Rome Guide
Rome
Testaccio
The solid working-class neighbourhood of Testaccio groups around a couple of main squares, a tight-knit community with a market and a number of bars and small trattorias that was for many years synonymous with the slaughterhouse that sprawls down to the Tiber just beyond. In recent years the area has become a trendy place to live, property prices have soared, and some uneasy contradictions have emerged, with vegetarian restaurants opening their doors in an area still known for the offal dishes served in its traditional trattorias, and gay and alternative clubs standing cheek-by-jowl with the car-repair shops gouged into Monte Testaccio.
The slaughterhouse, or Mattatoio, once the area's main employer, is used for concerts, raves and exhibitions now, along with stabling for the city's horse-and-carriage drivers and a branch of the Museum of Contemporary Art of Rome, where a couple of pavilions stage temporary exhibitions of a radical and adventurous nature. Opposite, Monte Testaccio gives the area its name, a 35-metre-high mound created out of the shards of Roman amphorae that were dumped here. It's an odd sight, the ceramic curls visible through the tufts of grass that crown its higher reaches, with bars and restaurants hollowed out of the slopes below.