La Veranda Ristorante
Borgo Santo Spirito, 73
Tel. 06.68.72.973

It’s near the Vatican and among the most atmospheric restaurants in Rome. So the food isn’t great. It seems good enough when your feet ache and your mind reels from a full morning at the Vatican Museum, and you order simply – a pasta and, say, the very good steak – and you are sitting in what seems to be a crumbling, ancient palace, which indeed it is. There’s a courtyard garden to sit in when the weather and the management permits, and an elegant hotel upstairs. (Check out the public rooms when you go to the rest room.) The whole building was at one time a haven for the Knights Templar, a medieval military religious order. You’d know them as “crusaders.” Expensive.