According to Time Out’s 2025 ranking, Via Panisperna in Rome has officially been named the coolest street in Italy. It also lands sixth in Europe and an impressive seventeenth worldwide – a rare honor for a street that feels more lived-in than showy.
Tucked inside the iconic Rione Monti, Via Panisperna is nothing like a glossy luxury avenue or a boulevard built for aristocrats. Its appeal, Time Out explains, comes from the mix Romans know by heart: eighteenth-century buildings, long-standing workshops, real trattorias, sudden cinematic viewpoints, and that unmistakable Monti authenticity.
Layered onto all this charm is real history. This is where the famed “Ragazzi di Via Panisperna” – the group of brilliant young physicists led by Enrico Fermi – made scientific history in the 1930s.
The only Italian street to make the list sits in the heart of Monti, and even its name carries mystery. Some say it comes from two local families, Pane and Perna; others trace it to a tradition of monks from nearby San Lorenzo handing out pane et perna – bread and ham – to the poor. The most accepted theory, though, links it to an ancient Greek-Latin term indicating a boundary between important estates. The street also takes its name from the old Church of San Lorenzo in Panisperna, believed to be built on the site of the saint’s martyrdom.
Along the way stand Palazzo Cimarra and Palazzo Falletti di Villafalletto, two elegant eighteenth-century residences, as well as the church of San Bernardino da Siena and art-rich Villa Aldobrandini. But the address that still shines brightest is No. 89. Here, inside the Royal Physics Institute of the University of Rome, Fermi, Ettore Majorana, Emilio Segrè, Franco Rasetti, and Edoardo Amaldi reshaped modern nuclear physics. It wasn’t just a classroom; it was a lab of explosive ideas.
Today, Via Panisperna remains a slice of everyday Rome: baroque churches, noble façades, artisan shops fixing leather and lamps, tiny galleries, and the smell of espresso drifting through the air. Travelers love it because it feels genuine – not polished, but real. With its narrow climbs, flowered balconies, and checkered-tablecloth trattorias serving carbonara without fanfare, the street offers what visitors crave most: a human-scaled neighborhood where every doorway nudges you to slow down and look closer.
