Quartiere Ostiense

An interesting mix of industrial archaeology and popular tradition is the main feature of Ostiense, one of the capital's youngest and liveliest areas. Its streets with underground charm, immortalized in Ferzan Özpetek's famous film Le fate ignoranti, are a landmark of Roman nightlife, beloved by international youth for creative cuisine restaurants, quaint bistros, live music venues, and trendy nightclubs. The district is notable for the numerous street art works that decorate buildings, warehouses, and former industrial structures. Notable murals include Iena Cruz's Hunting Pollution on River Port Street, made with a special paint that purifies the air; Sten&Lex's Black&White Power, depicting a series of the neighborhood's imaginary inhabitants, on General Warehouse Street; opposite, JB Rock's Wall of Fame, a series of faces of well-known figures from A to Z, such as Dante Alighieri, Jimi Hendricks, Frida Khalo, and Elvis, along with those of some of his family members.

Located in the southern part of the city, near the Tiber, the present-day Ostiense took shape in the early twentieth century, when the then mayor of Rome, Ernesto Nathan, initiated a new area with an industrial vocation. Already at the end of the nineteenth century, in the nearby Testaccio district, a modern Mattatoio had been built - in operation until 1975 and today a cultural center dedicated to contemporary art - and work began on the extension of the Via Ostiense to the sea, completed in 1907. Then came the building of the Mercati Generali, inaugurated in 1921, the new Fluvial Port for the landing of boats used for the transport of raw materials, the Gas Works, with the great Gazometro of 1936, later subjected to architectural constraint, and the Centrale Montemartini, the first public plant for the production of electricity. The latter today represents an extraordinary example of conversion into a museum venue: it is the second exhibition center of the Musei Capitolini and houses a considerable part of the sculptures of classical antiquity that were unearthed during excavations carried out in Rome in the late nineteenth and early decades of the twentieth century. Along with the municipal facilities, private establishments, including the Magazzini Generali for storing goods, pasta factories, dairies, glassworks and hardware stores, stand.