Belli's Trastevere & the Jewish Ghetto
Rome, Italy
This walk explores one of Rome’s most layered districts, where medieval churches, ancient ruins, and working-class streets reveal the city of craftsmen, dockworkers, Jewish families, confraternities, and dialect poets. It passes through Trastevere and Sant’Angelo, including the Roman Ghetto, and traces how neighborhood life, trade associations, and charity institutions shaped everyday survival. Along the way, medieval mosaics and hidden churches illuminate a Rome of faith, labor, exile, and local identity. The route ends with places like the Monument to Giuseppe Gioachino Belli and Santa
The stops
- 01 Monument to Giuseppe Gioachino Belli
The Monument to Giuseppe Gioachino Belli is a marble memorial dedicated to the 19th-century poet who wrote mainly in Romanesco, the Roman dialect.
- 02 San Gregorio della Divina Pietà (Saint Gregory of Divine Mercy)
San Gregorio della Divina Pietà is a small Roman Catholic church facing the Piazza Gerusalemme located in Rione Sant'Angelo, in Rome, Italy. It is located near the Great Synagogue of Rome and the former Jewish quarter of Rome.
- 03 Settimio Calò
Settimio Calò was a Roman Jew remembered as one of the victims of the Nazi roundup of Rome’s Jewish population in October 1943. He is associated with the memory of the deportation of Roman Jews during the Holocaust.
- 04 Portico d'Ottavia (Portico of Octavia)
A crucial architectural trace in the former Jewish quarter, where ancient Rome, later exclusion, and neighborhood life folded into one enduring monument.
- 05 Teatro di Marcello / Marcellus Theater (Theater of Marcellus)
The Theater of Marcellus is an ancient Roman theater begun by Julius Caesar and completed under Augustus, dedicated to his nephew Marcellus. It is one of the largest surviving theaters from ancient Rome.
- 06 Chiesa di Santa Caterina dei Funari / Church of Saint Catherine of the Ropemakers
Santa Caterina dei Funari is a Renaissance church in Rome associated with the guild of rope-makers, or funari. It was rebuilt in the 16th century and is notable for its art and for its link to an artisan confraternity.
- 07 Palazzo del Monte di Pietà / Palace of the Pawnshop
The Palazzo del Monte di Pietà was the headquarters of Rome’s charitable pawnbank, an institution created to provide secured loans and combat usury.
- 08 Ponte Sisto
A river crossing linking neighborhoods of labor, trade, and movement, important for understanding how ordinary Romans navigated the city and its markets.
- 09 Santa Maria della Scala
A smaller sacred stop that helps read Trastevere as a lived district of guilds, confraternities, and neighborhood devotion rather than only grand monuments.
- 10 Santa Maria in Trastevere
A cornerstone for medieval mosaic art in Rome, with glittering apse mosaics that evoke the devotional visual culture of the Middle Ages and the neighborhood’s long artisan and popular identity.
The narration at every stop is in the app — this is the map of where it takes you, with a line on each stop.
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Walk Belli's Trastevere & the Jewish Ghetto with a voice in your ear.
Download Odyssey Guide on iPhone to start this walk.
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