The real city centre of Rome is the centro storico , or historic centre, which makes up the greater part of the roughly triangular knob of land that bulges into a bend in the Tiber, above and below Corso Vittorio Emanuele, to the west of Via del Corso, Rome’s main street. This area, known in Roman times as the Campus Martius, was outside the ancient city centre, a low-lying area that was mostly given over to barracks and sporting arenas, together with several temples, including the Pantheon. Later it became the heart of the Renaissance city, and nowadays it’s the part of the town that is densest in interest, an unruly knot of narrow streets and alleys that holds some of the best of Rome’s classical and Baroque heritage and its most vivacious street- and nightlife. 

The main square and transport hub of Piazza Venezia is a good orientation point: to its north lies the main body of the old centre of Rome, with the graceful oval of Piazza Navona and the great dome of the Pantheon at the heart of its tangle of streets and churches; to its west is more of the same, focusing on the busy squares of Campo de’ Fiori and Largo Argentina , and fading as you move towards the river into Rome’s ancient Jewish Ghetto . To the south is the Capitoline Hill and its museums, on the edge of Rome’s ancient centre.