Borgo Pio: Tiny Rome neighborhood perfect spot to celebrate Valentine’s Day eve and save money

The sixth-floor balcony looms over pastel-colored buildings. Although faded over the last centuries, they still shine atop the rain-splattered cobblestones. Mediterranean pine trees, so majestic with their skinny trunks and full foliage spreading like leafy umbrellas, stand like sentries in the distance.

A pigeon flies over the empty street. Its squawk mixes with the water gurgling from a 19th century fountain as the only sounds filling the damp air. Framing it all on the left is the hulking travertine mausoleum that is Castel Sant’Angelo and to the right Michelangelo’s majestic, towering brick dome of St. Peter’s, sparkling in the sunlight finally breaking through the rain clouds.

So beautiful. So quiet. So magical. It’s a rare view of Borgo Pio, kind of like Venice from a gondola in an empty canal.

A fantasy? A tourist’s journal entry? Nope. It was our hotel room Thursday. Marina and I did a Valentine’s Day eve celebration in a Rome hotel, in the town we live in. Yes, the four-star Trianon Borgo Pio is about a 10-minute drive from our homes but sometimes we spend a night in a Rome hotel to remind ourselves why more than 10 million tourists visit every year.

Why a hotel in Rome?

This was our fifth “Night in Rome” and we’ve been all over the city, from the outskirts near Fiumicino Airport to a Frisbee throw from Appia Antica, the road the Ancient Romans built to the sea. This year we chose Borgo Pio, an odd choice for Rome residents as it’s as if I took a hotel on the Las Vegas Strip when I lived in Vegas in the ‘80s.

Then again, what’s wrong with that? As I wrote of tourist traps last week, there’s a reason people flock to these places. Borgo Pio is a tiny sliver of a neighborhood near St. Peter’s that gets flooded with tourists escaping to the string of outdoor trattorias after a long day in the Vatican.

Along the main drag named Borgo Pio, souvenir stores are about every half block. They still sell the same sexy priests calendar they’ve sold for 20 years. Barkers stand outside restaurants luring you in like creepy guys outside peep shows. I think I saw one menu written in Uzbek.

But go in the middle of February, on a cold, rainy weekday and the streets are empty. You pass artisans polishing antiques. You notice historical landmarks. The barkers are bored into silence. It’s a fresh view of a famous Rome neighborhood in its rawest form.

Why the night before Valentine’s Day? I won’t succumb to the time-honored act of sodomy called price gouging. While Italy pales in comparison with the United States, which is the 10-time defending international gold medal champion, Italy still knows when to squeeze.

Our room at the lovely Trianon, built in 2001 with a seventh-floor lounge and panoramic view of Borgo Pio, was €165 Thursday. The next night on Valentine’s Day it jumped to, depending on the room, €380-€400. I inquired about dining on Valentine’s Day at Les Etoiles Terrace, down the street at the Atlante Star Hotel with spectacular views of St. Peter’s.

Set menu: €180 per person. Even St. Valentine would’ve said, “Vaffanculo!”

Borgo Pio history

It figures. Valentine’s Day began in Rome and has been celebrated since the 8th century. Valentine was a Rome clergyman who cared for persecuted Christians in the 3rd century A.D., back when Ancient Rome had experienced its height of power and treated Christianity like growing bathroom mold.

Valentine was a Christian hero. His name comes from the Latin word valens, meaning worthy and strong. The Catholic Church made him a saint but the bigoted Romans beheaded him on Feb. 14, 273 A.D. He was buried on Via Flaminia, the long road starting across the street from Piazza del Popolo just a mile and a half (2.5 kilometers) east of the Vatican. 

In Valentine’s day – before Valentine’s Day – Borgo Pio was Rome’s dark corner of death. Plagued with malaria, Borgo Pio was a burial area. St. Peter was crucified nearby at the foot of the Vatican hill in 67 A.D. He was buried at the nearby site of St. Peter’s today and it has been a point of pilgrimage ever since.

They have poured in, undeterred even by the Sack of Rome in 410, the Saracen invasions of the 8th and 9th centuries or the invasion of Charles V in 1527. An estimated 35 million are expected this year for the Rome Jubilee. Yes, we beat the crowds.

Through the Middle Ages, Borgo Pio wasn’t even part of Rome. It consisted of only a few houses and many vegetable gardens. It had a small harbor called Porto Leonino on the nearby Tiber River. Rome used it to transport travertine blocks to build the current St. Peter’s in 1506.

During the Renaissance when the Vatican became the center of power in Rome, Borgo Pio began growing. It became popular for its many Roman baths and saunas (and prostitutes). Artists, such as Raffaello, used it as his studio. Raphael lived here. By the early 1500s Borgo Pio had a population of more than 4,900.

Rome finally incorporated Borgo Pio into the city in 1856.

Benito Mussolini changed the look of the Borgo, meaning “hamlet,” in 1929 when he reached agreement with the Vatican to clear out the homes between Borgo Nuovo and Borgo Vecchio, two roads that had been around since the Renaissance. He moved those Borghiciani to the outskirts of the city which, at the time, was better than going to his other destination for some Roman residents.

Auswichtz. 

Borgo Pio today

Thus, today, Via Conciliazione is a huge, wide boulevard that offers a beautiful view of St. Peter’s, providing the perfect gob-smocking reaction Mussolini wanted from visiting dignitaries.

Today, the trapezoid-shaped Borgo Pio stretches from Piazza del Risorgimento next to the Vatican wall in the north to Ponte Principe Amedeo in the south to the Vatican wall in the West to the Tiber River in the east. You can walk down every street, pass every shop, restaurant and bar in about 30 minutes.

Which we did.

The Trianon is on tiny Piazza delle Vaschette, one block from the restaurant-clogged Borgo Pio road. Out our door is the giant white block that is Universita LUMSA, a private university founded in 1939.

Down the narrow street we pass under balconies overflowing with potted plants of red flowers. Long green vines stretch up walls for three stories. Lining Via Plauto are buildings in yellow and orange in various stages of fading.

In my 11 years in Rome, I have found myself in some of Rome’s quaintest wine bars in Borgo Pio. We stop at Makasov, a tiny enoteca with overstuffed couches and casual tables and chairs. A few people in their 20s and 30s, looking more local than foreign, sip Spritz and wine.

Back in front of our hotel is the craggy stone La Fontanella di Borgo Pio fountain, sporting one of Rome’s classic nasoni, the fountains that dispense a continuous flow of cold water year round. Built in 1860, this one still reads Acova Marcia, the name of Rome’s first aqueduct that brought water in from Castelli Romani, the pope’s summer residence town in the Alban Hills southeast of Rome.

Next to wine and gelato, the nasoni still have the most refreshing taste in the capital.

Not all of Borgo Pio is pope keychains and St. Peter’s T-shirts. At the far end closest to Castel Sant’Angelo, near a bar where a group of loud Scandinavian men drink beer, an old, dusty man polishes antiques in his tiny, cramped shop. A colleague varnishes old picture frames in the same way they have for centuries.

Off Conciliazione is an alley called Vicolo del Campanile, once home to one of Rome’s most underrated residents. In the 18th century, back when the Catholic Church was still lopping off heads, its executioners couldn’t live on the other side of the Tiber.

The first door on the left is the former home of Giovanni Battista Bugatti (1779-1869), known as Mastro Titta. He is the legendary last executioner for the Catholic Church. From this apartment, he walked out and executed 516 people, mostly by beheading, from the early to mid-19th century.

But the main drag called Borgo Pio is the poster child for schlocky Rome. A souvenir shop has a lifesize statue of a buff Jesus nailed to a cross with a small statue of Mother Teresa on sale nearby, perfect for anyone’s party room. Gladiator T-shirts remain hot sellers for kids. A waiter tries steering us to the plethora of empty outdoor covered tables, waving a big menu like a Geisha waving a fan.

Dining at Da Romolo

Any Rome resident will tell you never to eat in the big piazzas or anywhere Italian is a second language. I asked our hotel clerk where she would eat here. She sent us down two blocks to Da Romolo. On the tiny side street of Vicolo del Campanile (Vicolo means “alley”), it’s a simple, no-frills restaurant in a 300-year-old building.

Remains of a 2,000-year-old Roman wall can be seen behind huge picture windows.

The waiter, who oddly brought dishes while singing “It’s Now or Never,” says Romolo clientele is 60 percent local. I know it’s a good sign when we see two tables of Vatican priests, their glasses full of local Cesanese house wine. 

I’ll always dine where the food is blessed by a higher power.

Unlike the mass-produced pasta on Borgo Pio, my fettuccine con agnello sugo (thick noodles with lamb sauce) is handmade, authentic and delicious: thick meat sauce over homemade pasta covered in fresh parmesan.

The next morning we leave past a short line of romantic tourists checking in. I walk Marina to her car through the drizzle before I head to the train station on the other side of the Vatican. A woman sets up a table outside her cafe. Two shopkeepers chat on a street corner. 

Three black-clad priests walk down the street like three ghosts in quiet contemplation. Borgo Pio has been around for nearly 2,000 years but catch it as it’s just waking up and sleeping off a winter rain and the old ‘hood seems as romantic as Valentine’s Day.

If you’re thinking of going …

How to get there: Take any bus to Piazza Risorgimento and walk one block south to Borgo Angelico, another busy street in Borgo Pio.

Where to stay: Trianon Borgo Pio, Piazza delle Vaschette 13, 39-06-6860-0849, https://www.trianonborgopio.com/en, info@trianonborgopio.com. Opened in 2001, the four-star hotel is modern and quaint with beautiful, big rooms sporting great views of the neighborhood. The seventh-floor bar has outdoor seating. I paid €168 including an excellent buffet breakfast.

Where to eat: Da Romolo alla Mole Adriana, Vicolo del Campanile 12, 39-06-686-1603, https://daromoloallamoleadriana.it, info@romoloalmoleadriana.it, noon-3 p.m., 6:30-11 p.m. Tuesday-Sunday. Charming trattoria on a side street that opened in 1927. Pasta dishes start at €12, fish at €16 and pizzas at €7.

For more information: Castel Sant’Angelo Tourist Information Point, Piazza Pia, 39-06-0608, https://turismoroma.it/it/luoghi/tourist-infopoint-castel-santangelo, 8:30 a.m.-6 p.m.