An Afternoon Shopping in Monti
The four streets worth walking, what each one is for, and how to buy something in Rome you could not have bought at home.
There is a particular pleasure in leaving a city with something you could not have bought at home, and it is becoming rarer every year. Most European centres now offer the same twelve shops in the same order. Monti does not, and that is one of the reasons I live here.
The ground floors along four streets in this rione are almost entirely independent: clothing, vintage, jewellery, ceramics, small studios where the person cutting the fabric is the person who owns the shop. You can walk for a long stretch without passing a single chain. Give it an afternoon.
The four streets, and what each is for
Via del Boschetto is the one people mean when they say shopping in Monti. It runs uphill from near Piazza della Madonna dei Monti, it is narrow and one-way and slightly scruffy at the edges, and it holds the greatest concentration of small boutiques, vintage rails and artisan workshops in the neighbourhood. If you have only an hour, spend it here.
Via Urbana is our own street and it is quieter and more scattered: a shop, then a restaurant, then three residential doors, then another shop. It rewards walking the whole length rather than skimming.
Via dei Serpenti cuts across the others on its way down to the Fori Imperiali. It is wider, busier and carries a mix of vintage and design, and it is where you end up almost by accident on the way to somewhere else.
Via Panisperna is the high, quiet route. Fewer shops, better views back over the roofs, and worth the detour on the way home.
The shops I go into myself
I am only going to name the doors I actually walk through, because a list copied from elsewhere is worth nothing to you.
LOL, Piazza degli Zingari 11. Two bright rooms just below the piazza, holding mostly Italian labels with a few Belgian and French ones threaded through. Classic cuts made modern, the sort of thing that looks better in five years than it does in five months. It is the shop I most often send guests to and the one where I have done the most damage myself.
King Size Vintage, Via Leonina. The well-known one, and deservedly so. Properly edited rather than merely piled up, which is the difference between vintage and second-hand.
Pifebo, Via dei Serpenti. Louder, bolder, more print. Come here when you want the thing nobody at home will be wearing.
Le Nozze di Figaro. Fashion, jewellery and accessories chosen by someone with a definite point of view. Go in even if you are not buying, because half the pleasure is in how the room has been put together.
Humana Vintage. Second-hand, inexpensive and a genuine rummage rather than a curated hunt. Give it half an hour and low expectations and it will occasionally astonish you.
Beyond those, Via del Boschetto is known among Romans for its artisan workshops, including the Classe Artigiana Monti space at number 76 and a handful of designers who cut and sew on the premises and will make to commission. I would rather you discovered which of them speaks to you than have me tell you.
Practical things nobody mentions
Hours are not what you expect. Many small shops here still close in the middle of the day, roughly between one and half past three, and a good number do not open on Monday morning at all. August is the month when a hand-written note appears on the door. Plan your shopping for the late afternoon and you will find everything open and the light at its best.
Sizes are Italian and vintage sizes are their own country. Nothing you know from home applies. Try it on.
Cards are accepted almost everywhere by law now, but the smallest workshops still prefer cash, and it is a kindness to have some.
Ask. In a shop this size the owner is usually the person standing in front of you, and Italian shopkeepers are pleased rather than bothered when you ask what something is made of or who made it. It is the whole point of shopping somewhere like this.
Do not haggle. These are not markets. A price on a hand-made garment in Monti is the price.
What to do with the afternoon
Start at the top of Via del Boschetto and work downhill, so that you finish in Piazza della Madonna dei Monti rather than climbing back up with bags. Cut across to Piazza degli Zingari on the way, which most visitors never find. Then have a glass of something in the piazza at seven with everybody else, and go on to dinner without going home first.
That is how I do it, and it remains one of my favourite ways to spend a Saturday in the city I chose.
The whole route is a few minutes from our front door on Via Urbana, and there is more on the neighbourhood in my guide to Monti.