In browsing Rome apartments, I emailed the owners of a VRBO near Piazza Fiori. Here is a comment they made (native Romans, by the way) in their email about their location (which I agree is wonderful):

"Via dei Chiavari is a fine and elegant small street, where life pulsate without ever being crowded. People living here are Italians, you are not in an area like Trastevere, almost totally sublet to foreign tourists, noisy at any hour of the day or night."


So for those who often say they want to stay in Trastevere "away from the tourists", I found this comment quite funny as well as surprising. I, too, have recently mentioned that in the past few years my trips over to Trastevere have given me the impression that it is totally taken over by tourists every night, looking for a restaurant. It seems there are more locals in Piazza Navona than in Trastevere!

I guess Italians are just as good at hyperbole as anyone else. Thats pretty funny.

I just came back from a week in Rome, staying in Trastevere.

I dunno -- the people I saw seemed like Italians to me. The stores and restaurants were local neighbourhood shops, not the the kind likely to draw tourists out of downtown Rome. And there aren't that many hotels in Trastevere so where are all these gazillions of tourists sleeping? It sure felt enough like 'real Rome' to us.

Hmmm -- do I sniff an ulterior motive here?

We just come back from there and stayed in an apt on Via Pellegrino (Campo de Fiori) and we ate often in Trastevere. I would say that the concentration of tourists was about the same in both areas. The restaurants in Trastevere had more tourists earlier in the evening. (As well as a lively, young, after-work looking crowd.) The Campo restaurants (those right in the piazza) were virtually all tourists (including many Italian tourists).

When we got to Rome our "landlord" got out our map and wrote on it his favorite restaurants. They were all in Trastevere or near the Vatican (too far for us). His advice was the best - "Just stroll around. When you see a restaurant that is packed and you hear all Italian being spoken go there." HA! Unfortunately, the place that best applied to was McDonald's. (I know, because I inspected the facilities in every one of them...)

We were in Trastevere in May and found it the least intrusive of the Burbs but there are Tourists everywhere anyway. At 9.30pm all eating places are pretty packed so they are not all from Trastevere. We meandered down each morning to be the only Inglesi and became part of the nite time pusch as a tourist. Yes Rome is full of Poms and Yanks looking for an Italian but if a genuine experience is required why are you in Rome ?