From the Aventine to Testaccio: Rome's Quiet Hill and the Mountain of Shards

Giardino degli Aranci

A terrace of bitter orange trees on the Aventine Hill with one of Rome's finest views across the Tiber to St. Peter's dome.

You are standing on the Aventine, the quietest of Rome's seven hills. The terrace in front of you was laid out in 1932, but the view is far older. Straight ahead, across the Tiber, is the dome of St. Peter's, designed by Michelangelo.

To its right, the white monument of the Vittoriano. Below you, the river bends around the Tiber Island. The garden takes its name from the bitter orange trees that line the central path. According to legend, Saint Dominic planted the very first orange tree in Italy right here in the 13th century, bringing a sapling from Spain.

That tree still grows in the cloister of Santa Sabina, the church visible behind you through the wall. This spot was once a fortress of the Savelli family, built in the 1280s. The wall around the garden is all that remains. The Dominicans later turned the grounds into a vegetable patch.

Only in 1932 did the city open it to the public, giving Rome a belvedere to rival the Janiculum and the Pincio. Take a moment at the railing. The dome looks close enough to touch, but it sits nearly three kilometers away. When you are ready, walk back toward the entrance gate and turn right onto Via di Santa Sabina.

Santa Sabina

Rome's oldest surviving basilica from the 5th century, with original cypress-wood doors carved with the earliest known depiction of the Crucifixion.

You are standing before the oldest basilica in Rome that still keeps its original shape. Santa Sabina was built between 422 and 432 by a priest named Peter of Illyria, on the site of a Roman matron's house. Sabina had been executed for converting to Christianity, and this church carries her name. Step inside.

What you notice first is the light. The windows are not glass but thin sheets of selenite, a translucent stone. That is exactly how the church was lit fifteen centuries ago. The twenty-four marble columns dividing the nave from the aisles were taken from a temple of Juno that once stood on this hill.

Their Corinthian capitals match perfectly, all spolia, all second-hand. Before you leave, look at the wooden door you came through. It is cypress wood, carved around 430, the oldest surviving wooden door in Rome. Eighteen of its original twenty-eight panels remain.

One of them shows the Crucifixion, the earliest known depiction of it in the world. The figures are simple, almost schematic. At the time, showing Christ on the cross was still a daring act. When you are done, exit and turn left.

Walk past the garden wall to the small piazza at the end of the lane.

Piazza dei Cavalieri di Malta

A Piranesi-designed square whose green door hides the Aventine Keyhole, framing St. Peter's dome at the end of a hedge-lined avenue.

You are in Piazza dei Cavalieri di Malta, a tiny rococo square designed in 1765 by Giovanni Battista Piranesi. The wall in front of you belongs to the Villa del Priorato di Malta, the institutional seat of the Sovereign Military Order of Malta, the oldest surviving chivalric order in the world. Step up to the green door. Put your eye to the keyhole.

What you see is hard to describe to anyone who has not seen it: a tunnel of perfectly clipped laurel hedges, and at the far end, floating in the exact center of the frame, Michelangelo's dome of St. Peter's. It is an optical trick Piranesi engineered deliberately, an alignment that bonds the Order to the Holy See. Through that single keyhole you are looking across three sovereign states: Italy beneath your feet, the Order of Malta's extraterritorial garden, and Vatican City in the distance.

The obelisks on the walls resemble ships' masts. The Aventine has always been imagined as a ship ready to sail. Piranesi leaned into the metaphor, filling the square with nautical motifs. Romans call this spot the Buco di Roma, the Hole of Rome.

When you have had your look, head back out the way you came and begin the descent downhill.