The Esquiline Hill - the largest of Rome's seven classical hills - has been the densely-populated eastern half of the city since the 1st century AD. Through three very different periods - imperial Roman (Nero's Golden House, the Trajan Baths, the residential quarter), medieval-papal (the Lateran palace was the popes' residence from the 4th to the 14th century), and modern multicultural (the 1990s onwards) - the Esquiline has been where Rome lives outside the centro storico, where the city is itself rather than performing for visitors. The modern Esquilino quarter is a planned 1870s-1880s rectangular grid built around the new Termini railway station; the population is the most diverse in central Rome. Walk it in a single day and you cross 2,000 years of city history without leaving a 2 km radius.
Nero's Golden House
After the Great Fire of Rome in 64 AD destroyed 10 of the city's 14 districts including the original residential Esquiline, the Emperor Nero seized about 200 acres of the burned-out land (between the Palatine and the Esquiline) and built the Domus Aurea, the "Golden House". This was the largest private residence in Rome's history - about 150 rooms identified so far, with more being excavated, decorated with gold leaf and painted frescoes, with a revolving banqueting hall with a celestial-themed ceiling (the Octagonal Room), and surrounded by parks with an artificial lake (where the Colosseum would later stand). Construction was barely finished when Nero committed suicide in 68 AD.
His successors (Vespasian, Titus, Domitian, then Trajan) systematically destroyed and buried the Domus Aurea after Nero's suicide. Vespasian drained the lake and built the Colosseum on top. Titus and Trajan filled in the rooms with rubble and built the Trajan Baths above. The rest of the Esquiline became normal residential property again. The Domus Aurea was rediscovered in the late 15th century when Renaissance artists - Raphael, Pinturicchio, Michelangelo - lowered themselves through holes in the ceiling to copy the frescoes (which they called "grotesques" because the rooms were underground "grotte"). The grotesque style spread through Renaissance art from these copies. Today the Domus Aurea is partially excavated and open for guided tours only.
The papal Lateran
The Constantinian basilica of San Giovanni in Laterano - 5 minutes south-east of modern Esquilino's Piazza Vittorio - was founded by the Emperor Constantine in 324 AD as the first major Christian basilica in Rome. It was built on land previously owned by the Plautii Laterani family (hence "in Laterano"). The basilica was the cathedral of the city of Rome - the Pope's own cathedral - from the 4th century until today, technically more important to the Pope than St Peter's (which is the cathedral of the Vatican City state, not Rome). The adjacent Lateran Palace was the official papal residence from the 4th century until 1309 - a thousand years.
The Avignon papacy (1309-1377), when the popes moved to Avignon under French pressure, abandoned the Lateran. When Gregory XI returned to Rome in 1377 he moved into the Vatican (where the popes have lived since). The Lateran Palace and basilica continued as a major papal site but no longer as the Pope's home. The current San Giovanni basilica - founded 324, rebuilt multiple times - dates from a 1646-1660 baroque rebuild by Francesco Borromini that preserved the medieval core; the 15-metre statues of Christ and the Apostles on the facade are 1735. Free; daily 07:00-18:30.
The Scala Sancta opposite the basilica - the "Holy Stairs" - are 28 marble steps that, according to medieval tradition, Christ walked up from the courtyard of Pontius Pilate's palace in Jerusalem on the morning of his crucifixion. Saint Helena, Constantine's mother, reputedly brought them to Rome in 326 AD during her Holy Land pilgrimage. The original marble is now protected by a wooden cladding (pilgrims wore the marble down dangerously over centuries); pilgrims still climb the 28 steps on their knees, praying at each step. Free entry. One of the most distinctive pilgrimage rituals in Western Christianity.
Santa Maria Maggiore
Santa Maria Maggiore - the basilica on the Esquiline summit - is the smallest in footprint of the four major papal basilicas but contains the most important early-Christian mosaic programme in Rome. The basilica was built 432-440 AD under Pope Sixtus III, on the spot where (according to legend) snow fell miraculously on a hot August morning in 358 AD to indicate where the church should be built. The "miracle of the snow" is commemorated every 5 August with a shower of white flower petals from the basilica ceiling.
The interior preserves the original 5th-century mosaic cycle - 40 panels along the upper nave depicting Old Testament scenes (Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses), plus the triumphal arch mosaics (the life of Christ). The 13th-century Coronation of the Virgin in the apse, by Jacopo Torriti, is one of the most-loved medieval Roman mosaics. The 16th-century Cappella Sistina (the basilica's own Sistine Chapel, by Domenico Fontana) has the tomb of Pope Pius V; the adjacent Cappella Paolina has the tomb of Pope Paul V and the venerated Salus Populi Romani icon (an 8th-century or earlier image of the Virgin, one of Rome's most-loved Marian icons). Free; daily 07:00-19:00.
The 1870s planned Esquilino
Modern Esquilino - the rectangular grid of streets around Termini station - was built after Rome became the capital of unified Italy in 1871. The new Italian state needed to house its civil servants and accommodate the new railway terminus. The architect Gioacchino Ersoch designed the planned quarter 1872-1888: a rectangular grid of wide streets, anchored on Piazza Vittorio Emanuele II (named for the first King of Italy) as the symbolic centre. The buildings are 1880s neoclassical Italian-state architecture - tall apartment blocks with arched ground-floor porticoes, painted plaster, classical detailing.
The quarter was meant to be middle-class but the working-class arrived: railway workers, hospital staff, the small-trade merchants who served the new station. By 1900 Esquilino was densely populated and slightly rough. Through the 20th century it kept that mixed character - working class on the side streets, more bourgeois along the main avenues, with a strong Jewish population (the Jewish Tempio Maggiore is across the river but many Roman Jews lived in Esquilino through the 1880s-1930s).
The multicultural quarter
From the 1990s Esquilino became Rome's main destination for non-Italian migrants. The Chinese community (mostly from Wenzhou in Zhejiang) settled around Piazza Vittorio, opening import-export businesses, wholesale clothing operations, restaurants. By 2010 about 5,000 Chinese-Italian residents lived in Esquilino - small by London or Paris Chinatown standards but distinct, with its own cluster of shops, restaurants, and (occasionally) tensions with the older Italian population.
The Bangladeshi community - mostly from the Sylhet region - arrived from the early 2000s. About 8,000 Bangladeshi-Italians now live in Esquilino, concentrated around Via Cavour and Via Filippo Turati. The community runs grocery stores, restaurants, mobile-phone shops, beauty salons. Filipinos, North Africans (mostly Tunisian and Egyptian), Ethiopians, and Eastern Europeans (Romanians, Ukrainians) make up the other significant communities. The Nuovo Mercato Esquilino - the covered market that opened 2001 - is the most visible expression of this diversity: about 140 stalls, with about half run by non-Italians, selling food from every represented community.
The neighbourhood has its tensions - the Italian residents and the immigrant communities have not always integrated comfortably. But the long-term trend is gentle: the second-generation immigrant children speak Italian, attend the Esquilino schools, mix with the Italian residents. The neighbourhood is one of the few in central Rome where the canonical Italian centro storico identity coexists with a real multicultural identity. Walk Esquilino on a Saturday and you'll hear five languages on Via Carlo Alberto, taste eight cuisines on Via Principe Eugenio, and see the Italian families and the immigrant families using the same Piazza Vittorio gardens for their afternoon walks.
