Free audio walk in Rome
The Aventine and the hill of potsherds
- 9 stops
- Free
Starts at Piazzale Ostiense
About this walk
This loop of roughly three kilometres begins at an Egyptian pyramid built into a Roman city wall and then climbs the Aventine. Along the way you pass the cemetery where Keats and Shelley lie, a hill thirty-five metres high made entirely of broken olive oil jars, the old slaughterhouse that gave the quarter its kitchen, and a walled garden of bitter orange trees looking out over half the city.
The walk starts and ends at Piramide metro station. The two churches are free. Three places depend on the season or on an appointment: the rose garden blooms from April to mid-June, and both Monte Testaccio and the garden behind the keyhole can only be visited by arrangement.
The stops
Walk them in order; each story plays when you reach its pin.
- 1Stop 1
A Pyramid in Rome
A thirty-six metre tomb in the Egyptian style, built in three hundred and thirty days for a Roman magistrate.
- 2Stop 2
The Cemetery of the Foreigners
The place where papal Rome buried everyone who wasn't Catholic, with Keats and Shelley lying beneath the cypresses.
Read the story - 3Stop 3
The hill of broken shards
Thirty-five metres high and built from more than fifty million broken olive oil amphorae.
Read the story - 4Stop 4
The Slaughterhouse
The slaughterhouse that gave the neighbourhood its kitchen: the fifth quarter, the cuts nobody else would pay for.
Read the story - 5Stop 5
The Rose Garden
Eleven hundred varieties of roses on the site of the old Jewish cemetery, with paths laid out in the shape of a menorah.
Read the story - 6Stop 6
The Orange Garden
A walled garden of bitter orange trees on the ruins of a medieval fortress, looking out over half the city.
Read the story - 7Stop 7
The cypress wood door
A fifth-century church with a wooden door carved with one of the oldest crucifixion scenes in the world.
Read the story - 8Stop 8
The Knights' Square
The only square that printmaker Piranesi ever actually built, filled with obelisks and carved weaponry.
Read the story - 9Stop 9
The keyhole
Through the hole you look down a tunnel of cypresses straight at Saint Peter's, across three sovereign territories at once.
Read the story
Ready when you are
Walk The Aventine and the hill of potsherds with ROODS.
9 stops through Rome. Open ROODS in your browser, walk to the first pin and the story plays.
- Stories on a map, with narrated audio
- Walk at your own pace, stop where you like
- Runs in your browser. An app is optional.
