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
