Balduina

The area of Balduina is marked on the southern side by the green "cliffs" of the hill forming a natural entrance just at the corner of Via Antonio Labriola and Via Gualtiero Serafino through Viale delle Medaglie d'Oro in a place known at the beginning of the 20th century as Dogana della Balduina (the customs house of Balduina); It is bounded to the west by the FR3 railway that runs from Rome to Cesano and Viterbo, a boundary overtaken by some housing in the Monte Ciocci area, here facing the Valle Aurelia, known as "Valle dell'Inferno"[1] Balduina is bounded to the north by some convents and villas on the Via Trionfale, a historic road that leads north towards Via Cassia. Finally, to east the neighbourhood is framed by the Via Trionfale itself, which runs down from Villa Stuart to Borghetto S. Lazzaro and is the boundary with Prati di Castello.

Balduina district is divided into three readily identifiable districts:

* the "true" Balduina, the core of the neighbourhood, is centred on Piazza Balduina;
* Belsito, to the north, is marked by Piazzale delle Medaglie D'Oro and the green area of Parco della Vittoria, Villa Stuart and the green areas around the Cavalieri Hilton hotel;
* Monte Ciocci, named after the Casale Ciocci mansion (a work by Baldassarre Peruzzi), faces the Vatican hill and is the home of the old brickworks which were created to provide building materials for Saint Peter's Basilica. Streets here are named after Latin writers.

Until the beginning of the twentieth century "Balduina district" and "Monte Mario" were used interchangeably and the neighbourhood was surrounded by open fields with no specific name. Subsequently the name "Monte Mario" slowly "moved" (in an urban sense) towards the areas of S. Onofrio and Case Nostre, marking these areas on the plateau where today stands the railway station of the same name.