The countryside and towns outside Rome offer a whole range of Etruscan and Roman sites and buildings, Renaissance villas, monasteries and sanctuaries going back to the earliest centuries of Christianity, and fine gardens, as well as exceptionally beautiful scenery. 

Tivoli is unique, in that it has three World Heritage Sites, the Villa d'Este, Hadrian's Villa and Villa Gregoriana.

Ostia Antica: the port of ancient Rome.

Palazzo Farnese at Caprarola and the Villa Lante at Bagnaia: these are grand country residences of popes and cardinals dating from sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, with splendid garden and fountains, set in the beautiful wooded, hilly countryside north of Rome.

Anagni and the Cyclopean walls of Alatri. This is south of Rome, towards Frosinone. Anagni is built almost entirely of stone and is one of Italy's finest mediaeval cities; it produced three popes in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries and has a world-class Romanesque cathedral, with lavishly frescoed crypt, and many other extremely handsome buildings. The walls of Alatri, built of great stones weighing several tons each, go back to the fourth century BC. Nearby is the vast monastery, the Certosa di Trisulti, dating to the thirteenth century.

The Etruscan sites of Cerveteri, Tarquinia and others.