22 min
45 min
B
12.7 / km²
23
1
2,177
+4% vs city
Counted from OpenStreetMap and Inside Airbnb (CC BY 4.0)
Staying in Monti
Monti is the wedge between Via Cavour and Via Nazionale, directly above the Forum. It is the one central district where the ancient sites are a walk rather than a journey: the Colosseum in ten minutes, the Forum in eight, Piazza Navona in twenty-two across Piazza Venezia.
What you are paying for is that it is still lived in. The lanes off Via del Boschetto and Via Panisperna are workshops, wine bars and a handful of restaurants that fill with Romans at 21:00 rather than tour groups at 19:00. Piazza della Madonna dei Monti is where the district drinks, on the steps around the fountain, and it is loud in a manageable way rather than a Trastevere way.
The catch is the ground and the edges. Monti is a hill, so an address here means a climb with the suitcase, and the two roads that bound it are four lanes of traffic that never stops. The northern corner runs into the streets behind Termini, which are a different proposition after dark, and the Via dei Fori Imperiali end has been a Line C construction site for years with no end announced.
What works
- Colosseum and the Roman Forum are ten minutes downhill on foot
- Metro B at Cavour, and Termini is a fifteen-minute walk
- Restaurants that take bookings from Romans, not only tour groups
- Cheaper than the streets around the Pantheon for the same walk
What does not
- Via Cavour and Via Nazionale are four-lane roads and the noise carries
- It is a hill: stairs and steep lanes with luggage, every time
- The northern corner runs into the scruffy streets behind Termini
- The Line C worksite has disfigured the Fori Imperiali end for years
It will also be a stop for the new, and very much delayed, Line C , and the Colosseum end of the Via dei Fori Imperiali is made unattractive by the construction site.