Piazza Tesachcio

Popular at all hours of the day with Romans and tourists passing through in search of Roman spirit, Piazza Testaccio is one of the main squares in the district of the same name, named after the Latin “Mons Testaceus”,  monte dei Cocci, an artificial hill made from the fragments of amphorae (heads) from the nearby river port of Ripa Grande. The square was created at the beginning of the 20th century with the original name of Piazza Mastro Giorgio, when intense building activity began on the plain around the mountain for the dwellings of the workers along the Via Ostiense.

For years, the square was the scene of the historic district market. Today, after the market's relocation, Piazza Testaccio has once again gained light, thanks to the relocation of the Fountain of the Amphoras, built in 1927 by Pietro Lombardi  and housed in Piazza dell'Emporio from 1935 to 2014, due to structural problems. At one of the corners of the square is the Madonnella, a copy of an ancient seventeenth-century image, preserved on the altar at the Church of Santa Maria Liberatrice.