In The Repurposing of Rome, an episode from our archives, we hit the streets of Rome with our recording equipment to search for ancient ruined artifacts or “spoglie” hidden in plain sight.
Rome is a city that has been repurposed like no other. It has been inhabited without interruption for over three thousand years. A past like that cannot but leave its mark on a city. And if you keep your eyes open, the vestiges of Rome’s ancient past can be found around almost every corner.
From the fluted Corinthian columns walled into the sides of nondescript buildings to the piazza that follows the shape of the ancient stadium it was built upon, from the crumbling Roman buildings that found new life as Renaissance palaces to the fragments of ancient decoration plastered into the walls of medieval buildings…the history of Rome is palpable in its very urban fabric.
You don’t have to visit an archeological site or even a museum to discover the city’s many layers of history. Just take a long rambling walk through Rome’s historic center and you’ll find the tangible ghosts of the ancient city coming to life all around you.
Want to follow along with us? Here’s a list of the stops we make on our passeggiata:
• Ponte Fabricio
• Torre dei Caetani (*Note: Tiffany mistakenly refers to it as the Torre dei Crescenzi in the episode. Oops!)
• Portico Of Octavia
• Theater of Marcellus (and Palazzo Orsini)
• Largo di Torre Argentina (and the Cat Sanctuary)
• Piazza Navona (and Sant’Agnese in Agone Church)
• Piazza di Pietra and the Temple of Hadrian
PS If you’d like to book a walking tour of Rome with Tiffany, read about her tours here. Better yet, come to Rome for a magical week with Katy and Tiffany in October 2025! Find out more about our unforgettable listener trip here.
***The Bittersweet life podcast has been on the air for an impressive 10+ years! In order to help newer listeners discover some of our earlier episodes, every Friday we are now airing an episode from our vast archives! Enjoy!***
You can listen to the episode right here, or find it on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Overcast, and elsewhere.
Related Episodes:
Episode 442: The Glorious Gardens of Rome
Episode 426: Touring Rome with Tiffany
Episode 354: Virtual Tour of Rome with Special Guests, Part 2
Episode 353: Virtual Tour of Rome with Special Guests, Part 1
Episode 313: Virtual Tour of Rome
Bittersweet Moment #207: A Virtual Tour of San Clemente
Five key takeaways from the episode:
- The podcast hosts discuss ancient Roman structures that have been repurposed over time, including the Ponte Fabricio bridge (still in use after 2000 years) and the Portico of Octavia (repurposed as a fish market in the Middle Ages).
- They describe the Theater of Marcellus, which was transformed into a fortress and later a palace by wealthy Roman families in the medieval and Renaissance periods.
- The hosts talk about Largo Argentina, an ancient sacred site that now serves as a cat sanctuary, where volunteers care for stray cats among the ruins.
- Piazza Navona is highlighted as an example of Rome’s historical layers, built on the site of an ancient stadium and retaining its distinctive oval shape.
- The Temple of Hadrian in Piazza di Pietra is mentioned as another repurposed ancient structure, which was incorporated into a customs house building in the 1500s.
Full Episode Transcript:
Katy
Welcome to Rome. This Is The Bittersweet Life with Katy Sewall and Tiffany Parks. Hello. This Is The Bittersweet Life . I’m Katy Sewall. Hi, all.
Tiffany
I’m Tiffany Parks. We’re standing on the Ponte Fabricio, also known as the Ponte DEI Quattro Capi, the oldest standing working bridge in Rome. And we’re listening to the water of the Tiber flowing beneath us. And there’s some really awesome accordion music in the background as well.
Katy
Yes. So why are we on this bridge?
Tiffany
Well, today we’re going to be talking about all of the ancient and other old things in Rome that have been repurposed and made new again and are still being used, sometimes for the same purpose, sometimes for totally different purposes.
Katy
Great. Probably not all of it, but some.
Tiffany
Of it, some, all of it would be like. That would take years, probably your whole life. Okay.
Katy
But we decided to start on this particular bridge.
Tiffany
Why? Because this is. This bridge was built in the first century ad, I believe, and it’s still in use today. Now it has been repaved and rebuilt a little bit, but the foundations are the same. So if you look at it from when you’re not standing on it, the pilings, is that the word? Pylons? Pilings. Those are original. And it’s pretty cool to me that a bridge is still standing after almost 2,000 years.
Katy
Right. And in the distance, if we look to our left in the way we’re facing, there’s a tower, a brick tower.
Tiffany
Yeah, it’s Torre DEI Crescenzi. If I’m not mistaken. It’s on the Tiber island. It’s a little brick medieval tower. There’s not very many medieval towers still standing in Rome because they were in, I think the 13th century. The Pope had them all leveled, so few might have survived, but most of them are gone. It is a pretty well preserved and authentic medieval tower. And Katy’s favorite thing about this tower, which I love myself, is there’s a little bust and an ancient bust of a woman’s head. Not very big. I mean, it’s far up, so we can’t really tell, but I would guess it’s only about maybe not even a foot long from the base to the top of her head. And it’s just sitting in the tower. Like there’s a little niche in there and it’s just stuck in there.
Katy
Just a little tiny head just in the tower for no reason. We don’t know who it is. It’s up a little high. We can’t really see her Face very well. But it’s a little, tiny woman’s head.
Tiffany
Yeah. I believe we’ve talked about it before on the podcast.
Katy
First, probably we should take a picture of it.
Tiffany
We’ll post a picture of this on our social media sites the day this comes out. But yeah, so that’s not really repurposed as opposed to just decoration. And that does sometimes happen. Like, you’ll see particularly medieval buildings. The ones that have kept their original appearance will sometimes have little bits and fragments of ancient decorations like this just sort of walled into them for no real apparent reason. But we like it.
Katy
Do you think that somebody just maybe found that head and set it there, and years later, it’s still there?
Tiffany
I have no idea how that got there. And it makes me so curious that I almost want to write a story or a book about it.
Katy
Which you probably will. All right, so let’s pause, and we’ll walk to our next location.
Tiffany
Okay. But before we leave, I want to just give a euro to this accordion player on the street here who is doing such a great job.
Katy
Where are we heading? Do you want to tell us as we are walking or heading to the Jewish ghetto? Right.
Tiffany
So we’re standing in the Jewish ghetto, which is one of my favorite neighborhoods. About Bayou. You like it?
Katy
Oh, yeah, I love it. Of course.
Tiffany
And probably the main monument in this neighborhood is the portico of Octavia, which we’ve talked about, I think, a little bit.
Katy
We have. We talked about it when the scaffolding first came off of it.
Tiffany
Right. And if you’ve read my book Midnight in the Piazza, you know that there’s a scene that takes place. Place in front of it.
Katy
Let’s go down here, away from this crowd just a little bit. There’s a tour guide going on right now, so we’re gonna.
Tiffany
He’s not as dashing as Nigel from Midnight in the Piazza, my tour guide with the floppy hair. But you only know this if you’ve read Midnight in the Piazza. And if you haven’t yet, what are you waiting for? But I digress.
Katy
Yes.
Tiffany
So this site, which is an ancient site, obviously we’re talking about today’s mostly ancient stuff. Back in the day, it was a portico, meaning it was an area of the city that was surrounded by a covered columned rectangle. Like, if you can imagine, a little covered columned walkway that made a sort of delineated space around a couple of temples. And there were also little niches shooting off of it with other sites, other rooms, and things like that. But what really remains of it is just the entryway, this sort of monumental entrance that had a marble pediment and Columbia. Oh my gosh. Very angry dog over here who has a muzzle on.
Katy
For good reason. For good reason.
Tiffany
Oh no. That the other dog is like running away. I can’t be as far away from this other dog as I can. They’re both the same type of dog.
Katy
Both the same kind of dog.
Tiffany
Yeah. Anyway, so with Colombian. Colombian. Colombian coffee. And Corinthian columns. Sorry, Corinthian columns. Fluted Corinthian columns. Anyway, what I love about this place, besides just that it is beautiful to look at, is that it was repurposed in the Middle Ages as a fish market. The residents of this area would go fishing in the river, which is right behind us, and they would sell their fish right here in this sort of semi shelter of this space, of this ancient space. And this is probably one of the reasons that it survived. Because most ancient sites didn’t survive. If they did, there was usually a reason for it. It was usually because the site was repurposed as something else. Most commonly that happened as ancient temples were turned into churches. We might talk about that a little more if we see any of those. But I love this one because it was such a, let’s say, pedestrian sort of use that they gave it just this sort of outdoor fish market. They just needed a little bit of shelter. And it has even grown on since then and had more identities afterwards. A church was built into it. Sant’Angelo in Pescaria. Yes. It has a much more modern facade and you can’t really tell that it has this sort of ancient past, but it is built on the foundations. And I’m sure there are some internal walls as well that were reutilized. And also to the left of the structure, if you’re looking at it, are apartments that were literally built right into it in the Middle Ages and they’re still inhabited, which is just, just amazing to me.
Katy
You know, I’ve noticed there’s one apartment over there that was for sale when I lived here by back in 2013 and 14 and surprised to notice that that apartment is still for sale. Now, I’m not saying it didn’t sell in the meantime, but I was thinking, huh, if your apartment is built into ancient walls, maybe. Maybe it’s full of mold or the demons of 2000 years.
Tiffany
I would say more likely than mold and demons is just structural worries. You know, I think people are probably afraid to live in a place that is so structurally ancient and just pericoloso Dangerous. Precarious, I guess, is the word I’m looking for. But that leads me to another site that’s just right next to this.
Katy
We’ll walk over there. Do you want to talk?
Tiffany
Let’s go on the little bridge, because that’s the best spot to see it. If you’re following us and you’re actually in Rome and you want to do this along with us. If you’ve saved this episode for your trip to Rome, right to the right of the structure, without going down the ramp to go to the lower level, go to the right, and there’s a little tiny footbridge. And from there you can get a really great shot of the Theater of Marcellus. Unfortunately, the dogs are over there walking.
Katy
Toward that dangerous dog.
Tiffany
So if we disappear all of a sudden, you know why?
Katy
He’s got a complex, for sure, being so small.
Tiffany
So this is the Theater of Marcellus, which is right beside the Portico of Octavia. If you remember from the book, this is the one that Beatrice thinks is the Colosseum. And if you look at it, you can see why it does have sort of. If you just look at one little bit of it, you can sort of see why someone who’s never seen the Coliseum might assume that this was it. It’s got a couple of layers. The top layer is pretty much gone. Of arched columns, arched supports. But what it was was actually not anything like the Colosseum, in which there were games going on, but it was a musical performance hall, so it was actually a theater. And it’s not round or oval, it’s a half circle. So we’re looking at the round side. And it was basically taken over by. Oh, my gosh, I’m so bad at this. Whenever I go out and talk about Rome and, like, I don’t prepare. Like, if I were doing a tour, I would have double checked all of my facts.
Katy
And I was like, hey, it’s a nice day. Let’s go outside.
Tiffany
Yeah. But sometimes I forget to double check my facts. And if it’s a place that I don’t talk about on every tour that I do, sometimes I’m like, oh, wait, is it the Orsini family or the Savelli family? I think it was the Orsini family, one of the really most important late medieval, early Renaissance Roman families who took over this site. And that’s what happened, actually, during the Middle Ages, the wealthy families in Rome, there were not very many of them. Maybe a handful, maybe 10, 15 wealthy families, powerful families. They would take over ancient sites that they could then turn into fortresses. So the Frangipani family took over the Coliseum. Another family took over the Castel Sant’Angelo. And this happened a lot. And I believe, Christian, correct me if I’m wrong, it was the Orsini family who took over the theater of Marcellus. And it did pass hands a few times. It did pass into the Savelli family, I believe, eventually. But that was later on in the Renaissance. But in the medieval times, it was taken over by this wealthy family, and they just moved in and they just barricaded, you know, as much as they could of it. Anything that was open, they filled in and they moved into the top floor.
Katy
That’s what I was going to ask is how do they take these things over? How do you take over the Coliseum? You just get in there one time when it’s empty and start building walls.
Tiffany
Well, the idea is that you have a private guard. Any important family was going to have their own armed guards to protect them because it was such a dangerous time and such a time of lawlessness where there was no protection from the government. If you had any kind anything to protect, you were going to be paying people to protect you. Armed guards. And so what I can assume happened is that the family, yes, just kind of went in, had their guards surrounded, and just started building some kind of battlements or something like that. So it was a very medieval, probably not very luxurious residence at first, but over time it was transformed into a palace. And that really happened under the 16th century Renaissance architect Baldosari Peruzzi, who’s, by the way, Katy, the same architect who designed one of our favorite villas in Rome, which is Villa Farnesina. So, same architect, so early 1500s, he turns the top floor, or the top two floors into a palace, complete with gorgeous coffered ceilings, frescoed walls, beautiful floors, many different rooms, gorgeous little windows. If you look up, you know, you can see that there are actual windows in there. Probably some have been replaced because some look quite modern. But it was turned into a true palace with a courtyard in the middle. And of course, that kind of thing was not sustainable. Like, no one family in this day and age can afford to have that kind of palace because of taxes and all the other things that go along with it. So it was eventually divided up into apartments. And so now there are several apartments in there. I’ve never been in there, but I have seen photographs, because one of these apartments was for sale for a period, and it was listed in the New York Times as costing something like $54 million. So whatever the Euro equivalent of that is. And I looked, it was, you know, like an eight bedroom. I mean, not an eight bedroom, an eight room apartment. So it’s not that big. If you really sit and think eight rooms. Like, if you were to buy a house these days, eight rooms might be about average for a house house. So it’s not enormous, but because of its location and because of its history, it costs what it costs.
Katy
Well. And it has all these ancient frescoes on it.
Tiffany
True, true.
Katy
Amazing stone floors. Yeah, incredible.
Tiffany
Is it noon, Katy?
Katy
It must be.
Tiffany
It’s noon, Katy.
Katy
That’s what it is.
Tiffany
It’s noon in Rome.
Katy
It’s always easy to know what time.
Tiffany
It is in Rome, especially on a Sunday. I read a book years ago by an expat who lived here for one year, and it was called A Thousand Bells at Noon. And whenever I hear the bells ringing, especially on a Sunday at noon, I always think of that book.
Katy
That was a great title.
Tiffany
Yes. Yes, it is.
Katy
So should I pause as we walk to our next location? Okay.
Tiffany
We’re standing at Lago, Argentina, which is kind of like one of the most central spots in the whole city. If you were wondering what the cheering is behind us, that is the marathon, the Rome marathon going on right behind us.
Katy
Yeah. So that’s actually. Obviously this episode is going to come out after it’s long done, but right now, as we record the Rome marathon is going on, it’s also super hot out and. And so everybody’s running past dripping in sweat toward the end of the run, and we were just marveling at them. But it’s also right next to this other site that we wanted to talk about.
Tiffany
Here’s another spot that I adore because it has such a charming and unexpected repurposed purpose. So the site is actually a sacred site. It was in ancient times. There are four temples here, the remains of four temples here. And there’s some of the oldest ancient temples in Rome. Actually, they’re not in the greatest shape in the world. If you’ve been to the Pantheon, it’s nothing like that. One of them, the one on the far right, if you were standing on the east side, because it’s a rectangular space, is a little bit better preserved than the others. And that’s because in the medieval period, part of it was turned into a church, a Christian church. And if you look over there, Katy, you can see, see, there are a few frescoes back in that little niche area that has sort of a roof over it.
Katy
Yes. Red, white and blue.
Tiffany
Yeah. So that little area where. Because that particular temple became a church. It is the best preserved of all four, but they’re all, you know, I mean, you can’t really. Like, if you walked past, you might not know what this site was. So it does take a little bit of imagination. And there’s a lot of, like, ancient debris just strewn in the middle, you know, just like bits of marble that you just have no idea. I mean, probably the archaeologists who are taking care of the site know what it is, but as a viewer, it just kind of looks like random pieces of marble lying everywhere. The site was actually discovered in the 1920s because Mussolini was doing so much rebuilding at that time that they were constantly, like, tearing down old buildings and rebuilding them, or especially streets and things like that. And I don’t know what was here up until the 1920s, but whatever it was, it was torn down. And they started excavating, they started digging a foundation for a new building, and they came across the ruins of these four ancient temples. And luckily, someone was smart enough to be like, hold on a second, let’s leave it. Let’s not build something over it. So that’s good.
Katy
Yeah, it’s nice.
Tiffany
Yeah. And the site just kind of was sectioned off. I don’t think anything was really done with it beyond probably some archaeological work. And eventually, in the 1960s, some woman, and I don’t know her name, but an older woman who was obviously a cat lover, started feeding the stray cats that were sort of gravitating to this area on their own, because, as you can imagine, I mean, it’s an open area. There’s no traffic, there’s no people. So it’s just kind of an open space. There’s some grass, there’s some things to climb on. It’s a natural place that a cat would want to be. So this woman started sort of feeding the cats that would congregate here. And from that, you know, lone person doing this random thing by herself, it eventually, over the years, became an actual recognized charity. And the site is now considered. I don’t know if it’s an official title, but it is unofficially at least, considered the cat sanctuary of Rome. And at any given time, there are dozens of cats that you can spot down here if you just kind of wait and watch long enough. There’s also a little section at the end that’s closed off, where the volunteers can go down and they take care of the cats. They do deworm them. They spay and neuter them. They give them shots if necessary. And obviously they feed them and Clean up after them.
Katy
So isn’t this also where possibly Caesar might have been murdered?
Tiffany
It’s definitely near where Caesar was murdered, but it’s not right in this spot. But it’s very, very close. So if you look across to the west side of the rectangle, there’s a street. And actually, this is the street that the tram number eight runs along, and it’s pretty much between us and that, more or less in front of the theater, the Teatro Argentina, which is right across the street. It’s more or less in between there that they say is a spot where Caesar was assassinated. And the reason he was assassinated there, he wasn’t in one of these temples. He wasn’t assassinated in a temple. Basically, it’s the structure that was right on the other side, right next door to these temples, which was the. It was an enormous structure called the Theater of Pompey, Rome’s biggest theater. And it had a huge courtyard, huge, long, rectangular open space. And at the far end of it, which is this side, so the theater was actually quite a ways from here because this courtyard was so long. On the far end of it, there was a room, and it had several rooms off of the courtyard. But this one particular room was being used as a substitute for the curia. The curia is where the Senate met. There was a curia in the Forum, and it was burned down. And Caesar. Julius Caesar was building a new one. And there is. Caesar’s curia is there now, very, very heavily restored. But at that moment, there was no curia. And so they were meeting out of necessity in a room off of the Theater of Pompey. That is where that room was, like I said, just on the other side of this site, sort of where the street is, but obviously several meters down. I mean, it hasn’t been excavated, so we don’t really know exactly what’s down there or even if anything is down there. But that’s the spot that it happened, so very interesting.
Katy
Okay, well, where should we head next?
Tiffany
We are going to make an attempt to cross the street where the Marathon is going. I don’t know if they’re gonna let us, because we would like to go to Piazza Novona. Let’s see if we can do it.
Katy
If we can’t, we’re gonna just sit somewhere and talk about Piazza Navona. But, you know, you’re listening, so what does it matter to you? I mean, let’s be honest. Until then, I’m going to. Okay, so we can’t get across the Marathon. We could, but it was going to mean standing in the sun, waiting for an interminably long time. And we just didn’t want to do that.
Tiffany
No. Nor do we have the time. So we are headed back towards Trastevere. But I didn’t want to do this episode without at least mentioning Piazza Navona, because it’s the epitome of repurposed Rome and the layers of Rome that you can see, see right in front of your eyes. Which is what excites me most about Rome more than anything else, is its historical layers. Piazza Navona, if you’ve been there, you know, it’s a long, oblong, square, oval shaped, flat on one end and curved on the other end.
Katy
Yes, we’ve talked about it being a stadium.
Tiffany
Yeah, we’ve talked about it. But that’s really what makes it so fascinating. It was this stadium of Domitian where human games took place, mostly races, track and field kind of stuff after it fell into disrepair after the fall of Rome. And I’m sure that a lot of the marble from the seats and the arches and things were taken away bit by bit. Some, of course, survives. Something always survives. And in the Middle Ages, when people were looking out for new places to live, what they did was they’re like, okay, here is a half of a wall. That’s half a wall that I don’t have to build. That was the mentality. Because there was so few resources available to people at that time, you couldn’t just like go down to your local building guy and buy some stuff. So you really had to sort of forage it yourself. And you’ll see in the walls of buildings even much older than in the Middle Ages, even Renaissance buildings, you’ll see ancient columns just kind of stuck into the side of them sometimes. Maybe that was there. But what I think more likely happened was that was a column that had been sort of just abandoned, was lying on its side, most likely, and it was just sort of taken and used as an extra foundation, you know, as an extra stabilizing agent for the building so that it would be less likely to fall down. You can still see this all over the city. But with the Piazza Navona, people slowly, slowly began to move in and they followed the shape of the stadium. They were basically building their homes only where the seating area was and where the arches and the main structure was, because the middle part was just open, it was a stadium, so it was empty. So there wasn’t anything to work with there.
Katy
This is the motorcycle.
Tiffany
So they moved into the area of the seating and the actual structure of the stadium and the homes followed this little curving line, an oblong shape. Now, today, those buildings that are in Piazza Navona, those homes and apartment buildings, they are much newer than the Middle Ages, but the structure is in some way still that ancient structure. You know, it’s always like, where does the ancient leave off and the medieval takeover? Where does the medieval leave off and the modern takeover? Those lines are hazy. You don’t really always know, but there is some of both, which is what I mean when I talk about those layers of history. So when you go into Piazza Navoni, you see that shape. It’s such a particular and distinct shape for a square to be in. And that’s the reason, because that was the shape of the stadium.
Katy
Piazza Navona has two big churches in it, but one, of course, is the most dominating focal point of the entire square.
Tiffany
Well, some would argue that the central fountain is the dominating.
Katy
Their vocal point.
Tiffany
Both of them. Yeah, yeah.
Katy
I mean, from a structure standpoint, from what’s built around the old stadium standpoint, do you know at what point that church appeared or how that ended up there?
Tiffany
Yes. The church you’re talking about is Sant’Agnese in Agone. Saint Agnes in Agone. Now, by the way, my love of toponymy place names and my love of word origins comes into play here. The word agone was the word for those ancient races.
Katy
The.
Tiffany
That’s what they were called those ancient games, and so that’s why it has that name. But St. Agnes, a little bit of, let’s say, early medieval or late ancient history here. Saint Agnes. I’m not going to go into the whole thing because it might not be that interesting, but St. Agnes was basically martyred in the stadium right on the spot where the church is now. And how. Well, the story goes, the legend goes, some very important. Roman wanted to marry her. She was a Christian, a beautiful young Christian girl. She refused to marry him. He was offended. For revenge, he brought her to a brothel that was. Or he captured her, brought her to a brothel that was on that spot, because I guess they had brothels in the stadiums back in those days. And he was going to force her into prostitution. And so he had her stand up there in front of everyone and stripped off all of her clothing. And the miracle was, according to the legend, that her hair grew so fast. And of course, it depends on the translation, whether we’re talking about the hair on her head or also her body hair, we don’t really know, but either way, it grew so fast that it covered her nakedness. But then she was killed anyways. And I believe that she was decapitated on the spot.
Katy
Covered in hair.
Tiffany
Covered in hair, yeah.
Katy
Boy, what a jerk.
Tiffany
Yeah, they were back in those days. So, you know, as soon as Christianity was legalized, very shortly thereafter, a small church sprung up on that spot, dedicated naturally to her with the name Inangone, because it was on the site of those games. And that church was there for a long time until Pope Innocent X came along in the mid-1600s. He was from the Pamphile family, and that was where his family palace was, in that square. The square was not anywhere near as monumental or prestigious back in those days as it is now. So in his effort to clean it up and make it into a more monumental and beautiful square and worthy to be the square where the Pope had his family residence, he commissioned the church that we now see there, Sant Agnese Nangone. It was built over. There were several different architects working on it over the years because some quit or got reassigned to new jobs. But I think of it as Borromini’s church. He was the one that gave it its distinctive facade, which, if you know anything about Borromini’s art, it’s just so typically him, with all the curves and all the movement and sort of this embracing atmosphere. The church looks like it’s almost gonna, like. Like it’s so concave that it looks like it’s about to reach out and embrace you. And so, yeah, I would say Bormini, but there were other architects working on it as well, so not just him. The other place that I wanted to talk about and would have. We would have gone there if it weren’t for this pesky marathon.
Katy
People, why do you need to run so much?
Tiffany
Seriously, I wanted to take you, Katy, to Piazza di Pietra. It’s not far from the Pantheon. If you leave the Pantheon and start walking up towards Vi del Corso, you should probably pass by Piazza di Pietro. It’s not far from the Parliament building. Whoa. We just. Whoa. All of a sudden, the street became incredibly trafficky.
Katy
There’s a big group of bridesmaids. And a bride just went by us.
Tiffany
No, it’s a hen.
Katy
Bachelorette party.
Tiffany
Bachelorette party. Henry, that smell of incense is strong. I’m surprised you guys can’t smell that at home.
Katy
This was nonchala. It might remind you of places like college. We’re actually walking back towards Trestevere. I’m making Tiffany talk a whole lot while she’s walking, but you know, it’s nice to hear these stories as we walk toward lunch, I think.
Tiffany
I think so, too. And we’re walking along a street I love to walk along because it leads right to Pontecisto. I used to walk along this street practically every day, going towards Trastevere, where I lived for many, many years. It’s Via de Petinari. But what I wanted to talk about was not Via DEI Pettinari, but Piazza di Pietra. Piazza di Pietra was the home, it still is the home of the ancient temple to Hadrian, Emperor Hadrian. This temple was preserved because the site of it was turned not into homes or into a church, but it was turned into the Roman customs house. It was probably turned into something else before that, but that’s what it became in the 1500s under the architect Giacomo de la Porta.
Katy
What’s a customs house, would you say?
Tiffany
I don’t really know. I just know that it has something to do with customs, as in, like, when you take import or export goods, something to do with the customs that you would have to pay. Dogana, it’s called Palazzo della Dogana. So I would assume it had something to do with that bureaucracy building, more or less. And, yeah, it’s gorgeous because it was done really well by the architect. He just took the parts where there was no ancient structure, and he didn’t try to make it look ancient. You know, the rest of the building looks very Renaissance. But then you have these gorgeous columns. I don’t know, there’s something like 13 or 14 of these huge fluted Corinthian columns. I mean, most of them have been put back together because they were in pieces at one point. But it doesn’t matter. It still gives you such a great. It just. It makes such an amazing impact when you’re. You’re just walking along the street and all of a sudden you walk into this small square and boom, there’s this ancient temple right in front of you.
Katy
Well, and it’s so large. Like, I think that’s part of more than the Pantheon, really. It just makes you feel extremely tiny.
Tiffany
Well, I don’t know that it’s bigger than the Pantheon, but the square is much smaller. Maybe that’s so by comparison. It feels like when you’re in this Piazza della Rotonda, where the Pantheon is, there’s just a lot of space in that square and there’s a lot of area. So even though the Pantheon is also just as if not more amazing to walk upon, especially if you’ve never seen it, I think that the Piazza di Pietra Temple of Hadrian is just. It’s more unexpected because it just looks like a regular, ordinary square. There’s not usually that many tourists there, or at least there didn’t used to be. And you just all of a sudden walk up and boom, there’s this really wide temple just right in front of you.
Katy
And it’s actually one of those places that I’ve been and multiple times, but for whatever reason, I never remember exactly where it is in my mental map. And so I feel like every single time I come upon it, it’s like that same thing where you’re like, oh, for it being such a large, big white column, you’d think it would be a little bit more obvious.
Tiffany
Well, that’s what I love about Rome, is that there are many ancient cities in the world, but most of them have not been inhabited in an uninterrupted way for 2000, 3000 years. Even like Rome has these sites, they never were completely 100% abandoned. And that’s what I love about Rome more than anything else.
Katy
Well, we should leave it there, thinking about what in our own lives we should repurpose. Perhaps it could be a bigger question for another episode. But thanks for the tour.
Tiffany
You’re welcome. Thanks for coming. Thanks for suggesting it.
Katy
And. And until next time, this is The Bittersweet Life. I’m Katy Sewall.
Tiffany
I’m Tiffany Parks.
Katy
Join us again. Bye.
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