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Not far to the north of the Lepanto metro station is the Vittoria neighborhood; Victory in Italian. Although the area has been inhabited since ancient times, Vittoria got its modern start in 1885 as a new military center called Piazza d'Armi — literally "Weapons Plaza." However, as anyone who has spent time in any number of Latin American cities with a Plaza de Armas knows, Central Square likely is a better translation. This name alone demonstrates the ambition that the government had for the area at the time. In the early 1900s, the plan for the neighborhood was revised to include the recognizable eight-way radial intersection that still is visible today.

Vittoria is just north of Prati and because Prati is adjacent to the Vatican, portions of the Prati neighborhood are crawling with tourists. However, far fewer head to Vittoria, and travelgasm.com considers it to be a good selection for our 7 Things Tourists Don't Do in Rome, but You Should, accordingly. Vittoria does have a sprinkling of hotels, as well as an increasingly popular video game museum, but even the museum does not clear the top 150 attractions on the big tourist advisory sites. The neighborhood very much feels like a local place.

VIGAMUS

You might expect to find a video game museum in Tokyo, but probably not in Rome. If you are interested in video games, a different perspective on this subject alone could be worth the visit to Vittoria.

Opened in 2013, VIGAMUS is Europe's first video game museum. Compared to Rome's historic museums like Borghese and Capitoline, VIGAMUS is modest, but it still hosts several hundred pieces of video game history from the 1970s to the present with many functional arcade games and gaming systems you actually can try yourself. Because it is €9 for adults and €6 for children, it is a bit on the expensive side for a smaller museum, but compared to the cost of pumping coins into an arcade machine for an hour or two in the 1990s, it isn't really that pricey. It's a fun trip down memory lane for an older gamer and likely an introduction to something new for younger ones.

Viale Giuseppe Mazzini

If you're interested in cities as much as or more than video games, Vittoria is well worth seeing not only for what it is, but also what it could be.

Vittoria culminates in an orderly eight-way radial intersection surrounding the Fontana di Piazza Mazzini (fountain) and its intersecting main street, Viale Giuseppe Mazzini, both named after the Italian revolutionary. Viale Giuseppe Mazzini provides a wide green space intended for people to walk through the neighborhood. Although an architecture critic likely would complain that the scale is a bit too large, it is not overbearingly so — like parts of EUR — and the street design is intended to make it quick and convenient for someone to get around the area on foot.

Unfortunately, as is often the case in Rome, maintenance and trash collection could be better, and the trees and plants could use much more attention. The route also has been damaged by parked cars along cross streets interrupting the walk and the whole path falls apart rather disgustingly into a car park, particularly on its west side. The bones of the neighborhood are quite good, though, and with some planned improvement, fewer cars, a bit more care and, shall we say, love, Vittoria could boast a world-class walking street that would make its founders proud. We would be thrilled for Rome to take a page from the Barcelona playbook and make this street into a proper tree-lined Rambla. The potential clearly exists.

To eat in Vittoria, the only restaurant to really hit the tourist radar is the popular Ristorante Cacio e Pepe. Italian for Cheese and Pepper-topped pasta, this restaurant likely is so successful with visitors because they had enough foresight to name their restaurant an exact match of a famous dish, and it pops up with an online search. They have stayed true to their roots with an Italian-only menu on a chalkboard, though, and locals do still go there. On our visits we enjoyed Nello L'Abruzzese for Italian cuisine and Al Settimo Gelo for gelato, but there are dozens of other options in the area, many of which are well regarded by Italians.

We've mapped out our preferred walk through Vittoria below. It takes you up Via Lepanto and Via Giuseppe, past a street market with clothes and knicknacks at decidedly local prices on Via Tito Speri, onto the main walking street mentioned earlier — Viale Giuseppe Mazzini — and finally to VIGAMUS and a local fruit and vegetable market — Mercato Vittoria.

How to Get Here: Take the Rome Metro Line A (Orange) to Lepanto Station and use the Via Lepanto exit. Alternately, take Tram 19 to the Lepanto Stop. To follow our suggested walk, from either starting point, head northwest on Via Lepanto.

Cities > Rome > Rome Overlooked 7 > Next: (3) Go Outside the Walls... >>

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