Municipio III


Municipio Roma III is the third administrative subdivision of Rome.
It was established by the Capitoline Assembly, with Resolution No. 11 of 11 March 2013, which replaced the previous Municipio Roma IV.

Geography

Municipio III is in the north of the city and is the sixth largest, with 97.818 km2.
To the south, it borders Municipio II and Municipio IV, to the west Municipio XV, along the river Tiber, and the comuni of Riano, Monterotondo, Mentana and Fonte Nuova to the north-east.
The territory is mainly hilly; the southern area comprising the main urban aggregates is contrasted by the northern area, characterized by a rural environment, mostly included in the Marcigliana nature reserve.
Lapped to the west by the Tiber, the Municipio is also crossed by its tributary the Aniene, the second river of the capital, which runs alongside the areas of Monte Sacro, Sacco Pastore and Conca d'Oro.

Urban areas

Within the Municipio there are the urban areas of Cinquina, Porta di Roma, Vigne Nuove and the extra-urban area of Sant'Alessandro.

Historical subdivisions

The following toponymy areas of Rome are located within the Municipio:
;Quarters
;Zones
  • Z. I Val Melaina, Z. II Castel Giubileo, Z. III Marcigliana, Z. IV Casal Boccone and Z. V Tor San Giovanni

    Administrative subdivisions

The urban distribution of the territory includes the thirteen urban areas of the former Municipio Roma IV. Its population is distributed as follows.:

Frazioni

The following frazioni of Rome lies within the area of the Municipio:
  • Colle Salario, Settebagni, Villa Spada

    Infrastructure and transport

Railways

The Municipio is currently connected by various urban bus lines, as well as by the Line B1 of the Rome Metro, a branch of Line B, which started its service on 13 June 2012, whose terminus is the station Jonio.

Streets

The Municipio III is crossed by three of the most important arteries of the capital:
  • to the north, the Grande Raccordo Anulare, which crosses it from west to east for about 8 km, between the Ponte di Castel Giubileo and Via Nomentana; in particular, the exits "Castel Giubileo", "Salaria", "Via di Settebagni – Bel Poggio – Fidene", the "Diramazione Roma Nord" of the Autostrada A1 and "Via della Bufalotta – Via delle Vigne Nuove" are within the Municipio.
  • to the west, Via Salaria runs parallel to the railway, crossing the Municipio from south to north, starting from Ponte Salario up to Monterotondo Scalo, and touching Settebagni and the Urbe Airport.
  • to the east, the Via Nomentana crosses Monte Sacro and Monte Sacro Alto, before reaching Fonte Nuova, Mentana and Monterotondo.

    History

The history of the Municipio Roma III concerns the territory of the northern area of Rome, between the Tiber and the Aniene, delimited by three major road axes: the Via Salaria to the west, the Via Nomentana to the south-east and, in much more recent times, the Grande Raccordo Anulare to the north.
The first evidence of the presence of man in the aforementioned territory dates back to 700,000 years ago; in the antiquity there was a great demographic development with the constitution of several cities in the area, roughly in the years of the founding of Rome, such as Crustumerium, inhabited by the Crustumini, and Fidenae.
In the imperial age, on the contrary, there was a depopulation due to the proliferation of villae in the territory; the same phenomenon occurred in the Middle Ages with the casali.
It is in the 20th century that the area reached a great and rapid urban development, with the birth of the garden city of Monte Sacro and then, in the second post-war period, of many other neighborhoods.

Geology and prehistory

Hundreds of thousands of years ago, the territory was subject to volcanic phenomena, caused by the Monti Sabatini and the Alban volcanoes.
In prehistory the territory was already inhabited. In the area called Bufalotta, remains of human fossils dating back to 700,000 years ago have been found; other remains dating back to 200,000 years ago have been found in a place called Monte delle Gioie and in Sacco Pastore. The latter are more recent findings, dating back to about 100,000 years ago, were discovered between 1929 and 1935: a Neanderthalian skull was found for the first time in Italy near Sacco Pastore by the paleoanthropologists Alberto Carlo Blanc and Henri Breuil. The Man of Saccopastore takes his name from these discoveries.

From the ancient settlements to republican Rome

The most important ancient settlements in the territory were undoubtedly Custrumerium and Fidenae. The first one is also mentioned by Virgil in the Aeneid and was conquered by Romulus, while the date of conquest of the second one is uncertain.
It is known that, when Rome was founded in 753 BC, Fidenae was a medium-large center that exploited the transport and communication routes both by river and land. For this reason, the Romans always tried to isolate it and to conquer it.
According to traditional accounts, the conquest took place under the reign of Romulus, through the so-called battle of Fidenae.
A more accredited hypothesis traces the conquest back to 474 BC when – though the Fidenates tried to contrast the Romans through an alliance with the Etruscan city of Veii – the city was occupied by a Roman garrison to conquer it. The Romans sacked it and then set it on fire between 436 BC and 435 BC: the city then became a municipium of Rome and a part of the inhabitants was enslaved.
To rebuild a part of the edifices burned by the Gallic fire, Rome drew a large quantity of blocks of tuff from the quarries near Fidenae. Thanks to the fall of Fidenae, the Romans gained a good position in the fight against Veii. In the late Republican age, according to Strabo, Fidenae, like Gabii and Labicum, was often taken as an example of a city subdued and reduced to a village.
Nowadays, as a testimony to the millennial history of the Municipio, it is possible to visit the protohistoric house of Fidenae, a full-scale reconstruction, made with ancient building techniques, of a house dating back to the end of the 9th century BC, which has been found almost intact.

The secession of the plebs on Monte Sacro

The area of Monte Sacro takes its name from the hill of the same name, which is famous for a great revolt of the plebs that took place in 496 BC: the plebeians took refuge on the hill, in what, for many, was the first strike in history.
The revolt was quelled by Senator Menenius Agrippa with the famous apologue pronounced in 503 BC: Agrippa metaphorically compared the Roman social classes to a human body. Thanks to this convincing speech, the situation was brought back to order and the plebeians returned to their duties. However the plebs, having retired and ceased to make its contribution to public life, obtained the establishment of the Tribunes of the plebs and of the Aediles of the plebs, as well as the creation of its own assembly, the concilium plebis, which elected the Tribunes and the Aediles.
To commemorate the event and the agreements made, an altar dedicated to Jupiter Terrificus was erected on the hill: for this reason it became "sacred".

The imperial age

The ''villae''

The area, during the Imperial age, reached a great development from a residential and socio-economic point of view, but to explain this phenomenon it is necessary to go back to the last two centuries of the Roman Republic: in fact, after the end of the wars that consecrated Rome as the absolute power in the Italian peninsula and in the Mediterranean Sea, the countryside had become depopulated because the farmers who managed it had been engaged in the wars themselves. For this reason, at the beginning of the 2nd century BC, new forms of land ownership took shape, such as the villa, a medium-sized land possession worked by slaves under the control of a farmer, in which the owner lived only occasionally.
The villa was the most used system in the territories concerned. In fact, between the 2nd century BC and the 1st century AD the area around Monte Sacro had surely to be dotted with villae having productive functions: in addition to the many archaeological finds of fragments of amphorae and large food containers, artifacts dating back to the imperial age were found, which attest the presence of villae where fruit trees, wheat, flowers, vegetables, olive trees and vines were grown, in today's areas of Monte Sacro, Fidene, Colle Salario, Vigne Nuove, Bufalotta, Serpentara, Tor San Giovanni, Prati Fiscali, Settebagni, Castel Giubileo and Magliana. We also know, from the sources which have been handed down to us, that oil and grapes were the main productions.
In the territory of the Municipio there are hundreds of Roman villae; here below some of them will be discussed.
Among the most important villae there is that of the freedman Faonte.
The archaeological excavations also brought to light a funeral urn with an inscription dedicated to Claudia Eglogae: this woman was the nurse of Nero and, together with Acte, collected the body of the Emperor and transported it to the tomb of the Domitii.
About this villa, Suetonius informs us that this freedman offered to host Nero himself on the run from Galba and his men, ready to kill him. But, with the men of Galba a few meters away, the Emperor decided to commit suicide by stucking a dagger in his throat, with the help of Epaphroditus.
Suetonius indicates the exact location of this building: it rose between Via Nomentana and Via Salaria and precisely, according to some archaeologists, in Via Passo del Turchino. The villa was probably very large and was divided into two sections: a rustic one and a residential one. Near the villa there was a large cistern which is still visible.
In the quarter of Colle Salario, near Via Serrapetrona and Via di Monte Giberto, there is a fenced area where there was another villa. Dating back to the end of the Republican age and the first phases of the Imperial age, the remains of the villa appear as a masonry core made of mortar and tuff. Furthermore, the presence of fragments of black-painted ceramic makes it almost certain that the site was already frequented in the 2nd century BC.
In Via di Settebagni there is a hill which houses the remains of an Imperial age villa: in particular, there are large barrel-vault rooms. The presence of fragments of tiles and ceramic suggests that the construction of this villa dates back to the late Republican age. The hill where the remains rise was probably terraced by the Romans themselves.
Furthermore, the remains of a villa called Redicicoli del bene were also found near Settebagni: This site, damaged during the construction of a complex of townhouses, was probably inhabited until the 5th century AD. Two tombs have also been found nearby, but it is not clear whether these are connected in any way to the villa.
In Via della Bufalotta there are also some remains, accessible by a dirt road, of a late-Republican villa. The excavations were carried out by the Soprintendenza Archeologica di Roma in 1984 and brought to light the remains of a rustic building together with two tanks used for the production of oil and wine, which are still visible today.
In Piazza Monte Torrone there are other remains of a large villa dating back to the 2nd century AD, while the remains of another villa are still visible in Via della Marcigliana. Probably some rooms of the villa were used as cisterns.