Where to place web server root?
For development, you could put the files anywhere - perhaps in your home directory (you can allow Apache to serve files from your home directory by setting UserDir enabled in the Apache configuration: see http://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.1/mod/mod_userdir.html).
For production, /srv/www is probably the best place for the files; this is (loosely) defined in the FHS: http://www.pathname.com/fhs/pub/fhs-2.3.html#SRVDATAFORSERVICESPROVIDEDBYSYSTEM
Additionally, /srv/www is typically (certainly on Fedora, for example) one of the locations that is regarded by SELinux as web content, which allows Apache to read the files.