History of RISTORANTE MONUMENTO

Traditional cooking whose origins are lost in the mists of time is the main characteristic of the "Monumento" restaurant in OstiaAntica.  Its name derives from the memorial stone "Bread and Work" set up in 1904 near the trattoria in memory of those who lost their lives whilst working on the land drainage project of the "Agro Romano" between the end of the XIX century and the beginning of the XX century. Among the "wheelbarrows" who arrived from Ravenna in the Roman countryside on the 25th of novembre 1884, there was also a vigorous woman, Maria Gordini, who dedicated her life to both bread baking and bringing children into the world (hence her nickname "Maiuta"that is "Help me").
At that time the labourers were fighting a bitter battle against the marshes, which in just one day of rain could regain hectares of land that had needed months of painstaking labour by the men from Ravenna to drain.
To these people, and to the hunters, another Romagnese woman, Mamma Nerina, devoted her life, transforming what was a simple hunters lodge into a place where the wood was always crackling in the fireplace and game and home-made tagliatelle were always cooking for all the customers in the area.
The reclaiming of the marshlands ended in 1910, but it was only after the II world war that this typicaly trattoria became one of the favourite haunts of the Romans for their "gite fuori porta", outings outside the city walls. Even Federico Fellini, whilst shooting the exteriors of "Amarcord", used to come to the restaurant and sit in the kitchen to relish the delicious cappelletti that Nerina prepared for him while chatting with her in their common dialect. 

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