Rome for The Time Travellers: a Friday-to-Monday weekend

The 'square Colosseum', 216 arches of travertine rationalism built for a world fair that never happened, now restored and open.

Libera's congress hall and the axis to the artificial lake, Rome's only planned modern district; walk it as the office lights come on.

A clean-lined dining room on the Flaminia axis, modern Roman cooking with a tasting menu that stays short; the splurge of the weekend.

The guided ticket that takes you down into the hypogeum and up to the arena floor; book the official tour weeks ahead, it sells out.

A fortified monastery on the Celio, a cloister of 1220, and the Oratory of St Sylvester with its frescoes of Constantine; ring for the nuns.

Rome's oldest restaurant, in business since 1518, with a hidden back room where every conspiracy in the city has been discussed over vignarola.

Zaha Hadid's flowing concrete museum, the ramps and the black steel stairs; the building is the exhibit, whatever is hanging in it.

Richard Meier's white glass box around the altar of Augustus, the most argued-about modern building in Rome; the frieze is worth the argument.

A Fendi-family villa by the river, art-nouveau interiors and a starred kitchen; dinner in the garden room if the evening is warm.

A Roman magistrate's Egyptian tomb from 12 BC built into the Aurelian walls, beside the gate where the road to the port began.

The iron gas holder of 1937 as skyline, with Blu's murals on the former barracks; the district the city forgot and then rediscovered.

The new market hall's steel canopy, lunch from the stalls: Mordi e Vai's braised beef sandwiches, or pasta at the counter by the Roman ruins.