Getting the Lay of the Land

Rome's city layout: a rundown of the main streets, piazzas, and neighborhoods to help you navigate the Eternal City

Rome is strung along an S-shaped bend of the Tevere (Tiber River). The bulk of the centro storico (historic center) lies east of the Tevere.

Piazza del Popolo and the Spanish Steps

Hotels near the Spanish Steps
Hotel Art
Pensione Parlamento
Pensione Panda

The north end of the tourist's city is the oval Piazza del Popolo. From this obelisk-sporting square, three major roads radiate south: Via del Babuino, Via del Corso, and Via di Ripetta. The middle one, Via del Corso (usually just called "Il Corso"), divides the heart of the city in half.

To the east of the Corso lie the Spanish Steps (whence leads Via del Babuino) and the Trevi Fountain. Surrounding these two monuments are Rome's most stylish shopping streets—including boutique-lined Via dei Condotti, running straight from the Spanish Steps to the Corso. Although hotels and restaurants in this area tend to be expensive and touristy, it's a pleasantly pedestrianized zone with some good budget values if you look hard enough.

The Tiber Bend

Hotels in the Tiber Bend
Grand Hotel Minerve
Hotel Raphael
Campo de' Fiori
Albergo Abruzzi
Sole al Biscione
Hotel Navona
Hotel Smeraldo
Hotel Coronet
Hotel Mimosa
Fraterna Domus
Hotel Marcus

To the west of the Corso spreads the medieval Tiber Bend area, home to landmarks such as the bustling Piazza Navona, the ancient Pantheon, the market square of Campo de' Fiori, countless churches, a few small museums, and the medieval Jewish Ghetto. This area is chock-a-block with great restaurants and has some good, inexpensive lodging.

The Corso ends at what is, for all intents and purposes, Rome's center: Piazza Venezia. This major traffic circle and bus juncture is marked by the overbearing, garishly white Vittorio Emanuele II Monument ("Il Vittoriale"), which you can now climb for free (until sunset) for low-angle city panoramas.

Leading west from Piazza Venezia is Via Plebescito, which, after passing through the archaeological site–cum–major bus stop Largo di Torre Argentina/Largo Arenula, becomes Corso Vittorio Emanuele II. This wide street effectively bisects the Tiber Bend as it heads toward the river and the Vatican. (Piazza Navona and the Pantheon lie to the north, Campo de' Fiori and the Jewish Ghetto to the south.)

Downtown Ancient Rome

A hotel near Ancient Rome
Casa Kolbe

Back at Piazza Venezia and facing south, go to the right around the Vittorio Emanuele Monument and you'll see a Michelangelo-designed stair ramp leading up behind it to the Campidoglio (Capitoline Hill), Rome's seat of government.

Around the left side of the monument is Via dei Fori Imperiali, a wide boulevard making a beeline from Piazza Venezia to the Colosseum, passing the archaeological zone of the Roman Forum on the right (slung into the low land between the Capitoline and Palatine Hills) and the Imperial Fori on the left.

South of the Forum and Colosseum rises the shady residential Aventine Hill, beyond which is another, smaller hill surrounded by the working-class quarter of Testaccio, now a trendy restaurant and nightclub district.

Termini train station

Hotels near Termini
Hotel Des Artistes
Hotel Fenicia
Fawlty Towers
Papa Germano

Those are the areas of Rome where you'll spend most of your time. But the first part of the city you'll see lies east of all this, in the grid of 19th-century streets surrounding the main train station, Termini.

Although many budget hotels surround the station, this area should be your last choice for where to stay—it's generally boring and, though much cleaned up in recent years, still seedy, especially after dark. The streets north of Termini are somewhat cleaner and safer than those south of it. East of Termini is the University district of San Lorenzo, home to some fantastic restaurants.

Via Veneto/Villa Borghese

A hotel near Via Veneto
Hotel Nardizzi Americana

Northwest of Termini (east of the Spanish Steps) is a boulevard zone where many foreign embassies lie, the highlight being the lazy S-curve of the cafe-lined Via Veneto, of the fashionable 1950s La Dolce Vita fame—but thoroughly touristy and overpriced these days.

Via Veneto ends at the giant Villa Borghese park, studded with museums and expanding northeast of the centro storico. (It's also accessible from Piazza del Popolo.)

Across the Tiber—Vatican City and Trastevere

A hotel near the Vatican
Hotel Colors

Across the Tiber are two major neighborhoods. Mussolini razed a medieval district to lay down the wide Via della Conciliazione, linking the Ponte Vittorio Emanuele with Vatican City and St. Peter's.

South of here, past the long parklike Gianicolo (Janiculum Hill), lies the once medieval working-class, then trendy, and now touristy district of Trastevere, with Rome's highest concentration of bars and restaurants (and where yours truly lived in the early 1990s).

South of Ancient Rome: The Aventine & Testaccio

Hotels in the Aventine
Hotel Aventino
Hotel Sant'Anselmo
Hotel Villa San Pio

A wonderfully quiet and leafy high-class residential district covers the Aventine Hill (Aventino), home to a mini-chain of villa hotels, a handful of sadly overlooked but fantastic ancient churches (including teh fifth century Santa Sabina), and some lovely views: over the Circus Maximus at the north end, over the Tiber from a tiny public park along Via Santa Sabina, and of the dome of St. Peter's from the keyhole in the gateway entrance to The Knights of Malta compound.

Dining on the Fifth Fourth
In the 19th century, workers from the slaughterhouse across the street from the hill would receive as part of their pay the undesirable "fifth fourth" of the day's butchering (offal, tails, feet, and so on). They would carry this offal across the street into the wine taverns, which would sell the workers a bottle of vino and take their quinto quarto back into the kitchen to turn it into culinary masterpieces of poor man's food, such now-classic Roman dishes as rigatoni con patata (pasta tubes tossed with tomato sauce and disturbingly delectable suckling calf intestines) and coda alla vaccinara (oxtail stew). The most classic of these old eateries is the (now expensive) restaurant Checchino dal 1887; for a cheaper alternative serving the same dishes, try Il Torricella.

To the south of the Aventine, the old slaughterhouse district-turned-nightclub-central neighborhood of Testaccio is packed to the gills with cheap pizza parlors and old-fashioned trattorie where extended families hold court over four-hour dinners.

The name of this neighborhood means "ugly head" and refers to the artificial hill at its heart. This was created in ancient times as workers at what was then Rome's port on the Tiber would decant imported Greek wine from their giant transport amphorae (vases) into smaller vessels, break the amphorae into shards, and toss them on a growing refuse pile. That pile grew and grew into the "ugly head," and in later centuries wine taverns began burrowing into the hillside, the terracotta makeup of which kept the atmosphere at a perfect, constant cool temperature ideal for wine storage (see sidebar).