65 min
35 min
B · Metromare
7.0 / km²
3
5
1,051
−32% vs city
Counted from OpenStreetMap and Inside Airbnb (CC BY 4.0)
Staying in Ostiense
Ostiense is the industrial strip along the river south of Testaccio: the Gazometro, the old power station that is now the Centrale Montemartini museum, the Roma Tre campus, and Garbatella, a 1920s garden suburb that is the prettiest thing in this guide nobody has heard of.
It is the best-connected district here after Esquilino. Metro B runs under it with three stations, Roma Ostiense next door takes you to Fiumicino, and the Metromare line to Ostia leaves from Porta San Paolo, which makes this the one district with a direct train to the sea. Rooms cost roughly half the centro storico.
The reason it is MIXED and not recommended is the hour on foot. Piazza Navona is about sixty-five minutes away and you will never walk it, so every evening becomes a metro journey with a last train to plan around. The other half of the problem is what the streets are like between the good bits: long blocks of warehouses and dual carriageway, empty and unlit after the offices close. Nothing happens to you there. Nothing happens there at all.
What works
- Roughly half the price of the centro storico for the same star rating
- Metro B at Garbatella, Basilica San Paolo and Marconi
- Roma Ostiense station runs direct to Fiumicino airport
- Metromare from Porta San Paolo is a direct train to the beach at Ostia
- Garbatella and Centrale Montemartini are genuinely worth an afternoon
What does not
- Sixty-five minutes on foot to Piazza Navona: you will ride, every time
- Long stretches of warehouse and dual carriageway between the good streets
- Empty and unlit once the offices shut, with no passing trade at all
- The Via Libetta clubs run to 04:00 and the streets around them are industrial
- No sight in the district predates the 1890s except the basilica
San Paolo is a residential area not so far from the center. [...] For the rest, it is just a residential borough.Buses in this area are not very reliable, particularly in the morning or evening rush hours when journeys can be delayed or even arbitrarily cancelled.