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Piazza Vittorio Emanuele Ii
Cross Largo Leopardi outside the Museo Nazionale di Arte Orientale, and achievement a few yards up Via Leopardi to Piazza Vittorio Emanuele II , the centre of a district which became known as the “quartiere piemontese” when the government located many of its major ministries here after Unification. The arcades of the square, certainly, recall central Turin, as do the solid palatial buildings that surround it. It’s more recently become the immigrant quarter of Rome, with a heavy concentration of African, Asian and Middle Eastern shops and restaurants. You’ll easily hear a dozen different languages spoken as you pass through the open-air food market (Mon-Sat 8am-1pm) - Rome’s cheapest - that surrounds the piazza. Close to the northern end of the piazza, behind the market stalls, an eighteen-metre-high pile of Roman bricks is what is left of a monumental public fountain known as the Nymphaeum of Alexander Severus (emperor 222-235 AD) - a distribution point for water arriving in the city by a branch of the Acqua Claudia aqueduct.
