Walk through the ex-Mattatoio in Testaccio today and you’ll find contemporary art installations, architecture students sketching under the industrial porticoes, and the occasional pop-up food market. But not so long ago, this complex—anchored at the foot of Monte dei Cocci , the ancient mound of discarded amphorae shards—was the visceral center of Rome’s meat trade.

Testaccio’s slaughterhouse opened in 1891, a monument to industrial efficiency with just enough architectural flair to feel civic. Designed by Gioacchino Ersoch, the complex was Rome’s answer to a rapidly growing population and its voracious appetite. Cattle and other livestock arrived by train, were processed in pavilions, and dispatched to feed the capital. But Testaccio did more than slaughter. It shaped the city’s culinary code. The meat and offal cuts were shipped to noble and middle-class kitchens and butcher shops to become the anchor dishes of the cucina romana.

By the 1970s, Rome had outgrown the slaughterhouse’s central location. Urban expansion and public health regulations pushed meat processing to the periphery, and in 1975, operations shifted to Viale Palmiro Togliatti, in the far-flung eastern district of Tor Sapienza. Where the old slaughterhouse had atmosphere and grit, the new Centro Carne di Roma had sprawl: two hundred thirty thousand square meters (around 2.5 million square feet) of pragmatic concrete, divided into zones for halal and kosher processing, poultry, aging rooms, and cold storage. It wasn’t pretty, but it worked.

These days, this utilitarian fortress is under threat. Management is in constant flux. And even more destabilizing than bureaucracy is the creeping dominance of vertically integrated supermarket chains. These corporate juggernauts have absorbed every link in the food chain—from breeding to butchering to packaging—pushing out wholesalers, slaughterhouses, and, most tragically, independent butchers. Neighborhood macellerie are struggling to compete with shrink-wrapped, loss-leader pork chops and boneless chicken breasts. And the knowledge that was once passed down in Rome’s meat shops—the kind with individual butchers who knew a customer’s stew required a certain cut from the shoulder, not the loin—is quietly disappearing.

Ironically, Centro Carne di Roma now serves the very supermarket systems that threaten its existence. While it was built to support a diverse, independent meat economy, more and more of its output goes straight to corporate distribution hubs.

But Romans, ever stubborn, are resisting. Some butchers, like Bottega Liberati in the Don Bosco district, have carved out niches, focusing on traceable meat, whole-animal butchery, and products with a story. There’s a growing appetite for traditional cuts and preparations, especially those associated with Rome’s rich offal traditions. Meanwhile, the transformation of the old Testaccio slaughterhouse into a vibrant cultural hub reminds us that food infrastructure, even when no longer used for its original purpose, still shapes the city.