Esquilino and Piazza Vittorio

Neighborhood · Rione XV Esquilino (Piazza Vittorio Emanuele II)Rome,Italy

Rome's biggest square, arcaded on all four sides, at the centre of the city's most mixed quarter, with the only alchemist's door left standing.

Piazza Vittorio is Rome's biggest square, arcaded on all four sides, and the quarter around it is where the city is most mixed. The shops under the arcades and along the side streets are Chinese, Bangladeshi, Indian, Egyptian and Nigerian as well as Italian, and the covered market two streets away sells the vegetables and spices those kitchens need. In the garden at the centre of the square stand the brick arches of a Roman fountain that once ended an aqueduct. Beside them is a doorway cut all over with alchemical formulae, moved here when the villa it belonged to was pulled down, and it is the only alchemist's door left standing anywhere. The square itself was built for a city that had just become a capital. When Italy took Rome in 1870 the population doubled within a generation, and this quarter went up at speed on the grounds of villas that were sold off and demolished. The arcades were copied from Turin, so that the new capital would look like a northern one. This is a working quarter rather than a pretty one, and the main station is on one side.

Worth knowing

Good to know

Market in the morning, square in the evening — the covered hall on Via Turati shuts by early afternoon and on Sundays, and the square's own life happens later.
Keep bags closed near the station end — the streets between here and Termini are busier with pickpockets than the rest of the centre, and noticeably so after dark.
Eat something that is not Roman — this is the quarter where the city's other kitchens are, and the restaurants under and around the arcades are where its residents actually eat.
Read the door through the railings — the alchemical signs are cut into the frame and the lintel, and the garden fence keeps you a few metres away, so you can look closely but not touch.

Things to do

1
Walk the covered market slowly
The hall on Via Turati is where people in this quarter buy their food. Walk the aisles without buying: Bangladeshi fish, Chinese greens, African yams, Roman butchers, Indian spice stalls, and queues of people who live here. Nothing in it is set up for visitors, and it is busiest before eleven in the morning.
2
Find the door in the garden
Go into the fenced garden in the middle of the square and walk to the far corner. The alchemical doorway stands on its own, flanked by two small stone figures, with the brick arches of the Roman fountain behind. Read what you can through the railing: it is the only object of its kind left standing.
3
Walk one arcade end to end
Take one side of the square under the colonnade and follow it the whole way. Shop signs change language every few metres, and the arcade is used as a street rather than a shopping gallery. The porticoes were copied from Turin, in the north of Italy, because the new capital wanted to look like a northern city.