Here's a view of Via Buonarroti (as in Michelangelo), the street I lived on in Rome, courtesy of Google Earth. My building was the pinky-beige one on the left, by the green car. It was small and a bit institutional-looking--the landlord rented it out furnished exclusively to expats--but more than serviceable. My room looked over a walled-in little courtyard that the bakery next door used as storage. I would occasionally be woken up by the sound of bags of flour being flung into a pile--WHUMP! WHUMP!
That greenery in the distance is Piazza Vittorio Emanuele (not to be confused with the "wedding cake" monument of the same name). Although it's surrounded by gracious 19th-century covered colonnades, when I lived there the piazza was run-down and slightly seedy. Certain days it hosted a food market, which evolved to cater to the immigrants who settled in the area as well as native Romans; it was moved to a nearby location while the piazza was renovated and cleaned up. My friends tell me it's a nicer area now--I'll have to check it out when I go back in May.
