10 of the Most Beautiful Streets in Rome You Need to Visit

In the fascinating tangle of streets that surround Rome’s Piazza Navona, well-heeled Via dei Coronari might just be our favourite. Tracing the route of the ancient Via Recta, the arrow-straight road we see today was the brainchild of Pope Sixtus IV (patron of the Sistine Chapel)  in the late 1400s.

One of the great pieces of urban planning in 15th-century Rome, Via dei Coronari was the first Renaissance street to be cut through the dense warren of the Eternal City’s medieval urban fabric.⁣⁣⁣⁣

Via dei Coronari was also the main street leading out of central Rome towards Ponte Sant’Angelo and the Vatican across the river, meaning that legions of early modern pilgrims traversed its cobbles every year on their way towards the most important church in Christendom.

Always at the ready to make a quick buck, local street vendors flogged all manner of sacred items and keepsakes by the kilo to the pious visiting hordes, including rosary beads known as ‘corone di rosario’ – giving the street the name by which we know it today. ⁣⁣

Not everything about this wonderful street was quite so holy, however. The elegant surroundings also attracted some of the Renaissance’s most famous courtesans – the notorious Florentine Fiametta Michaelis, lover of Cesare Borgia, had a house on Via dei Coronari.

So too did Tullia d’Aragona, whose amorous conquests, including the fabulously wealthy Filippo Strozzi, were matched only by her renown in poetry and philosophy.⁣⁣⁣

These days the street is home to antique dealers, art studios and one of the city’s finest places to get gelato.

Home to Gregory Peck’s charismatic American journalist in Roman Holiday and one-time real life domicile of the great director Federico Fellini, this elegant cobbled laneway hidden away just off Via del Corso has for centuries been a haven for expatriate artists holed up in the Eternal city.

Known as ‘La Strada degli Artisti’, or Street of Artists, the road’s association with the world of art goes all the way back to 1612, when the famous Baroque painter Orazio Gentileschi set up his workshop here.

Look out for the Fountain of the Artists midway along the street: featuring easels and stools, compasses and antique masks as well as a bucket overflowing with paint-brushes and chisels at the very top, the fountain was installed in 1927 to commemorate this rich heritage.

Today tranquil Via Margutta is known for its well-heeled hotels, boutiques and ateliers – next time you find yourself on central Via del Corso, take a slight detour for a stroll along Via Margutta and drink in the atmosphere of centuries past. It’s particularly lovely in Spring, when the wisteria and ivy that drape its walls are in full bloom.

Via Giulia is the Renaissance street par excellence: a long, virtually traffic-free corridor of historic palaces and churches winding through the heart of one of Rome’s most characterful neighbourhoods, designed at the command of Pope Julius II (patron of both Michelangelo and Raphael) by star architect Donato Bramante in the first decade of the 16th century.

Over 500 metres long and almost perfectly straight, it was the most ambitious piece of urban planning in Rome since antiquity.

Its most whimsical feature is a certain archway midway along the street, elegantly draped in ivy, spanning the road between two buildings. This is the Arco Farnese — a vestigial fragment of one of the great unbuilt ambitions of the Renaissance.

When the immense Palazzo Farnese was being designed in the 1540s, Michelangelo proposed a bridge that would link the palace directly across the river to the Villa Chigi (now the Villa Farnesina) on the opposite bank, echoing the famous Ponte Vecchio in Florence.

The impracticality of the scheme defeated even the Farnese family’s bottomless ambitions, and all that remains today is this single arch leading precisely nowhere. From the top of it, Farnese family members are said to have watched the street’s Carnival processions in considerable comfort.

Buzzing Trastevere makes a strong claim to being Rome’s most vibrant neighbourhood: a picturesque jumble of cobbled alleys and stately piazzas, bars and restaurants, churches and frescoed palaces.

At the heart of the action is Via della Lungaretta, which runs from Piazza della Piscinula in the south-east through the heart of the neighbourhood to the magnificent 12th-century church of Santa Maria in Trastevere — one of the oldest and most beautiful churches in Rome.

Although the street’s current character owes much to a Renaissance refit ordered by Pope Julius II, its origins are far older: in antiquity the Via Aurelia Nova followed the same route through this neighbourhood before climbing to the Janiculum hill above.

Two thousand years after the Romans paved it, Via della Lungaretta is still a hive of daily activity, and on any given evening the bar and restaurant terraces along its length are among the most animated in the city.

The Via Appia is the greatest ancient road of them all — the Regina Viarum, the Queen of Roads, as the Romans themselves called it.

Begun in 312 BC by the censor Appius Claudius Caecus, it eventually ran from Rome all the way to Brindisi on the Adriatic coast, nearly 600 kilometres to the south-east, enabling the rapid movement of armies and the swift communication of the Republic across its growing territories.

Today a stroll along the preserved stretch of the Appian Way south of Rome is one of the most extraordinary time-travel experiences the city offers.

The road still runs on its original Roman basalt paving stones — immense, slightly uneven blocks worn smooth by two millennia of feet and hooves and wheels — flanked by the ruins of ancient villas, the mausoleums and columbaria of wealthy Roman families, pine trees and cypress, wildflower meadows and long grass.

The catacombs of San Callisto and San Sebastiano are nearby, carved into the volcanic tufa beneath the road. The nearby Circus of Maxentius is one of the best-preserved ancient structures in the city, its chariot-racing track still largely intact.

For the best experience, rent a bicycle from the shop at the beginning of the Archaeological Park at the start of the preserved section. On Sundays the road is closed to traffic and the cycling is superb.

Far less famous than the Appian Way but no less evocative, a stretch of the ancient Via Latina still winds through the wildflower meadows and long grasses of Rome’s southern suburbs, in the shadow of the immense arches of the Claudian Aqueduct.

In antiquity the Via Latina was scarcely less important than the Via Appia, running 200 kilometres south to the Campanian city of Capua and Benevento, and was first paved with its Roman flagstones in the 4th century BC to facilitate military movements during the Samnite Wars.

The area’s centrepiece today is the Parco degli Acquedotti, a beautiful public park in Rome’s southern outskirts where the remains of the Aqua Claudia march in enormous brick arches across the landscape — a sight so dramatic that both Piranesi and JMW Turner painted it.

The hidden stretch of Via Latina runs through this park, alongside the remains of ancient tombs and the occasional solitary arch of a long-forgotten Roman estate. It’s a wonderful antidote to the crowds of the center.

This quiet residential street in a neighbourhood to the west of the Vatican is virtually unknown to tourists, yet it offers one of the most extraordinary optical illusions in all of Rome.

As you enter Via Piccolomini from the Gianicolo hill at the east end, the great dome of St. Peter’s appears directly ahead — impossibly close, filling the end of the street like a backdrop in a theatre set. Begin walking towards the basilica, however, and the dome paradoxically appears to recede, growing smaller as you approach it.

The effect, which is the opposite of what your eye expects, is caused by the particular relationship between the proportions of the road, the buildings flanking it, and the enormous dome in the distance, whose true scale only registers properly once your reference points change.

Walk back towards the east end — away from St. Peter’s — and the dome seems to rush towards you again, filling the street. It is one of those moments of simple perceptual strangeness that Rome occasionally offers, and entirely free to experience.

Centrally located Via del Governo Vecchio has it all: a magnificent sequence of elegant palaces and Renaissance buildings, some of the city’s most lively wine bars and vintage shops, and the watchful presence of Pasquino — Rome’s wittiest parlante (talking statue) — at its eastern end.

Pasquino is the most famous of the five ancient statues onto which Romans have been pinning anonymous political satire since the early 16th century, using the mouths of classical sculptures to mock popes, princes and governments with complete impunity.

The tradition has produced some of the sharpest political poetry in the Italian language — and continues to this day, though competition from social media has diminished the display somewhat. It is always worth reading what’s posted on Pasquino before moving on.

The street leads westward from Piazza Navona towards the Tiber, and makes an excellent complement to an evening visit to the piazza — the wine bars along its length fill up from about 6 PM onwards and are some of the best spots in the city for a glass of something local. Il Piccolo is our favorite haunt here.

If you’re feeling peckish, then make for Da Tonino, one of central Rome’s most old-school trattorie, that remains seemingly impervious to the march of time.

Rome is best savoured on foot, and one of the finest neighbourhoods for aimless, revelatory wandering is the Monti quarter — the area just to the east of the Imperial Fora and a short walk from the Colosseum.

Two thousand years ago this was the Suburra, ancient Rome’s most notoriously rough and overcrowded slum, a seething, noisy, dangerous neighbourhood immediately adjacent to the centres of power on the Palatine and Capitoline hills.

Today it is quite the opposite: its picture-perfect streets, independent restaurants and bars and tightly preserved character make it one of the most sought-after addresses in the city.

Via Panisperna is perhaps its most beautiful corner, where creeping vines frame the cobbled street as it climbs gently towards the imposing facade of Santa Maria Maggiore visible in the distance. It is one of those views of Rome that seems almost too composed to be real.

The street has a remarkable scientific legacy as well as an aesthetic one. It was here, at the Institute of Physics at number 89, that the physicist Enrico Fermi and his team — known to history as I Ragazzi di Via Panisperna, or the boys of Via Panisperna — discovered the properties of slow neutrons in 1934, work that would eventually lead to the first nuclear reactor and earn Fermi the Nobel Prize in Physics. The building still stands.

What is the most beautiful street in Rome?

There is no single answer — different streets offer different pleasures. For Renaissance character, Via Giulia and Via dei Coronari are hard to beat. For art history, Via Margutta. For ancient Rome, the Via Appia. For pure atmospheric cobbled atmosphere, Via della Lungaretta in Trastevere.

What is the oldest street in Rome?

The Via Appia Antica, begun in 312 BC, is among the oldest named roads still in use in Rome. The Via Latina is similarly ancient in origin, with its first paving dating from the 4th century BC.

Are any of these streets pedestrian-only?

The main stretch of Via dei Fori Imperiali is effectively pedestrianised. The Appian Way is closed to traffic on weekends. Via Margutta has extremely limited traffic. The others are cobbled streets in the historic centre where cars are present but generally limited – all are great for walking.

Is it safe to walk these streets at night?

Absolutely — Rome’s historic center is generally very safe for walking at night, and most of these streets are lively in the evenings. Standard precautions apply regarding pickpockets in crowded areas.