“We were a little disappointed by St Peter’s Basilica. When you see it on Instagram and TikTok, it looks a lot more grand and colourful. We were expecting that, so we felt a bit disappointed.” This testimony from a recent visitor to Rome encapsulates a peculiar modern phenomenon.For centuries, tourists and pilgrims alike have flocked to witness all the history Rome has to offer. But today, the touristic landscape seems to be filtered through a wildly different lens, quite literally. Armed with phones, selfie sticks and ring lights, the infantry of tourists descends upon the Colosseum.The phenomenon of Instagram tourism has caused a great mutation in how millions experience the Eternal City. The pursuit of the perfect Instagram post seems to dominate the cobblestones, with many discovering that the reality beyond the filter tells a rather different story. Welcome to the age of Instagram tourism, where disillusionment arrives along with your tourist-trap dinner. One need only perform a quick search to reveal the scale of this digital pilgrimage: a swathe of articles promising “Best Rome Spots for Stunning Instagram Photos,” “9 Must-Visit Instagram-Worthy Spots in Rome,” and “41 Instagrammable Spots in Rome” proliferates online. These visually validating lists have come to trump those rooted in cultural enrichment. The historically abundant city is increasingly being reduced to a checklist of photo opportunities. Previous generations would have, and do, find it inconceivable to be disappointed by St Peter’s Basilica, a building that took over a century to complete. Yet today’s tourists arrive with expectations shaped not by architectural genius or historical significance, but by filtered and curated Instagram posts and TikTok videos, all in a bid for maximised engagement. This disconnect is more than anecdotal. A recent study by MouseNotifier, a restaurant-availability site, explored the impact of TikTok content on travel-booking behaviour. It found that 27 per cent of tourists said their real-world experience was “underwhelming” compared with the content that originally inspired them to book. We are essentially witnessing a crisis of perception in which the image has, for many, become more impressive than the place itself. The deeper problem is one of overexposure and overconsumption, fostering a fading sense of wonder. Of course, it’s feasible that if you’ve scrolled past every conceivable angle of the Pantheon, you’re left wondering what’s left to discover for yourself. Sadly, nearly everyone is guilty of it, nowadays we all raise our phones to immortalise our experiences. This age of reproducibility has turned every post into a product of replication. Experiences are now shaped more by saturated narratives pumped into us through TikTok and Instagram algorithms than by personal exploration. The optimisation of virality over authenticity is evident in the new trend of American food influencers who have somehow “discovered” the most authentic restaurant in Rome. The irony is profound. In seeking authenticity through influencer recommendations, visitors are largely destroying the very thing they came to experience. It would be unfair to place the blame solely on tourists and travellers. After all, we are all simply operating within a technological landscape we didn’t create. Social media platforms have dramatically altered how we process and value experiences. We’ve been trained to see the world as potential content, and unlearning this takes concerted effort. Perhaps the solution lies not in wholly rejecting Instagram tourism but in consciously recalibrating our expectations. This means accepting that St Peter’s Basilica won’t look like its saturated Instagram version, but recognising that the monument, with all its crowds and imperfections, remains extraordinary. While expecting people to put down their phones is probably unrealistic, doing a bit of cultural research beyond social media might help dissipate disappointment. While Rome has survived plagues much worse than Instagram, what needs to survive now is our ability to be moved by beauty that doesn’t fit neatly into a square frame.