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Quartiere ICP del Piccolo Aventino

Historic site · San Saba, Italy

The brick garden-quarter that fills most of the rione, between the basilica and the Aurelian Walls. it.wikipedia's article on the rione describes two-family villini each with a small garden, and blocks of no more than four floors with courtyards, each faced in brick the colour of the old brickwork of the church and the walls. The streets are named after architects: Bernini, Borromini, Baccio Pontelli, Palladio, Pirro Ligorio, Bramante. The site is a plateau on a hilltop, crossed by ramps and stairways dropping to the walls or to Testaccio below. Via Baccio Pontelli and Via Andrea Palladio are stairways, and Viale Giotto runs along the inside face of the Aurelian Walls.

History

Between 1907 and 1914 the Blocco Popolare governing the city, radicals, republicans and socialists under mayor Ernesto Nathan, had the Istituto Case Popolari build ten lots of housing on the Piccolo Aventino, for the salaried lower-middle class. The area had been zoned as public green by the post-1870 master plan, next to the Passeggiata Archeologica. It was designed, like the ICP housing in Testaccio, by the then-young Quadrio Pirani. San Saba and Testaccio were carved out of Ripa in 1921, following Rome's first master plan of 1909. it.wikipedia reproduces an inscription on a cippus walled into the façade of a 1930 apartment building in the quarter, recording that Augustus made public the land on which the newer part of the rione stands: ID QVOD INTRA CIPPOS AD CAMPVM VERSVS SOLI EST CAESAR AVGVSTVS REDEMPTVM A PRIVATO PVBLICAVIT.

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