Monte TestaccioThere are some manmade mountains around; most constructed (like Silbury Hill in Engla

Monte TestaccioThere are some manmade mountains around; most constructed (like Silbury Hill in England) for ritual purposes, but Rome boasts one of the biggest rubbish heaps in Europe dating from the imperial era gracing its seven natural hills. Also called the mountain of shards (Monte dei Cocci), it is entirely made of pieces of broken 70 litre amphorae (known as testae) that were dumped there over a period of several centuries. While the Romans recycled most fragments of pottery as note paper, some of them couldn’t be used, due to the residues of olive oil that had seeped into the porous ceramic.The site was once next to the main Tiber port, bringing goods upriver by barge from the port of Ostia on the coast, and the Horrae Galbae warehouses where imported goods such as oil and grain were stocked and the state oil reserve kept. Many of the jars are labelled with their port and country of origin for tax purposes, along with the quality of oil within with most coming from Spain, Libya and Tunisia. Archaeologists are using them in their quest to reconstruct Roman trading networks throughout the Middle Sea.The triangular hill was a deliberate construction in a series of rising terraces of nesting cut jars with weighed down near entire jars as anchor points rather than a random dump, with most coming from the period 140-250CE.The 35 metre hill (it was higher when young) covers 20,000 square metres at its base, with a circumference of a kilometre, and is estimated to contain over 60 million jars. It was abandoned after the Roman era, and became overgrown, but became associated with revelry, illicit trysts, lent and Easter celebrations and the pre lent carnival, where a feast was held annually at its foot. Games were played, including a chariot race between pigs and bulls. It has played a part in the history of the city and country, and was the spot from which Garibaldi defended the city against the French with his gun battery during the war of Italian unification. Wine was also stored in caves dug beneath it. A favourite picnic spot for centuries, the hill has also played the part of Golgotha in passion plays.Since 1931 the site has been a public park, though it has fallen into a state of neglect in recent decades.LozImage credit: 1: Lalupa 2/3: Alexhttp://bit.ly/1QPKVbR -- source link

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