Day 4 - Testaccio

We started the day with a long walk to the farmer’s market in Testaccio, a quiet neighborhood tucked away the in south-western corner of Rome.

The market filled a large warehouse, probably one hundred stalls, all full of fresh local produce from the five provinces of Lazio: fresh baked bread and pastries; farm made cheeses in bricks and wheels; small homemade batches of wine and olive oil; jars of local spices and sprigs of herbs; hanging shoulders of ham; rows of fish, eels and prawns; aromatic booths of flowers and bushels of fresh local fruit and vegetables. 

We stocked up at the market and headed to a nearby park to watch passersby and enjoyed a quiet picnic.

Afterwards, we discovered, quite by chance, the shop of the legendry Antonio Aglietti. Aglietti is one of the few real artisans in the world making bespoke dress shoes.  Each pair is custom made in size, style and fashion, including the wearer’s initials, in gold, on the sole of the shoe (which shoe depends upon which leg you usually cross).  Aglietti’s shop, small and unassuming, was a lucky find- there are less than a dozen such artisans in the world.

After our picnic and window shopping, we walked to the Aventine Hill in nearby Ripa.  As we walked up the road, the clear sky offered no cover and the naked mid-day sun pounded us with waves of dry heat.  The road up the hill was lined with luxurious old estates ringed with lemon trees. 

The Aventine is the southernmost of Rome’s seven hills, and served as an important outpost against foreign incursion along the Severian Wall.  In the 5^th century BC, the plebian army refused to return to the battlefield unless given representation and retreated to the Aventine until  they were granted tribunes of their own.   This is known as the Aventine Succession (a later “Aventine Succession” took place in the 20^th century, drawing the name as an allusion to the original), and the Aventine is now synonymous with political opposition or taking a hard line.

At the summit of the Aventine is the worlds’ smallest country, the Sovereign Military Order of Malta, the world’s oldest existing chivalric order, dating back to the 11^th Century.  Originally founded to provide medical care for pilgrims in Jerusalem, they were bounced to Rhodes at the conclusion of the Crusades and relocated to Malta until they were expelled by Napoleon.  Now, this military order, focusing on providing medical care for the world’s most needy, exists as a sovereign state in a palace on the Aventine Hill. 

The Order has a garden alongside an abbey flush with orange trees.  A long walkway bisects the garden, which leads to an old stone terrace.  The terrace offers one of the finest views of Rome, as you look past the Tiber and over the city.  

The heat that day was unrelenting, and so we retreated to the shade of an orange tree for the remainder of the afternoon,  and then to the Abbey church.

On the walk home from the Order of Malta, we stopped by the city's communal Rose Garden.  The the several centuries old Jewish cemetery was dug up in 1934 for the "Roseto."  Outside of the garden is a monument to insurrectionist Giuseppe Mazzni; the monument swirls with chaos and violence and shows real ambivalence towards Mazzni's legacy. We stopped for gelato, and walked home past the Circus Maximus.

When we returned to our apartment, we had what was left from our picnic on the balcony, joked about our day, and listened to the seagulls squawk.  

We got all gussied up and headed over to a theatre by the Spanish steps to take in an opera.

We saw a small not terribly good production, but you can’t beat La Traviata, and even a lackluster performance still sounds great, and we had a wonderful time.  We headed back late, having had one of the most relaxing days of our lives.