The Testaccio Market
The covered market on Piazza Testaccio — a sleek modern structure that replaced the old outdoor market in 2012 — operates Tuesday through Saturday mornings. The ground-floor stalls sell the full range of Roman food: bread, cheese, cured meats, vegetables, and the quinto quarto cuts (offal, tripe, sweetbreads) that define Testaccio cooking. It is also the cheapest place in central Rome to eat breakfast: a cornetto and a coffee while the market does its business around you.
Quinto Quarto Cooking
The Roman quinto quarto — the fifth quarter, the offal and secondary cuts that nobody else wanted — was invented in Testaccio out of economic necessity and became a cuisine of genuine distinction. Rigatoni con la pajata (pasta with veal intestine still containing its mother's milk), coda alla vaccinara (oxtail braised with tomato, celery, and cocoa), and trippa alla romana (tripe in tomato sauce with pecorino) are all best tried here. Roscioli, Flavio al Velavevodetto, and Da Remo (for the best pizza al taglio) are the restaurants worth the journey.
Monte Testaccio
At the southern edge of the neighbourhood stands Monte Testaccio — not a natural hill but an artificial mound, 35 metres high, composed entirely of broken Roman amphorae dumped here over five centuries as the port of ancient Rome unloaded its goods. The sherds of 53 million olive-oil containers from all over the Roman Empire. Tonight the caves cut into its base house some of Rome's most informal live-music venues and bars.
The Protestant Cemetery
At the southern edge of Testaccio, beside Monte Testaccio, stands the Cimitero Acattolico — the non-Catholic Cemetery, where Keats is buried and Shelley's ashes were interred beside a ruined Roman wall. The cemetery is small, shaded by cypresses, and almost entirely unvisited. It provides what Rome rarely offers: a quarter of an hour's complete silence within walking distance of everything. The grave of Keats, marked with the epitaph he chose himself — "Here lies One Whose Name was writ in Water" — is in the older section, near the pyramid of Caius Cestius.
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