Trastevere, Rome

It is strange to think that this area of Rome was originally built to be a city port where storehouses held goods at the time of Augustus and continued to do so until the end of the 19th Century. Trastevere then became a down-market residential quarter and has now developed into a very desirable quarter. The heart of the district is Piazza di Santa Maria in Trastevere with its lovely church, a 17th-century palazzo, and a fountain in the middle which is probably Rome's oldest, having been designed by architects such as Bernini, Fontana and Della Porta. There are still some well-conserved medieval houses. On Sunday mornings, you can visit the Corte dei Vigili in Via dei Salumi, and if you enter the guard's rooms, you will see graffiti on the walls written by Roman soldiers who served the emperors from Septimus Severus to Caracalla, in addition to notations of their guard duty.