Piazza Testaccio & the Fountain of the Amphorae
Why is it significant?
Stand by the fountain in the middle of the square, a pyramid of stone jars stacked on top of each other with water trickling from their mouths. Around you, washing hangs from the balconies of tall ochre apartment blocks, old men argue on the benches and children chase pigeons.
Key Facts
| Place | Piazza Testaccio & the Fountain of the Amphorae |
|---|---|
| Address | Piazza Testaccio, 00153 Roma RM, Italy |
| Geo Coordinates | 41.87950, 12.47710 |
| Part of Walk | The Keyhole and the Amphora Hill: Aventine Secrets & Testaccio's Roman Soul |
| Generated | Generated |
Stand by the fountain in the middle of the square, a pyramid of stone jars stacked on top of each other with water trickling from their mouths. Around you, washing hangs from the balconies of tall ochre apartment blocks, old men argue on the benches and children chase pigeons. This is Testaccio, and it is about as Roman as Rome gets.
The fountain is called the Fontana delle Anfore, and the amphora is the symbol of this district. It was designed in the 1920s by the architect Pietro Lombardi, who also made the fountains of the other city districts. But the ground of Testaccio is soft, full of ancient rubble, and soon the square began to sink. In the 1930s the fountain was dismantled and moved to a square by the river. It stayed there for eighty years. Only in 2015 did it finally come home.
Testaccio was built very quickly after 1870, when Rome became the capital of the new Italy. The planners needed housing for the workers of the river port, the factories and above all the enormous new slaughterhouse. These courtyard blocks were among the first public housing in the city, crowded, poor, proud. The people here were nicknamed testaccini, and they built a fierce identity of their own.
That identity has a colour: the yellow and red of AS Roma. From 1929 the club played at the Campo Testaccio, a wooden stadium a few streets away, and the neighbourhood sang its own anthem about it. The stadium is long gone, but ask anyone over seventy around this square and they will tell you that Roma's true home was here.
And why amphorae? Because this whole district grew in the shadow of one of the strangest places in the ancient world... a mountain made entirely of jars. You will see it in a few minutes. But first, follow your nose to the market, where Testaccio still does its shopping.