Rome is a shadow of its former self – with the exception of this timeworn neighbourhood

Garbatella is the city’s last old-world district, with peaceful piazzas, washing-hung streets and trattorias full of chattering Romans

What do we want from a visit to Rome? For me, it’s the obvious – the ancient ruins, the art, the churches, the food – but also the traditional: old trattorias, quiet corners, peaceful piazzas, washing-hung streets and cafés full of chattering Romans. 
When I lived in Rome 30 years ago, that more traditional city still existed. Now I’m not so sure. The obvious survives, of course: the Colosseum, the Sistine Chapel, the Spanish Steps. But the old neighbourhoods – Trastevere, Monti, the Ghetto – and their timeworn Roman vignettes have largely surrendered to tourism and gentrification.
So too the city centre in general, often crowded beyond belief, and next year destined to be more crowded still as pilgrims descend for the Jubilee, or Holy Year, traditionally held every quarter century.
These days, then, when in Rome, I forsake my old haunts and go farther afield. But not much farther, just three metro stops from the Colosseum, to Garbatella, a neighbourhood which may have a sprinkling of new bars and restaurants but remains an old-world, close-knit community at heart.
Begun in the 1920s, Garbatella was built to house railway and dock workers from the neighbouring Ostiense district. A little later came Romans displaced when Mussolini razed working-class enclaves to construct grandiose new roads near St Peter’s and the Forum.
So far, so normal, for any expanding 20th-century city. What made – and makes – Garbatella unique is that it was built from scratch and created on the model of an English garden city. 
This meant a neighbourhood divided into 62 lots, or lotti, each a group of low-rise buildings, each with slightly different architectural elements, and each grouped around a garden courtyard designed – we’re in Italy after all – to foster community.
In time, the burgeoning population meant some of the founding ideals were compromised, but the neighbourhood’s unique nature, and a location then remote from the city proper, forged a distinct sense of place and residential identity that persists to this day.
Giorgia Meloni, for one, Italy’s current prime minister, makes much of her Garbatella roots.
You might not come here on a first Rome visit, or if time is short, but if you’re an old Rome hand, or have a morning or more to spare, the neighbourhood offers old-world pleasures aplenty. Equally, you could base yourself here (see below) to escape the crowds and keep costs down. 
How to visit? Take the metro to Garbatella and wander. The numbered lotti and the district’s old heart are roughly bounded by Via Alberto Guglielotti, Via Giovanni Ansaldo, Via Roberto de’ Nobili and Via Francesco Passino.
It’s a small area, made for random exploration, but if you prefer some structure, start in Piazza Bartolomeo Brin, where the obvious arch marks the district’s western entrance. Head a few minutes’ east down little Via Luigi Orlando – all peace and greenery – and enjoy a fortifying coffee al vetro, in “a glass”, like the locals, at Foschi (see below). 
Nearby stands the Teatro Palladium, built in 1926 as a civic theatre for the new neighbourhood.
A combination of Classical and Art Nouveau, it’s typical of the neighbourhood’s architectural eclecticism, where some buildings echo the Baroque, others the Romanesque, while others still embody the straight-lined Rationalism of the Thirties.
Other buildings are worth hunting down, such as the Albergo Rosso (1927), one of four “hotels” built as temporary lodgings for the new homeless incomers.
So, too, the various murals and other street art that are a feature of this and the neighbourhoods to the west (Ostiense) and south (Tor Marancia).
Take a break at Cesarini (see below) then walk three minutes to the Fontana di Carlotta, a neighbourhood focal point, along with the so-called Lovers’ Staircase nearby, a meeting place after the war for courting couples eager to escape the strictures of the family home.
Then give up on individual sights and take pleasure simply in the verdant surroundings and peaceful courtyards, and in the plants and flowers trailing over warm, ochre-painted walls, a colour of old Rome increasingly disappearing in the city centre.
A word of warning, however. Don’t expect unadulterated pretty. Some gardens are better kept than others; graffiti – a curse of Rome in general – is an issue; and beyond the lotti the charm of a provincial village quickly disappears amid Rome’s post-war urban landscape.
And yet. I asked what we wanted from Rome; from any popular city beyond the obvious. If it’s singular places that offer a sense of how people live and lived, then Garbatella, rough-edged and real, is a perfect fragment of another world.
The Centrale Montemartini (centralemontemartini.org), housed in a former power station, is part of Rome’s civic collection of antiquities, shared with the Musei Capitolini (museicapitolini.org) on the Capitoline Hill. It offers a striking juxtaposition of industrial hardware and Roman busts and statues.
Farther afield is San Paolo fuori le Mura (basilicasanpaolo.org), reputedly founded on the site of St Paul’s martyrdom around AD 64. Much was rebuilt after a fire in 1823, but this remains one of Rome’s four great papal basilicas, with St Peter’s, Santa Maria Maggiore and San Giovanni in Laterano.
Garbatella combines traditional trattorias such as Tanto pè Magnà (no website; Via de’ Jacobis Giustino 9) and Li Scalini de Marisa (Via Roberto de’ Nobili 17) with neighbourhood pioneers such as the excellent Ristori degli Angeli and creative newcomers like La Casetta. 
For pizza, try I Tre Fratelli (no website; Piazza Giovanni da Triora, 2) and for coffee, ice cream and aperitivi head for Foschi (Piazza Bartolomeo Romano 3) and Dei Cesaroni (Piazza Giovanni da Triora, 6). Locals also congregate at la Casetta Rossa, informal and community-minded. 
Later in the day, Enoteca La Mescita is the wine bar of choice and Otium (Via Roberto de’ Nobili 3b) and Latteria Garbatella are the spots for cocktails or a nightcap.
Accommodation is still scarce, but the Caravel (doubles from £75) has bright, modern four-star rooms, while Duca’s House (£70) offers contemporary B&B: both are on Garbatella’s eastern fringes.