[2] Via dei Coronari forms the south border of the neighborhood of Tor di Nona: to the southwest it laps the small hill named Monte Giordano, topped by the mighty Palazzo Taverna.

[1][3] The street name comes from the Coronari: these, also named Paternostrari, were the sellers of rosary beads ("corone" in Italian), holy miniatures and other holy objects; they had their shops along the road,[1][4] strategically situated, since the way, leading to the Pons Aelius, was part of the itinerary to the Basilica of St. Peter along which walked the majority of pilgrims, entering Rome from the Porta del Popolo.

[5] During the middle Ages, the road linked two different neighbourhoods; to the east lay the Scorticlaria, (a toponym used between the 10th and the 15th century, which during the Middle Ages became also part of the rione's name: Ponti et Scorticlarorum) so called because of the many dealers there in leather (Latin: scortum) goods; to the West lay the neighborhood Immagine di Ponte (the "image of the Rione Ponte"), named after a wayside shrine rebuilt in the 16th century on a corner of Palazzo Serra and still in place.

[7] High prelates, nobles and merchants, attracted by the fiscal advantages promised by the pope to those who had built there, erected their elegant houses and palaces here, whose façades were often adorned with sgraffito paintings, most of which are now faded away.

Nevertheless, in 1939, because of the policy of diradamento ("thinning"), carried out by the city government in the old center, which envisaged the destruction of single blocks in order to lower the population density, the street lost its unity because of demolitions north of the church of San Salvatore in Lauro and near Via Vecchiarelli.