In Assassin's Creed Brotherhood, Ezio Auditore spends years taking Rome back from the Borgias, a Spanish pope and his ruthless son. This walk follows his campaign across the real city, starting where the game starts, at the Vatican, and ending where it ends, at the Colosseum. At every stop you get the game scene first, then the real history: what happened here, and what the writers made up. The game pins several invented scenes to real dates, and spotting them is half the fun. This is an unofficial fan walk, not made with or endorsed by Ubisoft, and there are spoilers everywhere. The route covers about six kilometers, one of our longer self-guided walking tours.

Before you set off

The walking takes about an hour and a half; with the stories, plan on closer to three hours. Wear comfortable shoes, and in summer carry water and go early or late, because Rome gets hot. The nearest metro to the start is Ottaviano on line A, about ten minutes away, and the walk ends opposite Colosseo station on line B. The Pantheon, Trajan's Market and the inside of the Colosseum are ticketed, so check before you go. The game jumps around in time, so at a few stops you will hear a scene from earlier or later in the story. We will always tell you when.

St Peter's Square

You're standing in Bernini's great oval square, with the obelisk in the middle and the dome and facade of St Peter's ahead of you. The Sistine Chapel and the papal palace sit to the right of the basilica, out of sight from here.

In the game, this is where it all begins, on the twenty-eighth of December, 1499. Ezio has just faced Rodrigo Borgia, the Pope himself, in a hidden vault beneath the Vatican, and heard a message from a being called Minerva. Ezio and his uncle Mario fight their way out and ride home to Monteriggioni. Days later, Rodrigo's son Cesare destroys that home, kills Mario and takes the Apple of Eden. Ezio wakes up wounded, and the war for Rome begins.

Now the real part. Rodrigo Borgia was announced as Pope Alexander VI on the morning of the eleventh of August, 1492. But this is not the basilica he knew. Pope Julius II laid the first stone of the new St Peter's in April 1506, three years after Alexander died, and the square was only finished in 1667. The vault, Minerva and the Apple are fiction. And remember this spot. Later in the game, in August 1503, Ezio races Cesare back here and grabs the Apple, which Rodrigo had hidden in the courtyard in front of the basilica.

Walk away from the basilica down Via della Conciliazione, the broad avenue ahead. The round fortress at the far end is your next stop, about twelve minutes away.

Castel Sant'Angelo

Pantheon Rome In front of you is the Emperor Hadrian's tomb, turned into the popes' fortress, with an angel on top. Look left along the old Borgo and you will see a raised wall running back toward the Vatican. That is the Passetto, a covered escape corridor that Alexander VI really used in 1494, when a French army entered Rome.

In the game, two scenes happen here. In June 1501 Ezio sneaks in to kill Cesare and Rodrigo, finds them both away, takes a cell key from Lucrezia Borgia and frees Caterina Sforza. Later in the game, on the eighteenth of August, 1503, he watches through a window. Rodrigo has poisoned apples ready for Cesare. Cesare spits his out and forces the rest down his father's throat. Rodrigo dies, and Cesare runs for St Peter's, losing that race to Ezio.

The truth. Caterina Sforza was real, ruler of Forlì and Imola. Cesare captured her in January 1500. She was held in the Vatican, then in the prisons of this castle, and freed at the end of June 1501 through French intervention, after giving up her lands. The date is almost exactly right. The rescue is invented.

Alexander did die on the eighteenth of August, 1503, but in the papal palace, not here, and the cause is disputed. Guicciardini, a Borgia enemy writing decades later, says the pope drank poisoned wine meant for a cardinal. Modern biographers say he probably died of malaria. Cesare fell gravely ill at the same moment. Machiavelli wrote that Cesare told him he had planned for everything his father's death might bring, except being close to death himself.

Cross the bridge in front of the castle, then head east through the lanes of the old center to the Pantheon, about seventeen minutes.

Pantheon

Look up at the portico. The inscription names Agrippa, but the building is the Emperor Hadrian's rebuild. It has been a church since the year 609, and the painter Raphael is buried inside.

In the game, this is where Ezio follows the money, on the first of August, 1503. Earlier that day, on the Capitoline Hill, he saved a senator called Egidio Troche from Borgia debt collectors. Now he tails Troche over the rooftops to this building, where guards are counting cash. Ezio climbs the Pantheon, kills the guard captain, puts on his armor and carries the money chest into a pagan party. There he finds Cesare's paymaster, the Banker, and stabs him from a bench. The Banker is Cardinal Juan Borgia, known as the Elder.

Here is the eerie part. Juan Borgia the Elder was real, a relative of Alexander VI, made a cardinal in 1492, the same month Alexander became pope. He died in Rome on the first of August, 1503, the very day the game kills him. But there is no record that anyone murdered him. The game borrowed a real date and invented the blade.

In those years, whenever a rich cardinal died, people whispered that the Borgias had poisoned him, because the pope could claim his wealth.

From the Pantheon, head south through the streets toward the river and the small island in the middle of the Tiber, about fourteen minutes.