If you’re looking for a low intensity activity that is still historical, a suggestion I’d make is to go explore a section of Rome’s Aurelian walls. If you’ve ever spent time here, you’ve undoubtedly passed under or along this 12-mile ring. The Aurelian walls are the “younger” ancient walls, and were built in the 3rd century AD as an enlargement of the city’s Servian walls built in the 4th century BC. Those who have had the curious fortune of dining at the McDonald’s in Termini train station will have sat right next to the older wall’s scant remnants.
The other day I was out by Porta San Giovanni, one of the wall’s entryways sitting next to the Archbasilica of Saint John Lateran, one of the extraterritorial papal basilicas of the Vatican. It’s a fine moment to be outside: we’re well into the spring symphony that sets us up with solos from the mimosa, wisteria, honeysuckle and oleander blooms—all in that order. Down along the walls, it seemed that everyone was out to join the flowers.
So often, I pass through Rome and see something that catches my interest. I have a momentary thought of, “what am I looking at?” before the thing has passed and I’m on to another thought. Life is busy, so this is why I like to take small moments away from the crowds and get a closer look at how Romans are making modern use of their spaces both old and new.
Porta San Giovanni has its own history surrounding its construction—and as we are in Rome, it invariably has to do with a rich pope and possible builders who had ties to Michelangelo. But when I read up a bit more, I learned that in this space, on the 23rd of June (the feast of Saint John the Baptist), Romans would eat snails as a way to do with evil—the horns of a snail symbolizing the devil.
Before you get to Porta San Giovanni, adjoining the Aurelian wall is the garden of via Carlo Felice. Here you have everything from a public ping pong table to the first dog park that I have ever taken notice of in the city. All parts are lovely tended to by volunteer gardeners, and many folks were out taking advantage of this skinny green stretch that is nearly swallowed by the Vatican property, tram lines, commercial buildings, and the mercato di Via Sannio.
Right now in Rome, you will come across many road blockages, transport stoppages and general works taking place ahead of Jubilee 2025. Saint John Lateran is no different, and the front of the church is blocked off as the façade undergoes renovation in time to greet the millions of pilgrims expected next year. With this in mind, we opted to move the other way and instead headed down along the wall. It wasn’t long before we came to another opening in the wall—a sort of double arch that seemed to have another adjoining structure. It clearly used to be something else, as a series of arches were filled in with roughly the same type of brick. I made a note to snap a photo and try to look it up later. The day was getting long, and I had some errands that needed to be run before the city became clogged up with traffic.
Later I looked it up, and found that these arches comprised the Amphitheatrum Castrense. It Built in the 3rdcentury; it was used for a short time to host spectacles before it was walled up and incorporated into the wall. I know that I have driven through this path before, catching these small details for a split second. Getting a chance to stand now in front of speeding cars and the amphitheater in greater detail, it made me wonder, “what are we even missing out on when we walk by these things?”
Many times each day, we humans will pass by something of significance without taking much stock of it. And many more times a day, we come in contact with things that are simply interesting. Relics of the past or conveniences of the presence that provide commentary on who we are, who we were, and what we do as a society. You ever take the train to Termini, bound for your Big Mac dinner next to the Servian wall? Well if you look sharp on the left side of the train as it’s crawling into Rome, you will spy the Aurelian wall fused with an odd-looking monument with holes in it. That’s a funerary monument to a baker who was also a freed slave. The holes are thought to resemble the vessels made to create bread.
The baker’s funerary monument is a stop for another day along the Aurelian wall.
Recently somebody asked me if I had any advice for places that I’d visited that were worth a stop. It’s a hard question to answer—kind of like telling someone what makes a song great. Everything depends on a person’s parameters at any given time: the interest, the available resources, the bandwidth…you can find interest in so many things. But the walls in Rome, I find them endlessly interesting. As we finished our walk, we passed by a section of the old wall that had been freshly spray painted. It made my heart sink a bit, thinking about how someone decided to treat this piece of history that was still standing against all odds. But then I looked up at the wall. I imagined that yes, just as it was here before me, it will more than likely be standing here long after the people of my time and their markings have faded away. All in all, not a bad day out for observing the world and its ways.