Monte Testaccio

Monte Testaccio in Rome is a unique testament to ancient logistics and everyday life in the Roman metropolis. This artificially piled-up hill consists entirely of millions of pottery shards from broken amphorae and other vessels. Its name derives from the Latin word for shards and points to its origins as the largest garbage dump of ancient Rome. The site lies in a hollow between the Aventine Hill and the banks of the Tiber, northwest of the Aurelian Walls. Today the hill, nearly fifty meters high, is largely covered in grass and trees, but its layers of fragments reach about forty-five meters deep. The area measures roughly a thousand meters around, and it is estimated that the hill is made up of about twenty-five million amphorae.

The history of this place is closely tied to Rome's enormous demand for food. As the city's population grew, local agriculture was no longer enough to supply its citizens and the army. Rome became dependent on imports, especially olive oil, which served not only as food but also as fuel, medicine, and a cosmetic ingredient. The oil came mainly from the province of Baetica, present-day Andalusia. The amphorae in which the oil was transported were single-use containers. Because their narrow necks and the film of oil seeping into the clay made it impossible to clean them hygienically, they were smashed after unloading and disposed of here.

The route the goods traveled is well documented historically. In Spain, the amphorae were loaded onto river barges and carried down the Guadalquivir to the Atlantic coast. From there they sailed across the Mediterranean to Italy, where they were transferred to cargo barges at the port of Ostia or, later, in the harbor basin built by Emperor Trajan. These barges traveled upstream to the docks below the Aventine. There the goods were temporarily stored in large, two-story warehouses known as horrea. Today only a few wall fragments and arch elements of the Porticus Aemilia remain of these structures. The Roman buildings of this district are nevertheless well known from fragments of the Forma Urbis Romae, the marble map of the city, which also shows the rising mountain of shards.