Monti

Neighborhood · Rione Monti (Piazza della Madonna dei Monti)Rome,Italy

A wedge of steep lanes and stairs between the Forum and the station, Rome's first rione and still a quarter people actually live in.

Monti is a wedge of steep lanes between the Forum and the main railway station, and it is the quarter in central Rome where people still live and work at street level. In antiquity this slope was the Suburra, the crowded, cheap, noisy district packed below the palaces on the hill; its name was an insult in Roman writing, and Julius Caesar grew up there. The medieval quarter that replaced it kept the shape: narrow lanes running downhill, joined by stairs, with workshops on the ground floors. It is Rione I, the first of Rome's fourteen historic districts by number, and Romans still give addresses by rione rather than by postcode. Via Cavour was driven through the middle of it in the 1880s and cut the quarter in two, which is why the two halves feel different. The centre of daily life is Piazza della Madonna dei Monti, where a sixteenth-century fountain stands in the middle of a small sloping square. From early evening people sit on its steps with a glass, and the square fills with a noise the residents in the flats above have been complaining about for years.

Worth knowing

Good to know

Come twice: once in the morning and once after seven — in daylight it is workshops, deliveries and school runs, and after dark the same square is packed with people sitting on fountain steps.
Use Via Cavour as your dividing line — everything uphill of it is quiet lanes and stairs, everything below runs toward the Forum, and the two halves have not felt the same since the road was cut.
Look for the workshops with their doors open — upholsterers, frame makers and shoe repairers still work at street level here, and most of them close for the whole of August.
Fill your bottle at the iron street fountain — the water runs day and night and is drinkable, and blocking the spout with a finger sends a jet up out of the small hole on top.

Things to do

1
Walk the stairs instead of the streets
Pick any of the stepped alleys running down the slope and follow it to the bottom, then find another and climb back. The quarter is built on a hillside, and the stairs are where its shape is obvious: washing overhead, cats on the landings, and a different small square at the end of almost every one.
2
Sit on the fountain steps at seven
Get to Piazza della Madonna dei Monti around dusk and sit on the steps that ring the fountain. Within half an hour the square fills up: students, families, dogs, and people carrying glasses out from the bars around the edge. Almost nobody is just passing through; people come here specifically to sit and stay.
3
Find the district plaques on street corners
Look up at the corners of the older buildings for a small marble tablet carved with a number and a symbol. Monti's badge is three hills. Once you have spotted one you will notice them all over the old city, and they tell you which district you have walked into.