Trastevere – Testaccio

Trastevere, the heart of the city, home to major Italian dialectical poet Gioachino Belli and the inspiration for another, Trilussa. It is precisely here that Roman plebeians were born and raised. Amid piazzas, its “Fontanone” fountain and cobblestoned streets, the “Trasteverini” led in ancient times the lives of the common people, whose pride and sincere character as well as beautiful women set them  apart from the “nobility”. Today the district is still amongst Rome’s most beautiful and characteristic: the hub of nightlife and wining and dinning, an open air theatre of marvellous piazzas (Piazza Trilussa, Piazza Santa Maria in Trastevere, Piazza San Cosimato ..), churches and historical alleys, all of which are marked by that distinctive timeless “Roman” flavour.

There is nothing more pleasant than an evening stroll through Testaccio, the working-class district, situated between Via Marmorata, the Aurelian Walls and the River Tiber, where true Roma soccer supporters are born and bred. Sense the rather original atmosphere of a zone heaving with restaurants, bars and clubs, making the area around Monte Testaccio highly popular with night-lifers.

The Monte dei Cocci, or Monte Testaccio, is a real and proper “waste tip”, an artificial mound dating from the Roman era rising in the very heart of the city. The ancient Romans in fact used to dump their broken pieces of pottery and fragments of oil amphorae which had arrived for market and been unloaded at the nearby river port on the Tiber. This gathering pile of earthenware over time swelled into a hill, where today a pleasant stroll may be taken hunting for exciting relics dating from the third century A.D. Then in the following centuries, grottos were dug, used as cellars and stables, which have been turned into restaurants and disco-pubs, popular haunts for the nightlifers.