Where to stay in Rome

The Centro Storico is the lattice of lanes between Piazza Navona, the Pantheon and Campo de' Fiori, held inside the Tiber's bend. Almost nothing here is more than fifteen minutes on foot from anything else, and much of what visitors come to Rome for sits inside it or on its edge. What you pay for that is noise and price: the same lanes carry the evening crowds, deliveries start early, and a courtyard-facing room is a different night's sleep from a street-facing one.

The grid from the Spanish Steps down to the Trevi Fountain and along Via del Corso: Rome's shopping quarter and the address of most of its grand hotels. It is as central as the Centro Storico and considerably easier to reach, because two metro stations sit inside it rather than on its edge. It is also the one part of the historic centre where the streets are wide and straight.

Central and ancient: the Forum and the Colosseum on one side, and on the other Monti, the one quarter inside the walls with an everyday life of its own — a grocer, a bar people go to twice a week, streets that are not only a route to a monument. That is why people choose it over the lanes by the Pantheon.

Across the river and its own decision entirely. Narrow cobbled lanes, ivy, and the densest concentration of good eating in Rome. It is also the loudest place in the city after midnight, and the two facts are the same fact.

The other side of the river, and the opposite of Trastevere in every way: wide nineteenth-century avenues, ordered blocks, real shops, and quiet after ten. The Vatican is at one end. Travellers choose it when they want space and calm and are willing to cross a bridge for everything else.

The transport decision, and nobody pretends otherwise. Both metro lines, every national train, the airport express and the airport buses meet here. It is also the cheapest central ground in Rome and the least charming, and the streets immediately around the station are the ones people write to complain about.

Two things in one area, which is why they are one area: Testaccio is the food quarter — the market, the old slaughterhouse, the trattorie Romans actually name — and the Aventine hill above it is the quietest residential address in central Rome. Neither is on the tourist circuit, and that is the point.