ENGLISH
Mount of potsherds (Testaccio)
The Monte dei Cocci or Testaccio Mount, is a unique site in the world, a real speciality rubbish dump of Roman age.
In fact it is constituted by many layers, stacked with an ordered system, of potsherds (in Latin testae , from which the name of the mount) of olearie amphoras disembarked from close fluvial port on the Tevere and destined to the sale inRome.
The rubbish dump was used for about three hundred years, from the age of Augusto to the half of III the century.
In the successive centuries the mount became place for “out of the walls” trips and festivities as G.G. Belli remembers in one of its beautiful sonetti (poems in roman dialect):Una Lingua Nova. In fact he describes Testaccio as a “Place where the plebe runs in springtime, and more in October, and eats and drinks a lot, because in the mount formed in ancient times by potsherds (teste) and therefore called Testaccio, coves are dug within which wines are maintained extremely cold. The opposite lawn moreover, and the close pyramid of the famous eater C. Cestio, are places very appropriate to have parties and noisy entertainment. Indeed in the past times the City of Rome used to have in that area public and sometimes cruel and bloody shows. A little bit further you can find the reformed cemetery” (I apologize for my bad translation J ).
From the XV century, the Testaccio Mount became the arrival point for the Via Crucis on Saint Friday, transforming itself in a real Golgota.
Later it will be a privileged place to spend the Ottobrate, the typical October roman festivities, when the adorned carts of the Mozzatore (women who worked to harvest grape) used to parade towards the taverns and the wine cellars of the Testaccio.
Among songs, poetry, dances, contests, games and chats, people rested from their work and above all everybody drank the tasty wine of the Roman Castles, conserved in the fresh wine cellars dug into the slopes of the mount.
Cache is a thin, magnetic,10 cm long, tube. Please, bring your writing tool.