A Walk Around the Aurelian Walls

The Aurelian Walls are ancient walls built to protect Rome built in the 3^rd century A.D. Just take a minute and let that sink in. A huge part of these walls built to protect the city of Rome thousands of years ago is still standing… enough of them at least that yesterday, we were able to recreate the parts that were missing and walk around the entire length of the walls (about 12 miles, in case you were wondering). Now, a huge part of the city lies outside of the original walls (our professor said something like only 5% of the population of Rome lives within the walls, something that has happened pretty recently), but most of historical Rome exists within them, since they were built so long ago.

A map of Rome with the Aurelian Walls outlined

We were supposed to meet our fearless leader, a professor at Temple Rome who has been leading this “wall walk” as  he calls it for 22 years, at San Giovanni, which was supposed to be just an easy  metro ride from the apartments. However, much to our surprise, we were forced to get off of our train when we were just one stop away from where we had gotten on the metro. We weren’t really sure why until we tried to get back to the platform and were told that the entire line was closed for the moment for an accident. So we had to venture outside, where we were shuttled onto a bus that took us a few more metro stops down to Termini, the main metro stop and bus station for Rome, where we then had to figure out which bus to take to get us to San Giovanni to meet our group. Needless to say, none of us were on time, but we definitely had an interesting start to the day. 

The portion of the wall next to San Giovanni, where we started our day!

The walk itself was exhausting. We started at San Giovanni and walked counter-clockwise around the city. Notable stops included San Lorenzo, Trastevere, the Vatican, Castel Sant’Angelo, the courthouse of Rome, Gianicolo (Rome’s second-highest hill but not one of the Seven Hills of Rome—we climbed the whole thing and at lunch from the top; what a beautiful view of the entire city!), Trastevere, and Testaccio, but really, we circled the entire city (see map above), so it was a pretty eventful day.

The professor who led our tour

Our fearless leader was so knowledgeable about the walls and everything he was talking about, and he definitely kept us motivated the entire day. What I loved about the walk was that we saw parts of Rome that are definitely part of the ancient history (the walls themselves being one of them), but we walked through a lot of modern neighborhoods, too, like Testaccio. Testaccio was built as one of the first low-cost housing neighborhoods in Rome, and it still retains a huge sense of community and identity with a lot of ethnic diversity. We passed a Mexican restaurant in Testaccio—the first I’ve seen since I’ve been here! But even neighborhoods like Testaccio can’t get away from the more ancient history—there’s a current excavation going on of one of the oldest Roman warehouses in the city right in the middle of the neighborhood, and obviously the walls go right through it.

The modern city intersects the walls from both inside and outside of the original boundaries.

Our view from the Gianicolo Hill!

What's left of the ancient Roman warehouse in Testaccio

The walls protected the city of Rome until 1870, when Italian troops finally regained control of Rome from the Pope. Still, they’ve been preserved in remarkable condition, and I am so glad that I took the opportunity to walk the length of them yesterday! It was exhausting, but it was by far the most interesting day I’ve had in Rome so far. 

The last porta, or gate, on our journey!