Discovering Roma: the Neighborhood of Testaccio

I’ve been calling Rome “home” since January, but there is still so much of this city that I have yet to explore. Before this month is over my friends and I will be checking out the lesser known neighborhoods of the city. Who knew there was more here than the Colosseum?…Only kidding.

For our Italian class we had to visit a neighborhood in the city and then give a presentation about our experience to the class (all in italiano of course). So on Wednesday morning a friend and I headed to the southern part of the city to do some exploring in the neighborhood of Testaccio. I’ve been here briefly during the Food Truck Festival I took my family to last week, but this time around we just needed to explore.

One of the first sights we saw in the neighborhood was a pyramid. After conquering Egypt the Romans had quite a love for Egyptian architecture, so though it seems out of place this Egyptian touch wasn’t a huge surprise. This pyramid is a funerary monument dedicated to a member of the College of  Septemviri, who died somewhere around 12 BC. We walked down the street a ways and found the Piazza Testaccio, a really beautiful square that was especially clean for Rome and then continued on our adventure.

The best thing we stumbled across all morning was the Mercato Testaccio. This market was very similar to the Mercato Trionfale I visited a little while ago, but I enjoyed Testaccio’s more. It was a bit smaller, calmer, and cleaner than Trionfale’s and would definitely be worth a second visit. This neighborhood would be considered on of the more “hipster” neighborhoods in Rome so many of the stalls sold goods that are pretty trendy–as in gluten free pasta and  a juice bar.

Part of our project included interviewing someone that worked in the neighborhood. We pulled up a chair at the juice bar and talked with a girl named Anna (who made us some delicious juice). Anna told us how she was born in Rome, but her father is of Sicilian descent. She’s been working at the juice bar for a few months because a friend of hers owns it, but her real passion in life is studying monkeys. She actually has a doctorate in biology and hopes to continue researching monkeys again soon. Anna is one of the nicest people I’ve met in Rome–she even offered us some travel advice as we finish out our semester abroad. I wouldn’t be surprised if we meet her again soon because that juice was really, really good.

We did a little more exploring in the neighborhood to see what is left of the stockyards that used to be very important for this area as well as Monte Testaccio. Monte Testaccio is essentially an ancient Roman dump that consists of rubble from broken oil lamps. We only caught a glimpse of this hill from the street, but I’m sure a more in depth tour would be really interesting.

I’m grateful this Italian project got us out of the JFRC’s campus and into a really cool neighborhood for the day. Next week, project or not, I’ll have to keep up these Roman neighborhood adventures.