The Via Ostiense was the road from Rome to Ostia - the port at the mouth of the Tiber, 25 km west. The Romans built it in the 4th century BC; the modern Via Ostiense follows almost exactly the same alignment. The road was lined with funerary monuments, the Pyramid of Cestius among them. About 2 km outside the Aurelian Walls, on the road's east side, was the spot where Saint Paul - the apostle to the Gentiles - was beheaded around 67 AD (the legend goes that the Roman authorities, who had granted him the privilege of beheading rather than crucifixion because he was a Roman citizen, executed him at this spot, and his blood made the ground fertile). The early Christians buried him here; in 386 AD the Emperor Theodosius I built a vast 5-nave basilica over the burial spot. The whole modern Ostiense + Garbatella neighbourhood grew up over the next 1,600 years in the area around that basilica.
San Paolo and the late-Roman basilica
The San Paolo basilica that Theodosius I commissioned in 386 AD (completed 395) was the second-largest church in the Roman world, after the original St Peter's. It was a Constantinian 5-nave basilica with about 80 marble columns - many recycled from earlier Roman temples, the rest cut from the imperial marble quarries in Greece and Egypt. The mosaics in the apse and the triumphal arch were 9th-13th century work by the artists who worked across the Roman papal basilicas. The basilica was visited by Saxon kings, by Charlemagne (who was crowned Holy Roman Emperor at St Peter's in 800 AD but came south to San Paolo for the Apostle's feast), by countless medieval pilgrims, by the Reformation tourists, and by the Grand Tour visitors of the 17th-18th centuries.
On the night of 15-16 July 1823, a workman who was re-leading the basilica's roof left a brazier of burning charcoal overnight; the brazier set the ancient wooden trusses alight; the entire roof and most of the upper walls collapsed. The fire was one of the great cultural-heritage losses of the 19th century. Pope Leo XII immediately ordered the basilica rebuilt - the work took 46 years (1825-1869) and was funded by international Catholic donations, including a 12-tonne block of malachite donated by Tsar Nicholas I of Russia (now built into the central altar). The rebuilt basilica is essentially identical in plan to the original 4th-century Constantinian structure - the same 5-nave layout, the same proportions, the surviving Corinthian columns and 9th-13th century mosaics reused where possible. The 266 papal portraits (medallions running around the upper nave walls, each Pope from Saint Peter to the current Pope Leo XIV) are 1873-1875. Free; daily 07:00-19:00.
The 1880s-1910s industrial city
The Roman state, after unification in 1871, decided to industrialise. The plot of land between the river, the railway and the Aurelian Walls - largely empty since antiquity - was earmarked for the city's gasworks, electrical plant, slaughterhouse, port facilities and workers' housing. The Mattatoio (slaughterhouse) opened 1891 (just inside Testaccio, but its support quarter spread south). The Montemartini thermo-electric power station opened 1912 - the city's first major generating facility, with 13 huge diesel engines and steam turbines fed by coal. The Gazometro (the giant cylindrical iron-frame gas-holder) was built 1937 to replace earlier smaller storage tanks, and at 89 metres was one of Europe's largest gas-holders for two decades.
The workforce needed housing. From 1913 the working-class neighbourhood of Ostiense proper began to develop - long terraces of apartment blocks for the gas-workers, electrical engineers, port-handlers and slaughterhouse workers. The Air Terminal Ostiense (where Eataly now is) was built 1938 as a multi-modal transport hub. The Roma-Ostia railway from Termini ran through the neighbourhood. The 1990s decommissioning of most of the industrial plants left vast vacant industrial buildings, which became the canvas for Ostiense's 21st-century reinvention.
Garbatella, the garden-city
In 1920 the architect Gustavo Giovannoni and the engineer Massimo Piacentini proposed a planned residential neighbourhood east of Ostiense, on the slopes leading down to the Tiber. The plan applied Ebenezer Howard's English garden-city theory (Letchworth was the first English example, opened 1903) to Italian working-class housing. The architect Innocenzo Sabbatini designed the bulk of the buildings 1920-1929. The result was about 60 lotti (housing blocks, each numbered 1-65 with some gaps) arranged around shared courtyards, with low-density buildings, abundant green space, fruit trees, and a distinctive Italian Liberty-Renaissance architectural style with theatrical detail (curved gables, decorative balconies, painted plaster, mosaics).
The neighbourhood kept its working-class identity through the 20th century. Garbatella was a Communist stronghold; the Italian Communist Party's local section was strong from the 1940s. The Palladium theatre (built 1927 as a cinema, restored 1992 by Roma Tre university, now an indie cinema + theatre + concert venue) was the social anchor. Through the 1990s Garbatella was poor, slightly rough, but architecturally extraordinary - protected by listing of about 30 of the lotti, with strict restoration controls. The 21st century has seen gentle gentrification; Garbatella is now bohemian-bourgeois, with rising rents but mostly preserved fabric.
Centrale Montemartini and the museum transformation
The Montemartini power plant was decommissioned in 1963 when the new generating facilities at Civitavecchia and outside the city replaced it. The vast industrial buildings sat empty for 30 years. In 1997, faced with the Capitoline Museums' overflow problem (the museum had vastly more Roman and Greek sculpture than it could display), the city had the idea of installing the surplus sculpture inside the empty power station. About 400 sculptures from the Capitoline Museums' Classical collections were moved to the Montemartini - originally as a temporary exhibition. The contrast between the marble Roman figures and the 50-tonne diesel engines, the gleaming brass instruments, the Art Deco machine hall - was so successful that the "temporary" exhibition was made permanent in 2001. The Centrale Montemartini is now one of Rome's most-original museums.
The museum has about 400 pieces displayed across the Sala Macchine (the Hall of the Machines, the central two-storey power-house, with the diesel engines intact), the Sala Boiler (the boiler hall), the Sala Colonne (the column hall, with the sculptures arranged by chronology). Highlights: the Boy with the Thorn (the famous Roman bronze, on loan from the Capitoline Museums); the Hercules with the Apples of the Hesperides; the Aphrodite Esquilina; multiple senators' portrait busts; the Hellenistic Apollo from Tivoli. €11 entry; closed Mondays; 90 minutes. The Sala Macchine alone is worth the trip.
The 21st-century reinvention
From the 2000s Ostiense has been the canvas for Rome's post-industrial reinvention. The decommissioned gas-works (the Gazometro at Via del Gazometro 14) sits as an industrial monument, currently being redeveloped as a mixed-use complex (cultural centre, housing, offices) due to complete in 2027. Eataly opened in the Air Terminal Ostiense building in 2012 (17,000 sq m, the brand's flagship). Roma Tre university anchored its main campus in the converted Mattatoio buildings (some shared with Testaccio's MACRO). The street-art programme BIG CITY LIFE launched 2014 with about 20 large commissioned murals across the south part of the neighbourhood; the Outdoor Festival has added pieces every spring since.
Ostiense + Garbatella in 2026 is one of the city's most architecturally varied neighbourhoods - 4th-century basilica, 1910s industrial city, 1920s garden-city, contemporary street art, the most-original museum. The walking is more demanding than the centro storico (the streets are longer, the sights more spread out) but the rewards are bigger if you have the legs. A full day here is a quieter, slower, more contemporary Rome experience than the Forum-Pantheon-Trevi tourist core.
