Top 20 Testaccio, Rome vacation rentals & luxury serviced apartments

Testaccio is quite literally built on food. Founded in 1st century BC as a river port, it was where Rome's supplies of olive oil, grain and wine arrived into the city. Everything was transported in terracotta amphorae, which were smashed on arrival and discarded. Centuries of this practice created a vast mound of terracotta fragments - the Monte dei Cocci - which has become the district's defining feature. Although that isn't really true. What lures the crowds to this cheese shaped corner of Rome is an explosion of culinary curiosity, creativity and an entrepreneurial energy that is rare to find elsewhere. Foodies from across Italy and the world have descended on Testaccio; at the market visitors rub shoulders with Michelin-starred chefs as well as local farmers and Roman ladies doing their weekly shop. There is buzzy nightlife and great modern art, as well as the draw of the Non-Catholic Cemetery at Rome, home to the bodies of Shelley and Keats and a place of pilgrimage for many floppy haired aspiring poet.