Exploring the 3rd-century Aurelian walls of Rome with kids

This past fall, an unusually cool Roman Sunday found me out with my family, my husband and two sons, exploring the ancient Aurelian walls of Rome. I have lived in Rome for 12 years and my Italian husband all his life, yet this was the first time for both of us to walk the 19-kilometer circuit of the ancient Roman Empire’s defensive walls, surprisingly still intact.

We were doing so among participants from the Rome-based NATO Defence College and their families, many of them new to Rome, and we were happy to be invited along to join them. Although all residents and visitors are sure to notice the imposing Roman walls, very few actually walk along their entire length.

This is largely for practical reasons; many segments are now busy thoroughfares, and it would have been virtually impossible to manage without the Carabinieri escorts who joined us on the walk. Still, visitors can enjoy walking along many pedestrian-friendly segments of the walls on a visit to Rome and it is an wonderful way to bring history alive for both children and their parents.

The circuit of the walls we followed were built by Emperors Aurelian and Probus in the 3^rd century A.D.  and enclosed the seven hills of Rome and some surrounding neighborhoods.

The walls are in such good condition because they were renovated by subsequent Popes (you can identify the Popes with the papal shields they had placed on the renovated segments) to protect from later invasions. Many of the gates, towers and aqueducts are remarkably well preserved.

The Walls take you past familiar Roman monuments such as the Pyramid, Porta San Sebastiano and the Appia Antica, St John in Lateran Basilica, Porta Pia, Castel Sant’Angelo, the panoramic Gianicolo and Testaccio (a neighborhood literally built upon an ancient Roman garbage dump – primarily mounds filled with broken shards of clay vases used for olive oil 2000 years ago. Most of the restaurants in this area have glass walls in their cellars so that you can view the layers of broken pottery).

If you decide to explore the Gianicolo  (Janiculum Hill) portion of the walls (and you definitely should – the view over Rome is unparalleled), weary traveling moms can take inspiration from the statue of Anita Garibaldi that marks her grave.

Anita was the wife of Giuseppe Garibaldi, the national hero who unified Italy in 1861, and she was known as a daring and adventuresome woman. The statue depicts her galloping full-speed on a horse, cradling a baby with her left arm while she shoots her gun at the enemy with the right. How’s that for a travel savvy mom?

September 16th, 2010 | by Kimberly Sullivan Comment