Trastavere is considered the most authentic Italian neighborhood in Rome. It's on the west bank of the Tiber, literally--'across the river.' Trastavere is the Rome you see in Fellini films.
We took a walking, gastronomical, twilight tour of Trastavere that was definitely a highlight of our trip so far.
We went to 8 different local places and sampled plates and plates of food. We had a mozzarella cheese that was more cream than cheese, stopped in an underground wine cellar that was the first synagogue in Rome (circa 800 BC), went to a meat market for samples of different salami, ate meatballs, three different kinds of pasta, hung out at a bakery that's been a family business for more than a hundred years, and topped the night off with gelato.If all that wasn't magical enough....
...we made a surprise stop to a monastery that houses the oldest apothecary in the world. (That could be hyperbole, but that's what the tour guide told us). The monks who lived and worked here blended, brewed, mortared and pestled all sorts of concoctions to keep the popes and other Catholic hierarchy--as well as the rest of the Romans--healthy. It was open from the 1200s to the mid-20th century.
Our guide told us they just locked the place up and walked out when they decided to stop apothecarying. The bottles are still full, there are hand-labeled boxes with dried (really dry) herbs, brass urns, floor to ceiling shelves, alabaster containers, marble floors. It looks like the set for a Harry Potter movie.
Very fun night.
Katerina
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