REYLL Conference – 26 -27 November 2015 Roma Tre University and the Ostiense, Testaccio and Garbatella districts
If you wish to have a taste of the 3 major districts in the university area, we recommend :
The Pyramid of Cestius (Piramide di Caio Cestio or Piramide Cestia)
http://www.livius.org/ro-rz/rome/rome_pyramid_cestius.html
It is an ancient pyramid i nearthe Porta San Paolo and the Protestant Cemetery. It stands at a
fork between two ancient roads, the Via Ostiensis and another road that ran west to the
Tiber along the approximate line of the modern Via della Marmorata. Due to its
incorporation into the city's fortifications, it is today one of the best-preserved ancient
buildings in Rome. The pyramid was built about 18 BC–12 BC as a tomb for Gaius Cestius, a
magistrate and member of one of the four great religious corporations in Rome, the
Septemviri Epulonum. It is of brick-faced concrete covered with slabs of white marble
standing on a travertine foundation, measuring 100 Roman feet (29.6 m) square at the base
and standing 125 Roman feet (37 m) high.
Rome's Non-Catholic Cemetery http://www.cemeteryrome.it/about/about.html
Via Caio Cestio, 6 (cllose to the Pyramid) . Opening hours: Monday-Saturday from 9.00 am to
5.00 pm (last entrance:4.30 pm), Sundays and public holidays 9.00 am to 1.00 pm (last
entrance:12.30 pm) . It contains possibly the highest density of famous and important graves
anywhere in the world. It is the final resting-place of the poets Shelley and Keats, of many
painters, sculptors and authors, Gregory Corso, Carlo Emilio Gadda, a number of scholars,
several diplomats, Goethe's only son, and Antonio Gramsci, a founding father of European
Communism, to name only a few. The Non-Catholic Cemetery for Foreigners in Testaccio,
Rome (to give it its full name) is also widely known as the Protestant Cemetery although it
contains the graves of many Orthodox Christians, Jews, Muslims and other non-Christians. It
is one of the oldest burial grounds in continuous use in Europe, having started to be used
around 1730 .It was also referred to in the past as ‘The English Cemetery’ because of the
many English people buried there. "It might make one in love with death, to think that one
should be buried in so sweet a place," wrote Shelley, not long before he drowned and was
buried here.
Museo Centralemontemartini http://en.centralemontemartini.org/
The history if the new exhibition space for the Musei Capitolini in the former Giovanni
Montemartini Thermoelectric Centre, an extraordinary example of industrial archaeology
converted into a museum, began in 1997 with the transfer of hundreds of sculptures to the
new location during the restructuring works carried out across much of the Capitoline
complex. To create space in the Museum of the Palazzo dei Conservatori, the Museo Nuovo
and the Braccio Nuovo, while keeping the works of art accessible to the public, an exhibition
was created in 1997 in the restructured rooms of the first public electricity plant in Rome.
The exhibition was entitled “The machines and the gods”: it put side by side two
diametrically opposed worlds, those of classical art and industrial archaeology.
In an atmospheric game of contrasts, the old machinery of electricity production became
the backdrop for masterpieces of ancient sculpture and precious goods found in the
excavations of the late nineteenth century and the 1930s. The display reconstructs some of
the great monumental complexes and illustrates the development of the ancient city from
the Republican era to the late imperial age.
GARBATELLA
http://www.urbanitaly.com/architecture/modernist/romegarbatella.html#sthash.Ph1HRV25.dpuf
The Garbatella, a residential quarter built on the southern outskirts of the city in the 1920s
and ‘30s. Part of a plan to link Rome to the sea at Ostia via a navigable canal parallel to the
Tiber, the Garbatella was to accommodate port workers and their families. The canal was
never dug, but housing development began a pace under the illuminated guidance of
famous architects. They were inspired by Ebenezer Howard’s socialist utopian concept of
Garden Cities, and planned detached houses or small blocks built around a common
courtyard and garden where families could socialize, share resources and grow their own
vegetables. The idea was to soften the rough edges of city life and recreate, to some extent,
the virtues of the rural villages so many of the workers came from. Their distinctive
architectural style was known as ‘barochetto’, similar to Baroque in its moulding and
decorative animal and botanical motifs. Still, the area has retained a distinctive, peoplefriendly character. Hidden behind the buildings are sub-tropical gardens and stunning
courtyards, lush communal spaces dotted with palms and banana and orange trees, usually
accessible.