Exploring Rome like Emily in Paris: The real locations behind season 5
In Rome all the city’s great landmarks are easy to get to — but away from the touristy hubbub, you can find ancient secrets and authentic food
Matt Charlton - 4 December 2025
It’s almost a relief: so many travel pieces are supposed to take you down the road less travelled, or shed light on hidden alcoves of well-known locations. Thankfully, the new season of Emily in Paris has afforded me opportunity to indulge my utterly basic side and lean into clichés… not of writing or plotting (I’ll leave that to the show), but of treading the oft-trodden cobblestones of one of the most popular tourist cities in the world.
The Eternal City co-headlines alongside the City of Light in season five of Netflix’s glossy guilty pleasure starring Lily Collins, with much of the action centred around Rome’s Jewish Quarter, one of the oldest Jewish communities in the world, created as a ghetto in 1555. It’s immediately obvious why location scouts chose this as a backdrop: the tumbledown tangerine walls, the narrow, cobbled alleyways, the cute squares with bakeries, bars and kosher shops, and the numerous sites, including the Great Synagogue and Teatro di Marcello.
Image: The Pantheon, seen through the streets of Rome’s Old Town
It’s also, by day, an oasis of serenity in a chaotic metropolis where the Tarzan-like wail of Italian police sirens and mosquito buzz of free-range mopeds is never far away. The Turtle Fountain, a location for one of season five’s big moments, is just a few steps from the Jewish Quarter.
Emily stays at The Eden (dorchestercollection.com), while the real-life cast saved a few quid (if not a commute) by staying instead at the W Rome. The former is one of the grandes dames of Rome’s hotel offerings – all classic elegance meeting modern luxury, gorgeous breakfast views of Rome’s most famous landmarks, and the Spanish Steps and Trevi Fountain (which features in the season finale) just a coin’s throw away. Meanwhile the W (w-hotels.marriott.com) is contemporary, showbiz, high-spec, design-led, slick, and right next to the aforementioned Spanish Steps… two sides of a very classy coin indeed. (Please don’t sit on the steps though… it was banned in 2019.)
None of the big hitters – the Pantheon, Piazza Navona, the Forum – are more than half an hour’s walk away, but as I weave between the tourists, the mopeds and the guides making solemn promises about queue-skipping, I start to get that itch – first to scream and push all the slow-walking tourists out of the way, but then to step off the main gangways and find something a bit more local (uh-oh, what would Emily think?).
I was aided by a GoCity Pass (gocity.com), which, yes, gets you into the world-beating landmarks with queue-skips, but also affords you more intriguing curiosities such as pasta classes, bike tours… and something a bit more underground – literally so.
On my guided subterranean tour of the Trevi district, we explore an ancient building complex buried beneath the city and away from the tourists. It gives a whole new sense of the ancientness here, and of something fundamental about one of the greatest civilisations. (Emily might get her beret wet, however.)
The food is inevitably better and cheaper if you step away from the main tourist piazzas, too. In fact, a Roman friend told me once not to seek luxurious restaurants and cool environments: “The poorer the place looks, the better the food is”. I have two techniques. One is to follow the friend’s list, where I encounter Sora Margherita (soramargherita.com), an unassuming trattoria with an incredible line in deep-fried artichoke and fettuccine cacio e pepe, and Taverna Trilussa (tavernatrilussa.com), with its authentic and predictably delicious Roman dishes. My other tactic is the Eternal Rome Food Tour (eatingeurope.com), where my small group wanders, and gastro[1]nomically depletes, the picturesque streets of Campo de’ Fiori, Trastevere and the Jewish Ghetto. Come evening, the last takes on the kind of vibrancy and life that makes you feel like a local.
If you really want to follow in Emily’s footsteps , however, Hostaria da Giggetto (giggetto.it) is the restaurant that’s featured in the show, and you could genuinely do worse than use these Roman episodes of Emily in Paris as a framework for a short visit. She covers all the main points, luxuriates in the beauty, indulges in the plush hotels and shopping, and takes in the vital vistas.
But to add a little local sprinkle of La Dolce Vita, simply look a few yards further: ask for recommendations at the hole-in-the-wall restaurants, pester the guide for local tips and make sure you throw your coin in the Trevi Fountain. Legend has it that tossing one over your shoulder means you’ll return – in which case you can dig that little bit deeper when you come back to this magical place.
It’s almost a relief: so many travel pieces are supposed to take you down the road less travelled, or shed light on hidden alcoves of well-known locations. Thankfully, the new season of Emily in Paris has afforded me opportunity to indulge my utterly basic side and lean into clichés… not of writing or plotting (I’ll leave that to the show), but of treading the oft-trodden cobblestones of one of the most popular tourist cities in the world.
The Eternal City co-headlines alongside the City of Light in season five of Netflix’s glossy guilty pleasure starring Lily Collins, with much of the action centred around Rome’s Jewish Quarter, one of the oldest Jewish communities in the world, created as a ghetto in 1555. It’s immediately obvious why location scouts chose this as a backdrop: the tumbledown tangerine walls, the narrow, cobbled alleyways, the cute squares with bakeries, bars and kosher shops, and the numerous sites, including the Great Synagogue and Teatro di Marcello.
Image: The Pantheon, seen through the streets of Rome’s Old Town
It’s also, by day, an oasis of serenity in a chaotic metropolis where the Tarzan-like wail of Italian police sirens and mosquito buzz of free-range mopeds is never far away. The Turtle Fountain, a location for one of season five’s big moments, is just a few steps from the Jewish Quarter.
Emily stays at The Eden (dorchestercollection.com), while the real-life cast saved a few quid (if not a commute) by staying instead at the W Rome. The former is one of the grandes dames of Rome’s hotel offerings – all classic elegance meeting modern luxury, gorgeous breakfast views of Rome’s most famous landmarks, and the Spanish Steps and Trevi Fountain (which features in the season finale) just a coin’s throw away. Meanwhile the W (w-hotels.marriott.com) is contemporary, showbiz, high-spec, design-led, slick, and right next to the aforementioned Spanish Steps… two sides of a very classy coin indeed. (Please don’t sit on the steps though… it was banned in 2019.)
None of the big hitters – the Pantheon, Piazza Navona, the Forum – are more than half an hour’s walk away, but as I weave between the tourists, the mopeds and the guides making solemn promises about queue-skipping, I start to get that itch – first to scream and push all the slow-walking tourists out of the way, but then to step off the main gangways and find something a bit more local (uh-oh, what would Emily think?).
I was aided by a GoCity Pass (gocity.com), which, yes, gets you into the world-beating landmarks with queue-skips, but also affords you more intriguing curiosities such as pasta classes, bike tours… and something a bit more underground – literally so.
On my guided subterranean tour of the Trevi district, we explore an ancient building complex buried beneath the city and away from the tourists. It gives a whole new sense of the ancientness here, and of something fundamental about one of the greatest civilisations. (Emily might get her beret wet, however.)
The food is inevitably better and cheaper if you step away from the main tourist piazzas, too. In fact, a Roman friend told me once not to seek luxurious restaurants and cool environments: “The poorer the place looks, the better the food is”. I have two techniques. One is to follow the friend’s list, where I encounter Sora Margherita (soramargherita.com), an unassuming trattoria with an incredible line in deep-fried artichoke and fettuccine cacio e pepe, and Taverna Trilussa (tavernatrilussa.com), with its authentic and predictably delicious Roman dishes. My other tactic is the Eternal Rome Food Tour (eatingeurope.com), where my small group wanders, and gastro[1]nomically depletes, the picturesque streets of Campo de’ Fiori, Trastevere and the Jewish Ghetto. Come evening, the last takes on the kind of vibrancy and life that makes you feel like a local.
If you really want to follow in Emily’s footsteps , however, Hostaria da Giggetto (giggetto.it) is the restaurant that’s featured in the show, and you could genuinely do worse than use these Roman episodes of Emily in Paris as a framework for a short visit. She covers all the main points, luxuriates in the beauty, indulges in the plush hotels and shopping, and takes in the vital vistas.
But to add a little local sprinkle of La Dolce Vita, simply look a few yards further: ask for recommendations at the hole-in-the-wall restaurants, pester the guide for local tips and make sure you throw your coin in the Trevi Fountain. Legend has it that tossing one over your shoulder means you’ll return – in which case you can dig that little bit deeper when you come back to this magical place.