Via dei Fori Imperiali

Where it runs. The Via dei Fori Imperiali is a straight, four-lane avenue driven from Piazza Venezia to the Colosseum through the middle of ancient Rome. It is lined with umbrella pines and flanked on both sides by the imperial fora, the Forum of Caesar, the Forum of Augustus, the Forum of Nerva, the Forum of Trajan and Trajan's Market, which lie several metres below the modern road surface. From the pavement you look down into excavated brick and travertine on one side and across to the Roman Forum on the other, with the Colosseum closing the view at the eastern end. The elevation is what makes the street work: it is essentially a viewing terrace laid over an archaeological site.

The story behind it. Roman city plans of 1873, 1883 and 1909 all proposed a road on this line, in the spirit of Haussmann's Paris, but it was the Fascist regime that built it, between 1924 and 1932. Mussolini cut the ribbon on horseback on 9 April 1932 and led a parade of First World War veterans down what was then named Via dell'Impero. The cost was severe: about 3.3 hectares of one of the densest quarters in Rome were demolished, including the Alessandrino district and the churches of San Lorenzo ai Monti, Sant'Urbano a Campo Carleo and Santa Maria degli Angeli in Macello Martyrum, and 746 of the city's poorest families were moved to the periphery. Part of the Velia hill was cut away entirely. The designer, Antonio Muñoz, at least commissioned artists and photographers in 1927 to record the streets and daily life about to disappear; that archive is in the Museo di Roma. The road was renamed after the Second World War, and it still hosts the Republic Day parade every 2 June.

On screen. This is the spine of the Rome chase in Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part One (2023), a sequence that runs roughly twenty minutes and is built around Ethan Hunt and Grace handcuffed together in a tiny yellow Fiat 500. The route as edited stitches the city into an impossible but geographically legible loop, taking in the descent of the Spanish Steps, the traffic circle at Piazza Venezia beneath the Vittoriano, and this avenue with the Colosseum filling the windscreen. Getting it made took three attempts. Filming had been scheduled to move to Rome in mid-March 2020 for forty days, and the pandemic stopped it; the unit returned later that year, and Italian production was suspended again on 26 October 2020 when twelve people on set tested positive. The film was the first in the series shot digitally, on Sony CineAlta Venice cameras, which is part of why the night sections of the chase hold detail in the shadows.

What you see today. Since 3 August 2013 the southern half of the road, between Largo Corrado Ricci and the Colosseum, has been closed to private cars, with buses, taxis and bicycles still allowed; the whole avenue is pedestrianised on the last Saturday and Sunday of each month, which is by far the best time to walk it. Along the way you pass bronze statues of Caesar, Augustus, Nerva and Trajan set up under the Fascist scheme, the marble maps of the growth of the Roman Empire on the wall of the Basilica of Maxentius side, and stairs down into the Forum of Trajan and the brick halls of Trajan's Market, now the Museo dei Fori Imperiali. In 2023 the city ran an international competition to redesign the street; the winning scheme keeps the road but adds pedestrian space, planting and raised walkways over the excavations.

The pines matter too: they were planted as part of the 1930s scheme and are now the only shade on the whole stretch, which is why the benches beneath them fill first on hot afternoons.

Getting there and timing. Colosseo station on Metro Line B sits at the eastern end; Piazza Venezia at the western end is a bus hub. Early morning, before about eight, gives the street to joggers and delivery vans and the best light on the Colosseum from the west. Summer afternoons here are punishing, with almost no shade between the pines and reflected heat off the asphalt. Spring and autumn are far better, and winter mornings are often crisp and empty. Tickets for the Colosseum, Forum and Palatine are timed and sell out days ahead in high season, so plan the walk around the entry slot rather than the other way round.