Along the street are: From the fifteenth century, the road served as the racetrack during the Roman Carnival for an annual running of riderless horses called the "corsa dei barberi", which is the source for the name Via del Corso.

The history of Via del Corso began in 220 BC when Gaius Flaminius censor built a new road to link Rome with the Adriatic Sea in the north.

The ancient name of Via Lata (which means Broad Way) denotes that the street was considered wide, especially in comparison to neighbouring lanes but at three places along its length, it became narrower due to triumphal arches.

The first was the Arcus Novus erected by Diocletian in 303–304, then the Arch of Claudius (AD 51–52) stood further ahead (the Aqua Virgo aqueduct crossed the road on top of it) and the third was later known as the Arco di Portogallo.

From around the year 600 AD, the Corso accommodated a welfare centre linked to feeding the populace at Santa Maria in Via Lata and granaries at its southern end.

[1] During the Middle Ages the Via Lata, the present day Corso, effectively denoted a boundary, to the city which mainly developed to the south and east of it.

[3] However, by the mid seventeenth century, the street remained a mixture of different scales and architectural styles, some unfashionable, a number of churches lacked facades and some buildings were a combination of structures from different periods or were simply incomplete.

In pursuing the nobility to complete their properties, he met with limited success; some just did not have the funds, some were content to avoid the issue by continuing to reside on their country estates [4] In the case of unfinished churches, he encouraged ecclesiastical colleagues to act as sponsors.