The Drugstore Museum: One of Rome's Underground Secrets

Want to see Ancient Rome without the crowds or the fees? There are wonderfully preserved 1st-century tombs and funerary relics, also well-curated and explained, within a kilometer* of Stazione di Roma Trastevere.

Above, a large family tomb, with frescoes and mosaics.

If you know RST, you can imagine we were intrigued by the name and the off-the-beaten-track location, near where we had scootered many times and couldn't envision an archeological site.

The name: The building, built in 1967, was occupied for many years by what some say was the first drugstore in Italy. In the 1980s the necropolis was discovered and the decision was made not to interfere with it, but simply to integrate some of it into the drugstore. (Wish we had seen it then too!) With the drugstore bankrupt by the 1990s, the necropolis remained inaccessible and untouched (there are advantages to lack of development) until the city and state were convinced in 2005 to take over the site. It took until 2020 for the museum to get to full use, and since then it has been closed now and then (for months at a time) - who knows why. We didn't write about it after we saw it in 2023 because we could not be assured it was open. Now it appears it is, with good programming as well.

A selection of amphorae. Someone complained about the colored lighting.
I rather liked it.

There are frescoes, mosaics, monuments. All one could ask for in digestible pieces.

In a post-modern approach, the bars and struts holding up the building above the site are highly visible, and the spaces for presentations and colloquies sponsored by the museum are not separated from the museum itself. All good design decisions, imo.

The multiple levels and explanatory panels are beautifully done.

I may not know what "syncretism" is,
but I appreciate this explanation, and the 
lovely statuette below.

Panels are in Italian and English,
and are both general and specific.

Many years ago Ingrid Rowland told us about a 

columbarium in a grocery (we thought) store in the 

Trastevere area north of the station. We never

found it. Maybe it was this columbarium,

now in the Drugstore Museum.

And there's more. The site here is part of a vast necropolis that existed outside the walls, near the Tevere, stretching out from Trastevere along what was the via Campana (the oldest road on the right bank of the Tiber, and now mostly absorbed by via Portuense). The city/state have identified several other sites, and have done some excavations nearby, forming what they call the "Portuense Necropolis Circuit"--stay tuned for our next trip out that way. Bottom line: we were wowed by this small, but nicely curated "Drugstore Museum" (yes that's the name in Italian).

Via Portuense 317 (set back from the street along a concrete wall - not easily visible - see red circle in photo below). Opening hours are given as 10 a.m. - 7 p.m. daily. But I wouldn't count on that. Here's a website that has other links that do not function. There's also a telephone (landline) - you might try that. Or just go out there and if it's not open, peek in the moto shop next door, or have a coffee nearby. The Museum is only about 1 km from the Stazione, but Google Maps will take you on a 3-4 km route to avoid your endangering yourself on the crossroads between the Stazione and the Museum. (another photo below of crossroads underpasses. We'd take the 1 km route, but that's us.

location circled - hardly eye-catching!

The crossroads and underpass (under the tracks to/from Stazione di Roma Trastevere;
 our trusty Honda in the foreground.

Dianne 

La Scoperta del Giorno (Today's Discovery): Architrave Shadows

 La Scoperta del Giorno (Today’s Discovery)

The latest in the now-and-then RST feature, La Scoperta del Giorno (the discovery of the day or, better put in English, Today’s Discovery). The Italian word “scoperta,” and its English equivalent, “discovery,” are similarly constructed; each is based on the verb “to cover” (coprire/to cover) and each is converted into “uncover” or “discover” with a prefix (the “s” in Italian, the “dis” in English).

We came up with the idea of La Scoperta del Giorno, as well as our first “scoperta,” while having cokes outside a small bar on via La Spezia, in sight of Piazza Lodi in the San Giovanni district.

Across the street was an apartment building—actually two of them—the one on the right of roughly 1920 vintage, the one on the left postwar. Looking at the 1920 building more closely, Dianne noticed that the trim/architrave above some windows on the 2^nd floor (where Dianne’s finger is pointing) was uneven, intentionally incorporating a raised section on the left, and creating the shadow that drew our attention. (Just the sort of thing a builder could do when craft work was relatively inexpensive.)

And that, trivial as it may seem, is “La Scoperta del Giorno” for September 29, 2025.

Bill 

Trouble in Via Panama: What's a car to do?

 There's trouble on via Panama. Congestion. Delays. Honking horns. And most of it was   avoidable.

The street is located on the edge of the swank Parioli neighborhood. It may have been intended to be used mostly by locals, but instead it's a busy thoroughfare, running along the south end of Villa Ada (a massive park). Because it connects two main roads/places—the notorious via Salaria and the very popular, heart of Parioli, Piazza Ungheria—some motorists would be tempted to use it to bypass always hectic viale Liegi, with its buses and trams. 

Last year, the city decided to reconfigure about half of via Panama, adding a wide new lane for bicycles, turning the existing bike lane into a pedestrian sidewalk, and adding cut-outs for buses. Already a one-way street heading south, vehicular traffic on via Panama was smushed into one lane. Locals don't like it.

As it turned out (reading the papers the next day), we arrived to inspect the damage just after a protest demonstration occupied the still-under-construction street. We found a remnant of the manifestazione: a chalked sign on the street, reading "Con le stampelle/Niente Bici/Serve Auto!!!" ("With the divisions, no bicycles, cars are needed")

In our humble opinion, there's just too much build-out, too much concrete (especially to provide space for people to wait for buses), and too little space for cars and trucks and scooters. 

The photos that follow (and the one above) are more or less in order, beginning at the "top" of via Panama (at Piazza Ungheria) and continuing down the street, to the point where the reconstruction ends. The photos were taken in October, 2025.

In many cities, including ones with nasty winters like our own Buffalo, New York, municipal authorities are bending over backwards to provide bicycle lanes, as if the bicycle is the solution to to the automobiles that clog our streets. It's beginning to happen in Rome.

The idea that bicycles can materially replace cars in Rome is questionable, at least, and the reconstruction of via Panama demonstrates that it can be taken to an unhelpful extreme. There is already talk of redoing the project, of cutting it back. That won't be cheap.

Bill 

Grazie, Ciao--or Ciao, Grazie? La Scoperta del Giorno

 The latest in the now-and-then RST feature, La Scoperta del Giorno (the discovery of the day or, better put in English, Today’s Discovery). The Italian word “scoperta,” and its English equivalent, “discovery,” are similarly constructed; each is based on the verb “to cover” (coprire/to cover) and each is converted into “uncover” or “discover” with a prefix (the “s” in Italian, the “dis” in English).

Above photo is from the Fattori café on the \eastern fringe of Pigneto, Piazza dei Condottieri

When entering a café, a bar, a newsstand or any other business other than a super-market/big box store/large appliance store, it's the Rome custom to announce one's presence with "buon giorno" or, later in the day, "buona sera." 

But what to say when you've drunk your espresso, enjoyed your cornetto, and paid the bill (that is, if you didn't pay before consuming), and you're headed out the door? 

"Grazie, ciao" would seem the obvious choice. It has the proper order: thanks [and] bye. 

But according to our informal survey, which included several neighborhood folks and 3 carabinieri, the appropriate closing is (and what Romans actually say):

"Ciao, grazie" (bye [and] thanks), even if the order seems wrongly inverted (to these Americans, anyway). Roman friends confirmed our observations over dinner. 

                                                            CIAO, GRAZIE!

                            And that's the Scoperta del Giorno for November 4, 2025. 

Valco San Paolo. A Fascinating Walk and a Street We Should Not Have Taken

Valco San Paolo. Most Romans haven't been there, and won't know where it is. We returned in October, 2025, having heard that the Rossellini Film Institute that takes up part of the area had been the site of pro-Pal (pro-Palestine) demonstrations. 

Valco San Paolo occupies several acres inside a bend in the Tevere river, bounded on the other side by multi-lane viale Marconi. Coming from the Marconi neighborhood, we crossed the bridge over the river and, bypassing the first road (Lungotevere Dante), took the 2nd road, via della Vasca Navale. Ahead on the right, some boys were playing basketball and, courtside, a table of after-school high school kids were chatting and looking at their cell phones. 

Just ahead to the left, what remains of a greyhound racing track (fading decoration by the artist Blu), and its modernist signature sign, "CORSE di LEVRIERI." 

To the right, the CINODROMO (dog-racing track).  

A graffiti-lovers paradise.

Just across the parking lot is vicolo Savini, a long straight street that we wouldn't take again. (We took it, and wrote a post on it, 10 years earlier, here.) On one side of the street is a massive, modern, recently-constructed building, running the length of the street, which we assume (we don't know) will house all or part of the Rossellini film campus, now located in other buildings. A few feet down Savini we passed by a colorfully dressed woman, having a walk with a young boy. She greeted us with a healthy "buona sera," which we returned. Ahead, some activity on the street. Dianne advised turning around. We kept walking, taking no photos. A man, noticeably uncomfortable, was delivering a newish automobile. Excited children opened the doors and reclined on the shiny hood.

Across from the long modern building were the homes of people (we assumed) senza fissa dimora (with no fixed residence). As we entered this "neighborhood," a man we had just passed called out, "dove andate?" (where are you going?), said with a genuine smile. I turned toward him and said (my Italian mostly failing me), "un giro," meaning (to me) "we're just taking a walk." Still smiling, he replied "girare!", perhaps to suggest that "taking a spin" on that particular street was a curious thing to do. And it was. We were not threatened, but neither did we feel safe. For a few minutes, we were unusually vulnerable. 

When we reached the end of the street (and the residences, and the activity), I took a photo from a distance of about 100 meters. 

Here, enlarged from the above photo, is the street action we walked through:

At the intersecton, a man was rummaging through some trash.

Turning left, here's what the long modern building looks like from the other side.

Not far ahead was a sports complex linked to the community of Garbatella. Just to the right of the entrance to the complex, a woman entered another area of informal housing of those without "fissa dimora."

Around a bend, several departments of the University of Rome (Roma Tre), including nuclear physics!  

Then, and still on via della Vasca Navale, a mural of Alfred Hitchcock, the first of many that signaled our arrival at R. Rossellini State Institute of Cinematography and Film. 

This one, referring to Robert DeNiro's famous scene in "Taxi Driver," seems to have gotten the line wrong: "You talkin' to me?"

Around another bend (and heading back toward the dog track), several massive pieces of wall art:

Above, "Work kills you because life is perilous" - at least one translation (from us).

Across the street, the entrance to still another encampment, this one looking more permanent, or at least more "fixed." 

And the parking lot, with vans and campers serving as homes:

Up the road and out, and across viale Marconi, to a corner bar and a shared bottle of Peroni.

Another world.

Bill