The Keats-Shelley House sits at the base of the Spanish Steps where John Keats spent his final months listening to water splash in the Barcaccia fountain below. He arrived in Rome on 15 November 1820 hoping Italian warmth might cure his tuberculosis. It didn't. Artist Joseph Severn nursed him tirelessly through two months of agony before Keats died at 25, his last words: "Thank God it has come." All the furniture was burned afterwards.

The painted flowers on the bedroom ceiling survive. So does Severn's deathbed sketch of Keats, displayed alongside locks of hair from Keats, Shelley, Milton and Elizabeth Barrett Browning stored in a silver scallop shell. Mary Shelley's travel writing desk sits near manuscripts by Oscar Wilde and Jorge Luis Borges. The museum opened in 1909 after the Anglo-American community saved the building from demolition. Rainer Maria Rilke wrote a poem about Severn's sketch. Sinclair Lewis said his visit was the only time he ever cried.

VoiceMap's self-guided literary tour places Keats's house alongside the Barcaccia fountain that inspired his epitaph, follows the writers who made the Spanish Steps their gathering place, and connects the museum to Rome's Protestant Cemetery where both poets lie buried beneath flowers.