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Roads and Taverns

The great roads that radiated from the Urbs like the spokes of a wheel had once been one of the strengths of the Roman expansion. But over the centuries they deteriorated into small lanes, some wiped out by scrub, some reconstructed with a different route of greater local interest. Even the Via Francigena⁷⁴ was shifted to different routes, of which the only certain one is the end of the Via Cassia, roughly from the Baccano valley⁷⁵ to the entrance to Rome.

The ancient roads measured their distances from the gates in the Servian walls⁷⁶ and were named either for the city toward which they led or the political authority who had had them built. Thus the Via Nomentana led to Nomentum, today Mentana; the Via Tiburtina to Tibur, present-day Tivoli; while the Via Flaminia was called by the name of the censor Gaius Flaminius and went to Ariminum (Rimini), start of the Via Aemilia, built in the consulate of Marcus Aemilius Lepidus.

The most beautiful and important road was the Via Appia, built, says Livy,⁷⁷ in 312 B.C. It led to Capua⁷⁸ and was the first Roman road to be paved in the manner of the Carthaginian roads, that is, with basalt stones. By that time Rome was a major power. The roads of the early republican period were simple tracks, difficult to transit for merchants and armies. That must have been why the central government felt the need to speed up the traffic of the armies. Its surface was perfectly smooth, and two vehicles coming from opposite directions could pass each other. Along its route were numerous stages: Right after the Porta Capena was Ad Novum; there followed Bovillae (Boville, near Frattocchie), Aricias (Ariccia), Ad Sponsas (perhaps Cisterna), Tres Tabernae (still not identified), and Forum Appii (whose tavern was known for having mosquitoes as large as elephants). Then came Ad Medias (Mesa), Feronia, Tarracina (Terracina), Fundi (Fondi), Formiae (Formia), Minturnae (Minturno), Ad Pontem campanum, Urbanas (Urbana), Casilinum (present-day Capua), and finally Capua.

But there were other roads toward different points south, such as the Ostiensis, the Laurentina, the Campana, and the Ardeatina. Toward the east ran the Latina, the Tusculana, the Asinaria, the Labicana, the Praenestina or Gabina, the Collatina, and the Tiberina or Valeria. The roads leading north were the Nomentana, the Salaria, the Flaminia, and the Cassia.

Besides the Appia, the richest and most ornate roads were the Flaminia, the Latina, and the Cassia. The first stretch, just outside the walls, was lined with tombs and mausoleums. In later centuries, shepherds and peasants of the agro used their ruins as shelter for the night.

Settlements gradually formed at the stopping places along the roads and grew into villages, towns, and cities. They were designated municipium, civitas, or vicus, but there were also small agglomerations, very important for the nomenclature of the roads, such as mansio, positio, and mutatio. A mansio was a simple cluster of houses that included one or more taverns for staying overnight. The positio was a mansio located on the seashore. And a mutatio was a place where horses could be changed.

With the centuries, the ancient Roman stations took the name of stazioni di posta⁷⁹ and added other services, such as a church and a grocery shop, especially for rural workers. Many of these villages were also fortified with sturdy walls; one entered through one gate and left through the other. A number of these stations became known as an osteria della posta and remained in operation for many centuries. Some are remembered for the illustrious names that passed through them: the osteria of Grotta Rossa, outside the Porta del Popolo, already existed in Cicero’s day;⁸⁰ the emperor Vespasian camped in the neighborhood when getting ready to give battle to Vitellius in 69, and it was still standing during the Battle of the Milvian Bridge, between Constantine and Maxentius, in October 312. Tradition has it that, in the twelfth century, the concordat between Pope Paschal II and Henry V on the question of the investiture⁸¹ was signed at an osteria near Sutri; much later, an osteria witnessed the retreat of Garibaldi in 1849. Montaigne and later Shelley and Byron stayed at Castelnuovo di Porto, since the sixteenth century a property of the Vatican, which gave it in concession for use as an inn for periods of nine years. From 1700 on, this station displayed the image of a peacock on its sign.

The population of these osterias along the great arteries grew over time. Other artisans joined the blacksmith, the tavern keeper, and the priest who said mass to provide needed services: shoemakers who made bags and purses, tinsmiths who made kitchen utensils. Little by little the villages grew into the large and small towns that today still line the major highways. One of the most important was certainly the Osteria della Storta on the Via Cassia, at a strategic point on the Via Francigena, 9 miles (14.5 kilometers) from Rome. There were actually five osterias here, given the importance of the interchange. Already in the Roman period there was an osteria for the postal service and to this end was built a stabulum for the post. According to tradition, Saint Ignatius of Loyola had a vision when he stopped here on his way to Rome. The Osteria dei Cacciatori (of the hunters), at the foot of Monte Sacro, was still standing, when, on August 15, 1805, Simón Bolívar swore he would liberate South America from Spanish domination; and the Osteria dei Francesi in Marino, near Frascati, in the Castelli Romani, took its name from Alberico da Barbiano, the great condottiero in the service of the papacy, in memory of his victory over the French in 1379.

One of the osterias on the Tiber Island belonged to a man named Grappasonne. In 1908, Queen Margherita’s car broke down in front of it. Later the owner hung on a hook the chair on which Her Majesty rested while the problem was being dealt with. From that day on, the sign on the osteria bore this inscription: “Osteria with choice wines from the forest of Marino. In this wretched osteria, on the 17th day of October 1908, the automobile of Her Majesty the Queen broke down, and she sat in this humble chair. The owner, Abele Grappasonne, moved by such an honor, placed this commemoration.”

Prices were already regulated in 1529, when in the absence of Pope Clement VII (1523–34), the legate Antonio del Monte published a “table of prices” for the osterias and the suburban taverns, from which we deduce that the price of bread in the osterias must have been one and a half bolognino per libbra, wine four bolognini the boccale, and the “evening,” which included lodging for the night and the meal for the traveler and his horse, should not exceed twenty-five bolognini. A ration of fodder, or, as they called it then, provenna, cost five bolognini. In the city things were changing, because the rates varied according to the level and reputation of the establishments.

As the centuries passed, many of the suburban osterias disappeared with the vicissitudes of the territory, but vestiges of a number of them remain, and a careful eye today can still spot them, especially along the consular roads. Many were converted into something else and their former use lost from memory. But in their time, they had an importance we would find hard to believe nowadays, with duties that today are unthinkable. For example, a 1675 edict stated that caporali⁸² must take peasants who fell ill,⁸³ with all their belongings, to the nearest osteria that was not a hut but was instead built of masonry and had bedrooms. The landlord was to be given a form with the patient’s name and other information and was to provide the first treatment—something to eat. Often the main problem was hunger, for which the stock cure was a hearty bowl of soup, fresh eggs, and lemon balm (melissa), an herb with antipyretic properties. If the patient grew worse, the landlord was to take him personally to a hospital in Rome. The expenses of board and transport were reimbursed by the Elemosiniere di S.S.⁸⁴ This edict had to be displayed outside the osteria. But malaria was fierce, and too often the dead were buried in the countryside by the peasants themselves, or by the landlord near the osteria.

In the agro, the larders of the osterias were especially precious during the growing season: here the caporali got supplies for the peasants’ meals; and when the osteria was near the fields, the workers would often go in person for supplies.

The hospitality situation in Rome was different. As the capital of Christianity, Rome has always been thronged by pilgrims, which explains why there have been so many taverns and osterias ever since the Middle Ages.

The historian Giovanni Villani, in his Croniche, tells that on the occasion of the jubilee year decreed by Pope Boniface VIII in 1300, some two million pilgrims came to Rome: “A large number of the Christians who were then living made the pilgrimage, both women and men, from distant and different countries, far and near. And it was the most marvelous thing ever seen, that all the year round in Rome, in addition to the Roman people, two hundred thousand pilgrims, not counting those who were on the road going and returning, all were supplied and content with their victuals . . . both the horses and the people.”

Even if we cannot verify the number of travelers, it is easy enough to imagine how, on occasions of the kind, the city turned into one immense tavern, particularly since the less well-off Romans took the opportunity to rent their own beds and their own spaces.

Until the eighteenth century, no distinction was made between a tavern and an osteria, since the place of refreshment coincided with the place in which one could eat, drink, sleep, and lodge one’s horses.

Since the number of taverns and osterias fluctuated, depending on a given year’s feasts and holy days, this may be why Rome remained—from the fifteenth century nearly through the nineteenth—the city with the best hotel service and at competitive prices. In the middle of the sixteenth century, a room rented for two scudi a month, equal to about seven euros today.

A 1526 census of the crafts and trades practiced in the city documents 236 hoteliers and innkeepers, 134 bakery shops, 100 salami shops (which also sold dairy products and dried meats), 90 spice sellers (who also served as pharmacists), 88 butchers, 76 gardeners and vineyardists, and 58 water sellers.

Inns and osterias, like all other commercial establishments, had signs outside, or pictures painted on the walls or doors, so that potential customers, most of whom were illiterate, could recognize the place. Thus we have the osteria of the Bear (near Piazza Navona and still in business today as one of Rome’s most elegant restaurants, Hostaria dell’Orso), the osteria of the Golden Dragon, the Elephant, the Helmet, the Two Swords, the Two Towers—all names corresponding

Osteria del Tempo Perso (literally, “wineshop of wasted time”), Via Ardeatina, Rome (Fondazione Primoli, Rome)

to easily recognizable emblems. These were the so-called talking signs for those who could not read.

The specialty of the osteria of the Falcon, in Piazza Sant’Eustachio, was a rice and giblet timballo. The trattoria of the Rooster, near present-day Via del Tritone, gave credit and served a special pot roast⁸⁵ of turkey.

Montaigne, who made his “journey to Italy” in 1580–81, stopped at the Orso. Extending his stay, he rented an apartment in the city center consisting of four luxuriously appointed rooms, with kitchen and pantry. The price of twenty scudi per month (about eighty euros today) included linens, wood for heating, cook, and stable service.⁸⁶

Well-off pilgrims usually lodged with prominent families, since they were unlikely to venture to Rome without a letter of introduction to some acquaintance or religious order. Those who did not have introductions, friends in the city, or the money to sleep in a tavern found shelter in the porticoes of churches or palaces, where they often slept with plenty of company.

Pilgrims were not the only travelers to Rome. There were always emissaries of princes and rulers coming and going, especially during papal elections, not to mention merchants, businessmen, adventurers, writers and artists in search of patrons, and courtesans. Tourists, in the modern sense of the term, began to arrive around the beginning of the sixteenth century.

Until the end of the eighteenth century, single rooms in taverns were extremely rare, and people slept in crowded and mixed-gender conditions. The travelers’ servants slept where they could, in the corridors, under the stairs, in the stable with the horses, or on guard in front of the master’s door.

A census in the middle of the nineteenth century counted 217 osterias, 29 trattorias, 217 cafés, 37 inns, and 40 hotels in Rome.

Until the first decades of the twentieth century, the taverns and osterias offered simple and genuine home cooking, consisting exclusively of typical dishes of the Latian tradition. A carafe of common table wine always accompanied the meal. The city’s vineyards provided plenty of wine, and one of the best was produced by the vineyards on the Via Nomentana adjacent to the basilica of Sant’Agnese. Some of the wine people drank in the osterias came, however, from southern Italy, and was unloaded in large barrels at the ports of Ripa Grande. This full-bodied wine was also used for blending with other wines.

Most of what we would call table wine came to Rome from the Castelli Romani, transported on special horse-drawn carts that carried eight barrels of sixty liters (about fifteen gallons) each. They traveled at night in order to have enough time to restock all the osterias, and it was not uncommon in the darkness to encounter a cart parked along the side of the road, while the exhausted driver caught forty winks, in the company of his dog, who slept under the wagon.

Since antiquity, publicans and innkeepers, divided in separate corporations, or guilds, were regulated by their own statutes, which prohibited, for example, standing at the city gates to solicit customers. This practice was so widespread that some provident innkeepers sent their employees as far away as Formia and Gaeta, which were the first large towns at the gates of the Kingdom of Naples. The innkeeper was obliged to report the arrival and departure of guests, while a special Roman police force gave publicans and tavern operators licenses to do business.

The osterias had special hours, staying open into the night, which gave rise to legitimate protests by nearby citizens who were trying to sleep. This is documented by the historian Gregorovius, with a letter sent by the Romans to Pope John XXII, in Avignon, to protest against the young clerics who frequented the osterias at night and whose rackets and brawls disturbed the peace.

The custom of decorating the doors of osterias with wreaths and branches (frasche, in Italian, from which comes the name frasca or fraschetta for a place where wine is sold) dates back to the Middle Ages. The custom lasted until our own day, when just before World War II, it was still common for someone strolling through old Rome, and not just colorful Trastevere, to encounter a vegetal sign. The family still went to the osteria, toting its own meal tied up in a large tablecloth. The innkeeper served a fragrant wine from the Castelli. This service was called “bread and cover” and survives as the cover charge, pane e coperto, in Italian restaurants today.

Those who did not bring their food from home could buy a snack from the ambulant peddlers who wandered through the city shouting the name of their product. There were the fusajari (lupine bean producers and sellers) and the olive sellers, who, depending on the season, also sold baked dried fava beans, squash seeds, and the famous coppiette (sun-dried salted horsemeat), an excellent invitation to drink cool, slightly sparkling wine. Throughout the eighteenth century and into the next, the Roman osterias were frequented by a vast assortment of regulars, including also travelers, artists, and writers—famous and not so famous—who left records of their pleasant memories written or painted on the walls, some of which remained until quite recently.

Among the oddest customs associated with the Roman osterias was the drinking game known as passatella. The players all together ordered and paid for a certain quantity of wine, then proceeded to count off to see who would be “master” and who would be “under.” Two of the players were named the “commandants” and they distributed the wine to the other players. If he wanted, and if he was able, the master could drink all the wine himself, while the “under,” who had the right to at least one drink, dispensed the wine to the other regulars seated around the table. Those who had not managed to get a drink by the end of the game were called olmi, tricked. Not infrequently, the passatella ended in a fight, sometimes with knives. The papal government finally had to ban the game—which only meant that it continued behind closed doors.

The landlord often lived with his family in the same building and had a friendly, confidential relationship with his clientele. His wife served the customers the same simple dishes that she prepared for her own family. People socialized in the osterias and discussed arts and letters, yes, but also politics, often closely observed by the sharp-eyed papal police.

In the early years of the twentieth century, or more precisely, when the layout of the archaeological area around the Ara Pacis was finally decided, the Piazza degli Otto Cantoni, home to numerous papal osterias, still existed. It was where one could taste first-rate maiale in agrodolce (sweet-and-sour pork) and where the aliciaro (anchovy man) made the best anchovies in town. Patrons whiled away the time between bites playing cards or dice.

Today the fashion of the osteria or the fraschetta has decidedly passed, and slowly but inexorably the ax of fast food has fallen.