Via Condotti site features

It is straight, narrow and short, and you can see the end of it from the start. From the foot of the Spanish Steps the street runs due west in a single line, with the steps and the church towers rising behind you if you turn, and the cross-traffic of Via del Corso closing the far end.

There are no pavement cafés and almost no awnings. The buildings come straight down to a narrow footway, and the ground floors are a continuous run of plate glass, brass fittings and doormen — one brand per frontage, each with a single object in the window and a lot of empty space around it.

Above the shopfronts it is an ordinary 18th-century street: shuttered windows, iron balconies, ochre and grey render, washing nowhere to be seen.

One frontage is different. Partway along, a dark wooden shopfront with small panes and gilt lettering opens into a long narrow room of red damask, marble-topped tables and a crowded hang of pictures and portraits — the oldest thing on the street by two centuries.

The traffic is foot traffic, dense and slow, moving between the steps and the Corso, with most of it looking into windows rather than going anywhere.

The name

The condotti: the conduits that once carried water to the Baths of Agrippa.

Number 86 — Caffè Greco

Established in 1760, perhaps the most famous café in Rome, which drew Stendhal, Goethe, Byron, Liszt and Keats.

Number 11 — Marconi

Guglielmo Marconi, inventor of radio, lived here until his death in 1937.

The ancient road

One of the roads that crossed the Via Flaminia, letting people who had crossed the Tiber reach the Pincio Hill.

The shops

Dior, Gucci, Valentino, Hermès, Armani, Jimmy Choo, Rolex, Prada, Salvatore Ferragamo, Dolce & Gabbana, Max Mara, Bulgari, Tod's, Cartier, Tiffany & Co. and Louis Vuitton, with Laura Biagiotti among those keeping offices here.

The McDonald's case

May 1986: Valentino filed suit to close a McDonald's near the Spanish Steps, complaining of noise and disgusting odours below his six-storey palazzo. McDonald's overcame the obstacles.