Giardino degli Aranci

This guide to Giardino degli Aranci in Rome opens eight hundred years ago, with the Spanish monk Dominic de Guzmán planting an orange sapling on the Aventine Hill while awaiting papal approval for his new religious order. It traces the site through the Savelli family's medieval fortress, centuries of Dominican friars tending an orchard here, and architect Raffaele De Vico's 1932 replanting of the bitter orange trees you see today. Stand at the belvedere railing for the view over the Tiber toward Saint Peter's, then look for the small hole in the wall of the church next door.