Celebrating New Year in Rome: events, parties and traditions.
Rome will ring in the New Year with a free concert whose line-up includes Elodie, Franco 126, Madame and Sangiovanni.
The
Rome Restarts 2023 concert will kick off at
21.30 on
31 December 2022 at the
Circus Maximus, with a
dj set keeping the party going into the wee hours.
On 1 January 2023, New Year's Day, the city will host a programme of free cultural events including concerts, guided tours, shows, readings and activities for children.
The
Capodarte initiative will be held in various areas of Rome in
museums, libraries, cinemas and theatres, including the city's
opera house.
New Year's Eve parties
New Year's food
The traditional Italian New Year’s Eve meal consists of cotechino (similar to salami), zampone (stuffed pig’s trotters), and lentils which are meant to bring luck for the coming year, all washed down with a glass or two of prosecco or spumante.
Dining out
If you wish to dine out on New Year's Eve it is best to reserve your table well in advance – and be prepared to pay more than usual; for inspiration see
Wanted in Rome's
restaurant listings.
Fireworks
The best places to watch fireworks light up the skies over Rome include the Gianicolo, over Trastevere, and Pincio, over Piazza del Popolo.
New Year's Eve traditions
A well-known but almost-extinct Capodanno tradition (in Rome at least) involves people throwing old objects out the window, symbolising their readiness to welcome in the new year.
Another Italian superstition holds that wearing red underwear when the clock strikes midnight will bring good luck for the year ahead.
Getting home
Metro services run until 02.30 on New Year's Eve (early hours of 1 Jan), substituted from 03.30 until 08.00 with nightbuses. On New Year's Day,
Rome's public transport network resumes at 08.00 and follows the normal
festivo timetable.
New Year's Day Parade
Some of America's best-known high school marching bands will stage a free, family-orientated
parade in central Rome on 1 January to celebrate New Year's Day.
The annual event involves US marching bands joining forces with Italian musical folk groups to perform alongside majorettes, street performers, dancers and historical re-enactors, starting in Piazza del Popolo at 15.30.
Plunge into the Tiber?
One of the city’s most unusual spectacles on New Year’s Day is the Tuffo nel Tevere. At midday daredevil divers thrill the crowds by making the 17-metre plunge off Ponte Cavour into the icy waters of the Tiber below.