route is yours: pick how you travel — on foot, by bike, by public transport or by car — change where you start and where you end, drag the stops into a different order, and add places of your own along the way.
To keep the route in the app instead of opening it once, download the KML above and import it into Google My Maps — Create a new map, then Import: the route then sits among your own maps in Google Maps, with the stops and our notes attached to each one.