Early spring 2019, I learned that I had been accepted into John Cabot University, an American university in Rome for the fall semester of 2019. From late August through December, I would be living right in the middle of the beautiful and historic city, so close to so many incredibly monuments, and within easy access of airports and train stations for further travels.
Spending this much time in Rome gave me a lot of time to get familiar with it. While I knew how to get to all of the bigger, more famous monuments, like the Colosseum or the Trevi Fountain, living there also allowed me to find my own hidden treasures right along the paths I would walk every day.
Baccanale
Since Italian culture is so centered around food, a lot of places on this list are also going to revolve around food. It’s nearly impossibly to resist the smell of something wafting out of a little shop nestled within the winding cobblestone streets.
This is how I found Baccanale. Sitting right at the entrance of the Campo de’ Fiori, a square where there is a market with fresh produce every morning, the booth looks unsuspecting and almost blends into the rest of the surrounding architecture. If it hadn’t been for the line of people waiting to get what would become one of my favorite lunch, I probably would have just passed it by.
For 4 euros, customers can go up to the window and order a pizza farcita, which literally translates to a stuffed pizza. It’s not exactly a stuffed pizza, since none of them come with the signature tomato sauce that we associate with pizza, but depending on what you order, it can be pretty close. In its essence, the farcite are sliced bread (pretty similar to ciabatta), and stuffed with fresh mozzarella and another ingredient. My favorite was mozzarella e prosciutto crudo, which was just mozzarella and ham, but there were many others, including salame milano and melanzana (eggplant.)
After you order, but before you have to fork over your 4 euros, the person behind the counter will turn to you and ask, “Caldo?“, which means hot. Always get it hot. The bread will soften and the cheese will melt and fuse the flavors of the farcita together. It will taste like heaven. At least, it does to me, whenever I would stop in around 1 PM for lunch after one of my classes or to get some fresh air on the weekends.
Gelateria del Viale
The apartment complex I lived in was on a street called Viale di Trastevere, which was the major road for my neighborhood of Trastevere. It was three lanes of pure terror during rush hour, and there was always the wail of an ambulance in the distance. At night, even four stories up, you could still hear everything that was happening on the street. Still, it wasn’t bad, because I had access to all of the public transit along the road, and the Viale took me a lot of places I wanted to go without even having to turn off it, including one of my academic buildings.
On one of my first days in Rome, some of the older students and Rome natives taught some of us study abroad kids how to tell if a gelateria is authentic and homemade or not. “It’s all in the pistachio,” a girl named Marta tells us. “If the pistachio flavor is brown like real pistachios, and not a bright green, then that’s how you know it’s good.” Another girl named Chiara adds that you also need to pay attention to the containers the gelato is in. If it’s a plastic bin, then it’s fake; if it’s in a nice silvery metal bin, then it’s real.
Gelaterial del Viale passes both of these tests. And, as a bonus, it’s right on the way to my academic building, so if I was having a stressful day after class, I could just pop in on my way out and grab something to brighten my day a little. Almost every time I went there, there was a young woman in her 30s behind the counter. She had dark brown hair and a sweet smile, and she was always patient with me as I stumbled through my order in Italian. Even better, she continued to speak with me in Italian, rather than just switching to English. I almost always ordered the same thing: una coppetta di biscotto (a cup of the cookie flavor). It was my favorite flavor, and I learned early on that it was easier to eat on the go with a cup rather than a cone. After I would order, the nice lady would turn to me and ask, “Panna?”, which means whipped cream. She would also add a little wafer cookie on top, which always made it look super fancy.
I loved Gelateria del Viale the best because the flavor was super rich and the gelato itself was so creamy. But other than that, it was so clearly locally owned. Even without the tips from Chiara and Marta, I could have figured it out. Each time I went in, the biscotto flavor was slightly different. One time, there were little chunks of cookie in there. Another time, there were little swirls of caramel. Each batch was unique. It made going in there exciting.
Ponte Garibaldi
To take a break from the food, but without moving off Viale di Trastevere, there is the Ponte Garibaldi. Ponte translates to bridge, which is all that the Ponte Garibaldi is, but it’s personally one of my favorite bridges in Rome (and there are many).
What I liked most about Ponte Garibaldi was the view. On one side, there was a gorgeous view of the Tiber River, lined with trees on the street level and the dome of St. Peter’s Basilica looming in the distance. On a clear day, the water reflects the blue sky as well as the next bridge over, and the dome contrasts against the sky. It’s a picturesque sight. Beautiful and calming as you take in the slight breeze that there always seems to be and the sound of the Tiber rising strongly underneath the bridge.
On the other side, there’s the Tiber Island, or Isola Tiberina, as the Romans call it. Here, it is the home to one of Rome’s many hospitals, as well as some small restaurants. I have never personally been to any of them, and I mainly crossed to the other side of the river via Ponte Garibaldi. Still, the Isola Tiberina is full of the orange colored buildings that make up most of Rome and is still beautiful to look out over.
The Cat Santuary at Largo Argentina
While the location itself is definitely not hidden as a major traffic hub, there is a little secret surprise hidden right under your eyes that no one knows about.
The Largo Argentina is a large square in the middle of some shops. Where I lived in Trastevere was more of a residential area of Rome, while this part of the city is closer to the shopping and tourist district, and is also very close to the historical monuments at the Roman Forum and the Colosseum. When entering the Largo Argentina, you first notice the small set of ruins in the center of the square, which traffic carries on around as if were just any other intersection. I took a class on classical archeology while in Rome, and my professor would take us out to some of these sites around Rome on occasion, and the ruins at Largo Argentina was one of these spots. He explained that the ruins are what are left of four small temples, and that they actually believe that there are more buildings in the are, but they can’t excavate because it would disrupt traffic too much. He also told us that archeologists and historians believe that Julius Caesar was assassinated in one of those buried buildings.
He was also the one who explained to me that the ruins have now been turned into a cat sanctuary by a local animal hospital, set on rescuing and rehabilitating the animals in a space where they can be safe from humans but still have free range to exercise. The ruins are closed off to people at all times, so the cats have full reign to hump around from temple to temple. I would often go out there myself and watch them play around, giving them various names of Roman historical figures (like Caesar, Brutus, Nero, etc.).
On one of my last days in Rome, I learned that the animal hospital has an office right there in the ruins, under the street, and that they have hours where they are open to the public, where they can pet and play with the cats, and even adopt them! If I was living there, I would definitely take home an Augustus from the ruins.
Santa Maria in Trastevere
Moving back across the river into Trastevere, there is a true hidden gem in the depths of the winding neighborhood. From the front, it doesn’t look like much. It looks like every other church with a bland facade and a signature bell town rising above. The only indication that this church is different from the rest is the gold mosaic on the uppermost part of the front, but it’s a little hard to see when first looking at it. I would have never noticed if not for one of my roommates pointing it out to me.
Still, even that little part of the front couldn’t prepare me for how it looks on the inside. The detail of the building is immaculate. First, looking up, the ceilings are painted with complex geometric patterns in bright hues of scarlet, sapphire, and emerald. The colors stand out even more from the gold edging that gilds them, giving the shapes even more definition. It’s hard to look away from them, but the long ceiling just pulls your attention to the altar.
Behind the altar is where the real art is. There are the typical scenes from the Bible and Christ’s life painted out on the apse of the altar, but what really makes them stand out is the gold leafing that works as a backdrop for everything, causing the church to glow. One of my professors even taught me a little trick that can be applied to a lot of the churches in Rome. On the left side of the altar, there is a little light switch. All you have to do is drop in the stated amount of euros, and the whole altar lights up. Otherwise, it’s dark.
The first time I went inside was for a class, and me and my friends all dropped our jaws in unison, each of us whispering to each other, “Could you imagine going here every Sunday?” The concept was just so foreign to us Americans.
Trapizzino
Another secret of Trastevere was something I passed every day, but didn’t even find for a while. A couple of my roommates found it one day after one of their classes, and promptly recommended the place to everyone else in our apartment (there were nine of us in total).
Going in, I thought I had walked in the wrong door. It’s pretty easy to do that along this street. All of the doors are so close together, since the shops are narrow, deep, and long in style. I could have just missed the door by one because it looked like a regular bar, and I was just the confused American. My roommates said that you had to go to the back counter, which was the takeaway counter. Italians don’t call take-out as that. They say takeaway.
Once at the counter, they have a couple of options, but what you want is the trapizzino itself. The food is a folded pizza pocket that they stuff with a variety of foods, like meatballs, chicken, or eggplant parmesan. My favorite was definitely the eggplant, but all of them were incredible. I especially loved this place as it got later in the semester and it started to get colder out (by Italian standards). It was also the perfect size that didn’t leave me too full or still hungry.
Laghetto di Villa Borghese
One thing that I loved about Rome is that even though it’s a city, the Romans don’t shy away from greenery. Everywhere you go, there are trees shading the pathways or vines growing up the sides of buildings. Just past the Spanish Steps, there is even a huge park that is full of green spaces and other communal activities for citizens and visitors of Rome, but without the large crowds of the more touristy locations. At one end, there is the Villa Borghese, which is an old house of one of the rich and powerful families of Renaissance Rome. It is still full of all the art that they collected and commissioned while they lived there. I had a chance to tour it myself, and there were some really gorgeous pieces by sculptors like Bernini and painters like Caravaggio.
Outside of the villa, there are plenty of other things to entertain the public. One of my favorite of these attractions is the laghetto, or lake. It’s a man-made lake in the center of the park with a faux-Roman temple seated at the end of it. Trees surround it, not falling over the water, but opening up into a little clearing for the lake, still allowing the setting to have a magical feel to it. Best yet, for 3 euros per person, you can rent a rowboat and ride around the lake for 30 minutes. One of the times I visited, there was a woman playing a harp and singing on the path leading up to the lake, just adding to the fairytale feel the lake already emanates.
Gelateria Giuffrè
Once again back along the Viale di Trastevere, there is a cute little gelateria and bakery. One of my roommates found it when walking back from the local train station. She said she passed it a couple of times, each time noting how cute the interior was, until finally caving and ordering gelato. Ever since that day, all she could talk about was Giuffrè.
Giuffrè is far back into Trastevere. At least, it is if you are a tourist, or if you are a student and campus is in the other direction. It’s just easier to go and get a perfectly good cup of gelato from the gelateria right next door to your building, even though this one is only ten minutes away from your apartment building. But once I let me roommates drag me over to Giuffrè on a night that was definitely too cold for gelato, my life was changed.
Giuffrè is an experience if nothing else. The gelato is great, but there is something about the spacious and minimalist environment that is so calming in the middle of Rome’s hectic color and activity. It was always quiet in there, but then again, we usually headed down the Viale after 9 PM.
I ordered the same thing every time: un cono di stracciatella e cioccolato fondente. A cone of chocolate chip and dark chocolate. Stracciatella is an Italy must-have. There really is no American equivalent of it, and if there was, it wouldn’t compare to the Italian’s. The cream is just the perfect consistency and the chocolate chips are just small enough so that they don’t break your teeth, but big enough that they still add flavor. I am not really a fan of chocolate-based ice creams or gelatos, but Giuffrè just knows how to make dark chocolate so that it is the perfect balance of a rich chocolate flavor and a creamy, smooth texture. It isn’t dry at all, and it mixes so beautifully with the stracciatella.
But this is not what makes Giuffrè special. When you order a cone, the person behind the counter will ask you if you want chocolate at the bottom of the cone. They have a little fountain that pours the chocolate fresh, and it is often still warm by the time you finish the cone. They also offer homemade whipped cream (panna), and sometimes they even have more than one flavor. My roommate assured us that cinnamon was the best flavor, and while I am not typically a huge fan of cinnamon, I couldn’t argue with her on that one.
Still, this is not what makes Giuffrè special. On my roommates’ last night in Rome (I was staying longer with my family), we all went on one last trip out to Giuffrè together as a room. We took up half of the tables and chairs since there were so many of us, and the poor guy behind the counter was so overwhelmed by us all showing up in the later evening hours. Still, we got one last night to laugh together and enjoy one of the best treats Italy has to offer, even if it was in the middle of December and a little chilly out.
When my family arrived the day all my roommates flew back home to the States, I was so excited and proud to show them all of the little places I discovered while I was exploring the city for the past semester.
I am so thankful for my study abroad experience, and I can’t wait until I can go back to visit Rome and walk among the orange and yellow buildings again, discovering all the new corners of the city.