The Vespa—that iconic, curvaceous, 1950s-style scooter—is the classic Roman form of transportation, immortalized by Audrey Hepburn and Gregory Peck in Roman Holiday. You can rent your own to tool around the city, or you can sign up for a guided Vespa tour of Roman highlights.
Everyone will tell you never to get on a scooter in Italy. They say motorini are too dangerous, too unstable, too unpredictable, and the surrounding traffic is too insane.
They say you'll inevitably get into an accident and return home with, if you're lucky, an ugly road rash from skidding through gravel in your shorts at 30mph (and, if you're unlucky, a cracked skull).
Poppycock. I rent scooters in Italy all the time and the worst injury I've ever suffered was a bent-back thumbnail once when I misjudged flicking the start button. The real issue is that people don't treat scooters with respect. They're just too cute: like baby motorcycles, or bikes pretending to be grown-ups with an engine and everything. Aww. Plus, they're just so much darn fun!
As a result, many people drive around, without a helmet, at high speeds. They rubberneck the sights, chat with their companion behind them, or sit there texting with one hand and steering with the other. That's just dumb. Remember: a scooter is essentially an undersized, underpowered, under-stabilized motorcycle.
It's not so much that scooters are dangerous as it is tourists are stupid (not people: tourists. People who are perfectly sane, rational, and responsible at home often transform into giddy idiots after just a few hours on an exciting, exotic, sun-drenched vacation).
Scooters also fool you into thinking you can join the cars racing all around as if an equal. You're not equal. You are perched precariously atop a tiny scrap of metal and plastic with wheels. The drivers of the cars are cocooned in a protective metal shell padded by airbags and such. If you get hit by a car, you'll be road kill; they'll probably just think they hit a bad pothole.
Yes, scooters are dangerous—though not much more so than walking—and yes the traffic in Italy is atrocious, doubling the danger, so take precautions:
In other words: do no, under any circumstances, drive like the locals, who are used to the traffic rules and have been riding a motorino since the age of 14.
Take a guided tour of Rome with one of our partners:
Planning your day: Rome wasn't built in a day, and you'd be hard-pressed to see it in that brief a time as well. Still, you can cram a lot into just a day or three.
To help you get the most out of your limited time in the Eternal City, here are some perfect itineraries, whether you have one, two, three, or four days to spend in Rome.
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This article was written by Reid Bramblett and was last updated in March 2014.
All information was accurate at the time.
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