Testaccio

The neighbourhood of Testaccio is named after a hill that is not a hill. Monte Testaccio is a thirty-five-metre mound made entirely of broken olive oil amphorae — an estimated fifty-three million terracotta pots, discarded over about four hundred years as the Roman port on the Tiber processed olive oil shipments from Spain and North Africa. When an amphora was emptied, it could not be reused (the oil soaked into the clay and went rancid), so workers smashed them and stacked the shards. Layer by layer, over centuries, they built a mountain of garbage. It is the world's largest ancient rubbish dump, and it is now covered in grass and nightclubs.

The slaughterhouse — the Mattatoio — operated on the riverbank from 1891 to 1975 and defined the neighbourhood's character. Workers were paid partly in offal — the "quinto quarto" or fifth quarter of the animal, meaning the parts the wealthy did not want: tripe, oxtail, sweetbreads, intestines. From this came some of Rome's most iconic dishes: coda alla vaccinara (braised oxtail), trippa alla romana (tripe in tomato sauce), and rigatoni con la pajata (pasta with veal intestines still containing the mother's milk). These are dishes born from poverty that are now served in expensive restaurants, and the irony is not lost on Testaccio locals.

The Mercato Testaccio is the neighbourhood's covered market, rebuilt in 2012 and now one of the best food markets in Rome. The stalls run by Mordi e Vai serve some of the best sandwiches in the city — bollito (boiled beef) on a roll, dripping with salsa verde. The market has both traditional vendors (butchers, fishmongers, produce sellers who have been here for generations) and newer food stalls that cater to the lunch crowd.

At night, the caves carved into Monte Testaccio become clubs and bars — the stable temperature inside the pottery mountain makes natural refrigeration. This is one of Rome's primary nightlife districts, and the contrast between the daytime market-and-grandma atmosphere and the weekend club scene is extreme. Testaccio is the most authentically Roman neighbourhood left in the centre, which is why Romans get nervous every time a new boutique hotel opens here.