Testaccio & Ostiense – Local tips (art & culture)

Had Back to the Future been filmed in Italy, the scene where Marty McFly and crazy Dr. Emmett Brown are trying to channel electricity from lightening to their car would certainly have been filmed in Piazza Damiano Sauli, in Garbatella. As far as the clock tower goes, rather than using that from a city-hall building, the spaghetti version would use the one from Elementary School “Cesare Battisti”.

I don’t know why but it just feels that way. Maybe it’s those large, spread-winged eagles that give this school this aura of institutional sobriety. Maybe it’s the fact that the ironworks clock tower would make a great conductor for electricity. Maybe it’s the fact that this school simply looks familiar and embodies the archetype of “School” for many Italians. Infact, many Italians may have already seen this school as part of the set for popular TV sit-com I Cesaroni. Others may have studied it as an example of Fascist architecture in textbooks.

In any case, if you’re ever in Garbatella, you may want to take a look at it. You will find the school on one side of the square. On the other side, you will see a church; in the middle, a pedestrian area with a small sculpture (with kids and old people congregating respectively on each side); and, in the backdrop, some brick archways that lead into the heart of old-town Garbatella, with its small cottages and gardens.

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Cesare Battisti | Art & culture, Relaxing
Piazza Damiano Sauli | Testaccio & Ostiense
24 hours daily

Are you Protestant, Jewish, or Christian Orthodox? If so, and if you happened to die while visiting Rome in the eighteenth or nineteenth centuries, perhaps of ‘mal-aria’ in the summer months, chances are that you would be buried in the Cimitero Acattolico near Piramide, aka as the Protestant Cemetery.

Catholic law in fact used to prohibit any non-Catholic from being buried in Catholic churches or cemeteries. Given that there were growing numbers Danes, Germans, English, Americans, Russians and Swedes who came to visit, study or live in Rome during in the 1800’s, the Cimitero Acattolico became the designated area to bury these ’stranieri’.

Now, it is the place where you can get away from it all while contemplating the graves of the Great. In what seems like a peaceful garden just meters away from the bustle of the Piramide area, you will find the tombs of Shelley, Keats, and Gramsci, to name the most famous of the many poets, historians, archaeologists, painters, sculptors, diplomats and intellectuals buried here. For a complete listing please visit the Cemetery’s website or the Cemetery’s Information Center.

In addition to Keats’ gravestone where you will be able to read the famous ‘here lies one whose name was writ in water’, a lovely gravestone is that of sculptor William Wetmore Story and his wife with the statue of the grieving angel.

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Cimitero Acattolico | Art & culture, Relaxing | Donation € 2.00
Via Caio Cestio 6 | Testaccio & Ostiense | +39065741900
Mon – Sat 09:00 – 17:00, Sun 09:00 – 13.00 (last entrance 16:30 & 12.30)

You’ve all probably noticed that there is a pyramid in Rome. Its interior can now be visited every other Saturday morning of the month with a guided tour.

You are probably wondering, why the hell is there a pyramid in Rome? Well, it was the tomb that Caio Cestio, a magistrate and member of one of the religious corporations, built for himself along the ancient Via Ostiense.

Why in that shape? Because at the time there was an Egyptian craze and it was hip, cool and trendy to do it Egyptian style, from home furnishings to hair-dos to tombs.

Why has this tomb remained intact while other pagan Roman monuments have been pillaged or destroyed and their marble re-used for other buildings? The pyramid is one of the better preserved ancient Roman monuments because it was ‘encased’ in the Aurelian walls and used for defense purposes.

Why should you visit it? It is makes for a really interesting trip through time. The guides really go out of their way to explain the ‘flavor’ of those times. Inside you will be able to see some remains of frescoes -albeit almost completely destroyed in Medieval times. You will also be able to see small frescoes of Nike (the goddess, not the shoes) and outside you’ll be able to play with lots of cats, since there is a cat sanctuary right in the area.

Note: The guided tour is in Italian.

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Piramide di Caio Cestio | Art & culture | Entrance with guided tour € 4.50
Via del Campo Boario | Testaccio & Ostiense | +390639967700
Open the 2nd and 4th Saturday of the month at 11:00 (only with guided tour)