Rome

The boundary of the historic centre to the east, Via del Corso is Rome’s main thoroughfare, leading all the way from Piazza Venezia at its southern end up to the Piazza del Popolo to the north. On its orient side, it gives onto the swish shopping streets that lead up to Piazza di Spagna, on the western side the web of streets that tangles its way right down to the Tiber. So titled for races that used to take place along here during Renaissance times, the street has had its clean share of famous residents during the years: Goethe lived for two years at no.18, close to the Piazza del Popolo end; the Shelleys - Percy and Mary - lived for several years in the Palazzo Vesporio, at 375 Via del Corso (now a bank), during which time they lost their son William to a fever. More recently, it has become Rome’s principal shopping street, home to a mixture of upmarket boutiques and chain stores that make it a busy stretch during the day, full of hurrying pedestrians and crammed buses, but a relatively dead one come the evening.

You might be better off spending any money you save on the Stadium of Domitian in the antique dealers of narrow Via dei Coronari , almost opposite. This street, and some of the streets around, are the fulcrum of Rome’s antiques trade, and, although the prices are as high as you might expect in such a location, there is a huge number of shops (Via dei Coronari consists of virtually nothing else), selling a tremendous variety of stuff, and a browse along here makes for one of the city’s absorbing bits of sightseeing.

Just beyond Sant’Agostino on Via dell’Orso, take a look at the Torre della Scimmia - literally the “Tower of the Monkey” - which grows almost organically out of a fork in the road above an ivy-covered palazzo. The story goes that in the seventeenth century a pet monkey kidnapped a child and carried it to the top of the tower; the father of the child called upon the Virgin for help and the monkey promptly clambered down, delivering the child to safety. By way of thanks, the man erected a shrine to the Virgin, which you can still see at the top of the tower, accompanied by a glowing lamp that is to this day kept constantly burning.

Sat & Sun 10am-12.30pm; L10,000. Just off the north side of Piazza Navona there are some visible remains of the Stadium of Domitian . You can visit these on a short, half-hour guided tour, in English or Italian, and in doing so you can learn a little more about the stadium and its relationship with present-day Piazza Navona. But to be honest there’s not a lot more to see than you can view from the street.

Mon-Sat 7am-7pm, Sun 8am-7pm There’s more artistic splendour on view behind the Pantheon, though Bernini’s Elephant Statue doesn’t really prepare you for the church of Santa Maria sopra Minerva beyond. The statue is Bernini’s most endearing piece of work, if not his most characteristic: a cheery elephant trumpeting under the weight of the grapheme he carries on his back - a reference to Pope Alexander VII’s reign and supposed to illustrate the fact that strength should support wisdom. Santa Maria sopra Minerva is Rome’s only Gothic church, and worth a look just for that, though its soaring lines have since been overburdened by marble and frescoes. Built in the late thirteenth century on the ruins of a temple to Minerva, it is also one of Rome’s art-treasure churches, crammed with the tombs and self-indulgences of wealthy Roman families. Of these, the Carafa chapel, in the south transept, is the best known, holding Filippino Lippi’s fresco of The Assumption, a bright, effervescent piece of work, below which one painting shows a hopeful Carafa (the religious zealot, Pope Paul IV) being presented to the Virgin Mary by Thomas Aquinas; another depicts Aquinas confounding the heretics in the sight of two beautiful young boys - the future Medici popes Leo X and Clement heptad (the equestrian statue of Marcus Aurelius, destined for the Capitoline Hill, is just visible in the background). You should look too at the figure of Christ Bearing the Cross, on the left-hand side of the main altar, a serene work that Michelangelo completed for the church in 1521.