★ Internazionali BNL d'Italia

01Pourquoi c'est important

Rome is the last full-scale rehearsal for Roland-Garros and, since the rise of a generation of Italian players, has become the single biggest sporting week in the Italian calendar outside football. In our reading, its value to a visitor is that it puts good tennis inside an extraordinary piece of architecture in a city that is at its best in May, and that the combination is available for the price of a grounds ticket.

02La semaine environnante

May is the best month in Rome and the tournament sits in the middle of it, competing for attention with the city's spring programme rather than dominating it.

Sponsor activity is concentrated in the tournament village at the Foro Italico, which functions as an open-air club through the fortnight, with the Italian banks, carmakers and fashion houses that back the event taking pavilions.

03Quand arriver

The first weekend and the Monday to Wednesday that follow are the best days: all courts running, Pietrangeli and the Grand Stand at their most accessible, and a grounds ticket sufficient.

04Où séjourner

The Flaminio and Prati districts, between the Foro Italico and the Vatican, are the closest and the most practical, twenty minutes on foot or one tram stop from the gates, with the trade-off that neither is where you would otherwise choose to stay in Rome.

05Accès et hospitalité

Tickets are sold through the tournament's appointed ticketing platform and are priced by court and by session: Campo Centrale is sold as separate day and evening sessions in the later rounds and as morning and afternoon sessions in the early days, while a lower-priced grounds ticket admits the holder to the outside courts and, in the first days, to the Grand Stand and Stadio Pietrangeli.

06Où se déroule l'activité sociale

The village at the Foro Italico is the tournament's public living room, with sponsor pavilions, bars and food stands open to any ticket-holder, and the terraces around Stadio Pietrangeli are where most of the day is actually spent.

07Comment s'y rendre

08Informations pratiques

09Historique

The championship was founded in 1930 in Milan by Count Alberto Bonacossa and moved to Rome's new Foro Italico in 1935. War interrupted it, and it settled permanently in Rome from 1950, with a single edition in Turin in 1961.

10Qui s'y trouve

Overwhelmingly Italian: Roman families and students on grounds tickets, a large national following that travels in for the weekend, Italian corporate hospitality across the banking, automotive and fashion sponsors, and the touring tennis industry.