Piramide Cestia
Just outside Porta San Paolo there is the pyramid of Gaius Cestius which is one of the typical and best preserved monuments of ancient Rome.
It has a base of 22 meters by side and a height of 27 metres. The effect is rather diminished by the superelevation of the modern road plan.
Built on the travertine basement the monument is covered by blocks of volcanic tufa stone. It is appeared to be a funerary monument of Gaius Cestius Epulone, dead in 12 B.C. He was a magistrate, people's tribune and a member of the college of the Septemviri epulones, which was involved in arrangements of the sacred banquets. His funerary cell of 4 X 6 meters had modest remnants of paintings and an inscription on its side in big letters that says that it was accomplished within 330 days.
Porta San Paolo, the ancient Porta Ostiense so-call after Basilica di San Paolo fuori le mura looks on the Aurelian Wall connecting Piazza di Porta San Paolo to Piazza Ostiense.
The internal part, Piazza di Porta San Paolo dated to the Aurelian time (the IIId century) with already two fornices is adorned by a medieval kiosk between two columns.
To reach the square is possible from the Viale Giotto which passed along le Mura and the Rione San Saba; from the Viale della Piramide Cestia which divides San Saba from Parco della Resistenza dell'8 Settembre under the Aventino hill, from the Via Marmorata, the
Testaccio quarter and the Protestant Cemetery.
The outside part of the Porta the Piazza Ostiense dates to the Onorio's time (Vth century).It has only one fornix surmounted by the monofore line of a gallery between two big cylindrical towers embattled with loopholes and wide windows supported above.
From here Rome is linked with Ostia, "porto in Rome" either through the Via Ostiense that after the Basilica di San Paolo basilica is connected to the Via del Mare or by means of the metro line Roma-Lido of Ostia that starts from the square.
A little bit further on the Piazzale dei partigiani, there is the railway station Rome Ostiense opened in 1938 specially for the Hitler visit.
In the back one can see the modern structure of the Terminal Ostiense opened specially for the Football Championship in 1990.
The records of Rome. Big numbers, not always enviable, for a big city.
New Phot-O-Matic section. To spend some time looking at photos (also) of Rome.
The administrative, urban, toponymic and imaginative subdivisions of Rome.
Notice for tourists: in Rome you drink for free. Historical fountains and 'big noses'.
Free museums return on the first Sunday of the month.
