Garbatella: the most beautiful working-class neighborhood in the world

Color, vibrancy, history, but above all a lot of Romanity. The Garbatella neighborhood has been given the title of “most beautiful in the world” because of its unique and inimitable appearance. The architecture of the buildings is more than a hundred years old, a building of working-class lots where a community lives that claims its identity. Always.

History and culture
The Garbatella was officially born in 1920 from an ambitious project by Ernesto Nathan, after about 20 years of construction, and stands in the area of the St. Paul mountains.

The initial urban planning idea was to build a navigable canal parallel to the Tiber that would be used to transport goods from Ostia to the Fluvial Port. The area adjoining this port, consequently, would have been designated to house future dock workers.

In the 1920s the structures the docks where the carrier boats would land were completed and it was precisely in 1920 that district designed for the employees of the industries and the port, conceived ten years earlier by Nathan, was inaugurated.

To this day Garbatella looks like a small suburb, a quiet, residential area that is home to the Lotti, the small red and orange cottages adorned with beautiful gardens. This conformation gave much dignity to the working class of the time, which started a history of protecting and preserving those buildings that are now the heart of the neighborhood.

With its many nightclubs of the movida, but with an eye to the past, Garbatella remains the place where on the street, on Sunday mornings, you can still smell the smell of laundry being hung out and the scent of the gravies being prepared for the holiday meal.

The laying of the First Stone
Benedetto Brin Square is home to a walled arch within which stands out, in snow-white, the district's First Stone.

It was King Victor Emmanuel III himself, together with the Istituto Autonomo Case Popolari and the Ente Autonomo per lo Sviluppo Marittimo ed Industriale di Roma, who laid the stone that still symbolizes the birth of one of the city's oldest neighborhoods.

“BY THE AUGUST HAND OF HIS MAJESTY KING VITTORIO EMANUELE III THE ENTE AUTONOMO PER LO SVILUPPO MARITTIMO E INDUSTRIALE AND THE ISTITUTO DELLE CASE POPOLARI DI ROMA WITH THE COOPERATION OF THE COOPERATIVES OF LABOR TO OFFER QUIET AND HEALTHY ROOM TO THE ARTIFICERS OF THE ECONOMIC RENAISSANCE OF THE CAPITAL. THIS APRICO QUARTIERE FONDANO TODAY XVIII FEBBRAIO MCMXX”
so reads the inscription on the stone.

The Legend of the Hostess
The origin of the name Garbatella still seems to be a matter of debate today. There are in fact three hypotheses regarding the origin of the appellation. The first is of purely scientific origin and tells that the name was chosen to recall what were the cultivations carried out in the area, namely those of the “a garbata” vine.

The second, more humble and complacent, predicts that the neighborhood was named that way because of its Italian-style “Garden-City” conformation: large, bright dwellings, around each of which stretches a small plot of land. This choice seemed to be worth the adjective “garrulous” from which the present name is derived.

The third hypothesis, the most popular and token one, as told by the vulgate, links the origin of the name to the presence of a garrulous and beautiful hostess named Carlotta (or Maria), well liked by travelers and nicknamed “Garbata Ostella,” later shortened to “Garbatella.” The effigy of this mythical character is represented today in Geremia Bonomelli Square.

The Garden City becomes Ward XXIII
The architectural style that inhabits the neighborhood is called “Roman Barocchetto,” or the perfect blend of Baroque, Medieval, Neoclassicism and Renaissance, giving rise to a harmonious vision, as if to reaffirm the vocation of the historic Garden-City. The various groups of buildings tell of a past of social as well as architectural importance, have earned Garbatella the title of Rione, thus recognizing its historical origin and cultural significance.