The geographic heart of Rome, this is the spot from which all distances from Rome are calculated, and the principal crossroads of city traffic. Piazza Venezia stands at what was the beginning of Via Flaminia, the ancient Roman road that leads east across Italy to Fano on the Adriatic Sea. Via Flaminia was, and still is, a vital artery. The initial tract of Via Flaminia, from Piazza Venezia to Piazza del Popolo, is now known as the Corso (Via del Corso, one of the busiest shopping streets in the city), after the horse races (corse) that were run here during the wild Roman carnival celebrations of the 17th and 18th centuries. The podium near the beginning of the Corso is the sometime domain of Rome's most practiced traffic policemen. The massive female bust, a fragment of antiquity near the church of San Marco in the corner of the piazza, is known to the Romans as Madama Lucrezia. It was one of the "talking statues" on which anonymous poets hung verses pungent with political satire, a practice that has not entirely disappeared.