Playing Assassin's Creed Brotherhood Before a Stay in Prati

Every few weeks a guest comes down to breakfast and tells me they already know the way to Castel Sant'Angelo because they climbed it in Assassin's Creed Brotherhood. They are half right. The castle is where the game put it, and it is a short walk from our door. What they usually do not know is that almost everything they will walk through to get there did not exist in Ezio's Rome, and that the one route the game handles beautifully is the one most visitors never notice.

I have written about this neighbourhood for more than a decade, and I replayed Brotherhood last winter with a paper map beside me to see how it lines up. Here is what transfers, what does not, and how to use the game as a planning tool rather than a tour.

The Rome in the game is about 370 years older than Prati

Brotherhood came out in 2010 and is set between roughly 1499 and 1507, when the Borgia family held the papacy. The game divides Rome into districts, and the land north of the Vatican where our guest house stands appears as countryside. That is accurate. In 1500 this area was the Prati di Castello, literally the meadows of the castle, a stretch of fields and vineyards outside the walls along the river.

The neighbourhood you see today was built after 1870, when Rome became the capital of a united Italy and needed housing for a new government class. Planners laid it out on a grid, gave it tall Umbertine apartment blocks, and named its streets after figures from the Roman Republic: Via Cicerone, Via dei Gracchi, Via degli Scipioni, and of course Via Ottaviano. The story locals still tell is that the streets were angled so you would not see the dome of St Peter's from Piazza Risorgimento, a quiet jab at the papacy that had just lost the city. I have never found the planning document that proves it, but stand at the piazza and look, and you will see why the story survives.

So when a guest says the game has prepared them for Prati, I tell them the opposite is true. The game shows you what was here before the neighbourhood, which is a much more interesting thing to carry in your head as you walk.

What the game gets right: the Passetto

The single most useful thing Brotherhood teaches is the Passetto di Borgo. It is a raised, fortified corridor running about 800 metres from the Vatican to Castel Sant'Angelo, built on top of a wall. In the game you can run along it, and its purpose is obvious: it is an escape route for a pope in trouble. That is exactly what it was used for. Pope Alexander VI, the Borgia pope at the centre of the game's story, used it in 1494, and Clement VII fled along it during the Sack of Rome in 1527.

In real life the Passetto is easy to walk past without noticing, because the street level has risen and buildings press up against it. From our door, head down to Via di Porta Castello or wander into Borgo Pio, and look up. The long brick wall with the covered walkway on top is the same one Ezio ran across. Most days the corridor itself is closed, but Castel Sant'Angelo has opened it for guided visits in some summers, so check the castle's own site before you go if you want to walk it.

The game cannot show you Prati, because Prati did not exist. What it can show you is the escape route that runs straight past our street.

Where the game will mislead you

Video game cities compress distance, and Brotherhood compresses Rome a lot. In the game, the Colosseum and the Vatican feel like a few minutes' sprint apart. On foot it is a little over 4 kilometres, closer to 55 minutes if you stop to look at anything. Guests who plan a morning based on game distances tend to arrive at the Colosseum tired and late for their time slot.

The other big difference is St Peter's itself. Because the game is set before 1506, it shows the older basilica, not the one you will queue for. Bernini's colonnade, which frames the piazza and which almost everyone photographs, came in the 1650s and 1660s. If you remember the square from the game as a rougher, more open space, your memory is correct for the period, and you will find the real thing much grander and much more crowded.

A few other points worth adjusting:

• The climb in the game takes seconds. The real ramp and stairs inside Castel Sant'Angelo take most visitors 30 to 40 minutes to reach the terrace, with stops on the way.
• The game's rooftops are continuous. Real Roman rooftops are not, and the views in the game come from points you cannot reach. The terrace of the castle is the closest substitute.
• Crowds in the game are thin and polite. Expect Ponte Sant'Angelo to be busy from about 10 a.m. on most days between April and October.

Our page on the best viewpoints near the Vatican lists the places where you can get something like that rooftop feeling without climbing anything you should not.

A half day walk built from the game

If you enjoyed the game, here is a route I give guests who want to see its Rome while staying grounded in the city as it is now. It starts at our door near the Ottaviano stop on Metro line A.

Walk down Via Ottaviano to Piazza Risorgimento and look for St Peter's dome, or the lack of it. Continue into Borgo Pio, which is the closest thing in the area to the narrow lanes Ezio climbs, and follow the Passetto wall east. It brings you out in front of Castel Sant'Angelo after about 20 minutes of easy walking. Visit the castle in the morning when it is quieter, and spend time on the terrace, which looks back along the corridor toward the Vatican. Then cross Ponte Sant'Angelo and turn around on the far bank. The view of the castle from there is very close to the one the game uses in its loading screens.

If you are also visiting the museums, read our first timer's guide to the Vatican before you book, since the timing matters more than people expect. For the modern side of the neighbourhood, our walk through Prati and Ottaviano picks up where this one leaves off.

Before you arrive, load your old save, or start a new game, and spend 20 minutes in the Vatican district. Find the Passetto and run it end to end, then note where it touches the river. When you walk out of our front door on your first morning, you will already know which way the wall runs, and you will be looking up at it rather than walking straight past.