La Villa Romana

Many posts ago we talk about the meaning of "Domus" & "Insula" as a typical roman building and as the names for the A Night in Rome apartments, today we're going to talk about.... "Villa", yes because we're going to have another apartment and this is its name!!
Now we have 3 little "babies" to make your holiday an unforgettable esperience! ;-)

The ancient building called "Villa" was built in Rome in the III century B.C. and originally it was the country house of the roman highest social classes. The richest romans, who lived in the Domus when they were in Rome, in their country possessions could have one or both these kinds of buildings: the "Villa Rustica" or the "Villa Urbana".
The first one (Villa Rustica ) was a real country farm while the second (Villa Urbana), which rose near the city, was similar to the Domus building but much more sumptuous. It was used to give romans a quite and relaxing stay near the city.

The Villa rose with a great number of galleries supported by long rows of columns which guaranteed to romans long walks by feet ,in litter, or by horse on bad weather days.
It was equipped with "triclini" for the summertime in a wide open space, and "triclini" for the winter season, in a closet one, rooms for the diurnal rest (the so called "cubicula"), studium rooms, swimming pool to swim (the so called "piscina natatoria") and a bathroom supplied by calidarium, tepidarium and frigidarium as the large public terme. All the building was surrounded by a land, partially cultivated as a hortus and partially adorned with flowers, fountain games, plants and statues as a garden.

A Nihgt in Rome Villa is our small pearl in the center of Rome Testaccio, certainly it has not private gardens with water games and statues but anyway it has its public gardens adorned by plants, threes and games for the babies! ;-)
It also does not have either tiepidarium calidarium or frigidarium or the private swimming pool but is a really wide and bright apartment with two balcony from which you can see the dawn and the sunset, in one of the most beautiful “quartieri de roma” !! Do you want to see the typical and popular roman neighbourhood?! Try Testaccio.....what your ears are going to hear is not the spoken italian but the authentic spoken romanesco!!

We hope to have you as our guests soon!!!

Try the original "romanesco" taste, stay with us!

La fontana delle tartarughe

The Tortoise Fountain was strongly wanted by the Duke Antonio Mattei (a member of an important family of the Middle Ages that had hegemony over the entire left bank of the tiber river).
The lengend tells that the Mattei Duke wanted to marry a beautiful and rich girl but her father didn’t want because as he said: "the duke was of noble origin but he was a penniless (uno squattrinato)!"

Look at the picture: the window at the right side of the main door, the small window...

As the Mattei knew it, he decided to show to his father in law what he was able to do in only one night and… realized the Tortoise Fountain in order to say "Ecco cosa e' capace di realizzare in poche ore uno 'squattrinato' Mattei" (here it is what is able to do a penniless mattei in only one night!!). Naturally the wedding was celebrated and, in order to nobody could never show at window (that one from which he saw the fountain for the first time), the mattei’s father in law decided to wall it and........

nowdays it’s still closed ….

Il Vittoriano

The main topic of the monument is represented by the inscription engraved on the propilei: "PATRIAE UNITATI" "CIVIUM LIBERTATI"

(from the latin: “to the unity of the native land” “to the freedom of citizens”)

This magnificent monument was devised when Rome became the Capital of Italy in the 1871 as an attitude of gratitude to the man who makes it happen: King Vittorio Emanuele II. At that time was necessary to create a symbol that point out the passage from the Papal State (until 1870 the so called "Papa Re") to a Laic one.

Today we don’t want to spend time talking about the historical aspects of the monument (if you need look here!), we want to suggest you a nice thing to do when you are there…

take the PANORAMIC ELEVATOR!

35 seconds and you'll be on the top of the city!!

Here is what you'll see looking at your right and...

here what you'll see looking at your left!


The entrance to the monument is free but the panoramic elevator costs 7 euro. Is open all days from 10 am to 16 pm (NO on monday) and it has a forced route, look at the image below...

You'll have a great panoramic view on the city, don't miss!

Rome's Ghetto

Rome's Jewish community claims to be the oldest in the world, as it is known to exist since the late 2nd century BC, when slaves were brought here from Palestine, under roman rule. During the early years and throughout the Middle Ages, the roman Jews had no problems in living side by side with the local Christian population; their main activity was trade. But hard times came during the late Renaissance, when the Church of Rome, following the Protestant schism, gave a sharp turn of the screw against the non-Christian population. The newly elected pope Paul IV decided to enclose the whole Jewish community within a very small enclosed area, and issued strict discriminatory laws.

Detail of the ghetto in a map by G.B.Falda (1676), featuring the three early gates (in red), the ones opened by Sixtus V (in blue) the Porch of Octavia (1st arrow) and the church of St.Gregory (2nd arrow on the right);a further gate was built in the 1800s on the spot marked with the 3rd arrow below

The neighborhood, known as the ghetto, comprised the few narrow streets located between piazza Giudea (no longer there) by the church of Santa Maria del Pianto, the remains of the Porch of Octavia and the river bank by the Tiber Island. Following Paul IV's bull entitled Cum nimis absurdum (literally "when too much is absurd", actually "when enough is enough"), issued in 1555, the 3,000 members of the community were forced to live within the ghetto's boundary, originally called 'the Jews' enclosure', whose total surface was about 8 acres. The dwellers were allowed to leave this neighborhood only during daytime, while from dusk till dawn the entrances to the district were closed by huge doors, watched over by guards, whose wages the same community had to pay for. Originally the gates were three, but only a few decades later, when pope Sixtus V had the ghetto slightly enlarged towards the river, their number rose to five. Neither the gates nor their doors exist any longer, but old maps still feature them quite clearly. Those who were left outside after the closing time were to face the implacable papal law court. Outside the ghetto all Jewish men had to wear a piece of yellow cloth on their hat, while women had to wear a yellow veil, or a scarf of the same colour, so to be easily recognized.
They could not own any property, the houses where they lived belonged to non-Jews, who rented them to members of the community and the only job they could live on was to sell rags.
On Saturdays, the adult members of the community had to attend the so-called compulsory preaches, sermons whose purpose was to convert them to the Christian religion; only within the ghetto's boundary, the Jews were allowed to follow their own religion.
Besides the discriminations, the ghetto's dwellers had to endure several humiliating traditions and rituals. For instance, during the celebrations for Rome's Carnival, usually held in February, a number of elderly Jews was forced to race along the central high street, while the crowd mocked them, and threw all sorts of trash; this custom was later turned into a horse race.

Nowdays the ghetto's gates no longer exist, but the hinges of one door (far left) are still visible in via della Reginella

Only in 1870, when the papal rule over Rome came to an end, the doors of the hideous enclosure were finally opened. The roman Jews were then let free to leave this area, and were given once again the same civil rights as the Christian citizens. A few restaurants in the neighborhood keep alive Jewish-roman cooking, a very old tradition which blends typical Jewish dishes with roman ones, such as the famous fried artichokes. The so-called "fagottari", patrons who used to carry their own food in a bundle (fagotto), thus ordering only wine, are no longer seen, as this custom has died out (since the moment that a tradition never dies totally......you can still today carry your own food and ordering wine in some wine cellars in Frascati).

Old houses in via di Sant'Ambrogio: the streetwas annexed to the ghetto around 1830

By the turn of the 20th century, not long after the ghetto had been opened, some of the original houses of the district were taken down, the streets were enlarged, and new buildings rose. But the surviving lanes of this neighborhood, a silent nook embedded in the heart of bustling Rome, have maintained their magical atmosphere, a very particular blend of history, architecture and tradition (too see photos look here).

Via del Portico d'Ottavia on one side still hasa row of ancient houses (15th-16th centuries)

Take time to visit the Ghetto & eat kosher is a really nice experience to have!

OPS...don't forget to try the most appreciated pastry called "Il Forno del Ghetto"!

La Meridiana di Augusto

Approximately seven meters under the street level in Via del Campo Marzio 48, under ten centimeters of limpid water illuminated by appropriate lamps, appears a great slabs of “travertino” marble on which, in horizontal and vertical bronze lists, like parallels and meridians, are reproduced the zodiac signs of the constellations of the Ram, the Taurus, the Lion and the Vergine. Draft of a “slice” of the great solar clock (a sundial), realize from the Emperor Augusto in the 10 a.C. that extended itself in a wide zone of the Campo Marzio (included between Via della Lupa and the public square of S. Lorenzo in Lucina).

Piazza Montecitorio

The great obelisk, that you can now see in Piazza Montecitorio, served as “gnomone” (the part of the sundial which showed its shadow on the the face indicating hour, day and month).
In the past, every year during the sunset of the 23 september (in the day and at the hour of the Emperor Augusto’s birthday) the sundial projected a shadow on the “Ara Pacis”, as a homage to the Emperor of the peace. The great and magnificent “clock” worked for approximately 50 years then it was ruined by earthquakes and by the alluviums of the Tiber river which, in those circumstances, deposited wide layers of mire on the wide slabs of the clock-calendar.

Ara Pacis

Domus Romana

Here we are again with the 2nd part of our yesterday post about the Domus and the Insula.

A domus was the form of house that wealthy families owned in ancient Rome (the middle classes and the poor were housed in crowded apartment blocks, known as insule, while the country houses of the rich were known as villas). The domus included multiple rooms, and an indoor courtyard: the atrium, which was the focal point of the domus, off which were cubicula (bedrooms), an altar to the household gods, a triclinium where guests could lie on couches and eat dinner whilst reclining, and a tablinum (living room or study) and celle (shops on the outside, facing the street).

Glass windows weren't readily available: glass production was in its infancy, and the cost would have been prohibitive, but this exterior blankness did give the occupiers the advantage of protecting themselves from outside noise, intruders, and the elements. Homeowners tended to view their exterior walls as public property, and they quickly became filled with political graffiti. Wealthy homeowners often rented out the two front rooms of their homes to merchants if they lived on busy streets. Thus a wealthy Roman citizen lived in a large house separated into two parts, and linked together through the tablinum or study or by a small passageway.

The house would not face the streets to protect the family from burglars. Because of this, the entrance to the house was directly on the street, providing more room for living spaces and gardens behind. The atrium was the most important part of the house, where guests and dependents (clientes) were greeted. The atrium was open in the centre, surrounded at least in part by high-ceilinged porticoes that often contained only sparse furnishings to give the effect of a large space. In the center was a square roof opening called the compluvium in which rainwater could come, draining inwards from the slanted tiled roof. Directly below the compluvium was the impluvium, a shallow rectangular pool to gather rainwater, which drained into an underground cistern. The impluvium was often lined with marble, and around which usually was a floor of small mosaic.

The back part of the house was centred around the peristyle much as the front centred on the atrium. The peristylium was a small garden often surrounded by a columned passage, the model of the medieval cloister. Surrounding the peristyle were the bathrooms, kitchen and summer triclinium. The kitchen was usually a very small room with a small masonry counter wood-burning stove. The wealthy had a slave who worked as a cook and spent nearly all his or her time in the kitchen. During a hot summer day the family ate their meals in the summer triclinium to stave off the heat. Most of the light came from the compluvium and the open peristylium. There were no clearly defined separate spaces for slaves or for women. Slaves were ubiquitous in a Roman household and slept outside their masters' doors at night; women used the atrium and other spaces to work once the men had left for the forum.

Welcome to our Domus!

Insula Romana

Today i want to explain you the reason why I’ve chosen, for A Night in Rome Apartments, the name of “Domus” and “Insula”.

Do you know who has invented the modern “condominio” (the building with more plans) ?

The Romans, obviously!
They were the first civilisation to utilise flats and apartments. Let’s see how…

In Roman architecture, insulae (derived from the Latin for islands) were large apartment buildings where the lower and middle classes of Romans (la “plebe”) dwelled. They were called so because of the way they looked from a bird's eye view. It would appear these buildings were spaced out like islands (hence the name), while being surrounded by road. The urbanization of the larger Roman cities caused a great demand for housing which was within a comparable vicinity of the city center and real estate was therefore at a premium.

Insula Romana a Piazza dell'Ara Coeli (Piazza Venezia)

As such, private houses were a luxury which only the wealthy could afford. This led to a majority of the inhabitants of the inner city living in apartment and tenement housing called insulae. The floor at ground level was used for tavernas, shops and businesses with living space on the higher floors. These houses were often constructed at minimal expenses for speculative purposes and for this reanson they dindn’t have running water or sanitation. The insulae were therefore of poor construction and prone to fire and collapse, as described by Juvenal.

Because of the inherent unsafety and extra flights of stairs, the uppermost floors were the least desirable, and thus the cheapest to rent. The insulae could be up to six or seven stories high (some were even 8 or 9 stories high- these very tall buildings were being built before the height restrictions). A single insula could accommodate over 40 people in only 400 square meters (4305 sq. feet), however the entire structure usually had about 6 to 7 apartments, each had about 200 square meters (2152 sq. feet). Because of the dangers of fire and collapse, the height of the insulae were restricted by Emperor Augustus to 70 Roman feet (20.7 m), and again by Emperor Nero down to 60 Roman feet (17.75m) after the Great Fire of Rome. There may have been up to 50,000 insulae, as compared to only 2000 domus in the late 200 A.D, when the city was in decline, and the population was smaller.

We have to say...our Insula apartment is decidedly better !! ;-)