I have been awake for 18 hours, 15 of them spent walking. Jet lag and a determination to get some walls under my belt as soon as possible make a beautiful and terrible partnership. I’m going to keep this short, therefore, as I am barely capable of seeing the screen.

Three words: Museo delle Mura. It’s one of those marvelous gems hidden in plain sight inside the gigantic ancient, medieval and Renaissance gate/fortress of the Porta Appia. You walk up to the massive archway and just to the right is a door into a museum. Entrance fee: zero. Just buzz to be let in and up you go.

The contents are limited — a few plaster casts of brick crosses from surviving sections of the walls and gates, plastic models of the phases of construction, a topographical map illustrating the perimeter of the Servian Wall (ca. 4th century B.C.) and the far larger expansion of the city’s defenses built by Aurelian (271-275 A.D.).

The real treasure here is the museum itself. It’s really misnamed. It should be the Museo nelle Mura, the Museum in the Walls, instead of the Museum of the Walls. The modest displays are eclipsed by a truly fantastic wall walk that takes you through four of the surviving towers in the stretch of the Aurelian Wall, later given a second story by Honorius with more arrow slits and a roof.

The interior spaces, particularly in the two massive gate towers, are magnificent, but you will never get a view of Rome and environs like you do from the very top of the right tower. That’s if you dare to take the tiniest, tightest of spiral staircases to get up there, which of course I did because I am a most generous blogger.

Here’s the wall walk seen from above:

Here’s the Appia Antica heading south from the gate:

There’s much more, but that will have to tide you over for now as my moribund state demands sleep.