The Roman Ottobrata

Photo by Kristijan Arsov

There is a word Romans use that has no real translation: Ottobrata. Literally, it means “the October days”, but in truth it describes something far more elusive: the lingering warmth after summer has gone, the golden afternoons when the sun hangs low, the way people stretch themselves out into the light as if storing it up before November closes in. It is not just climate. It is a shared state of mind that belongs entirely to this city and to this season.

The Ottobrata has its roots in the grape harvest. Once the vines had been picked and the wine made ready, Romans would leave the city on Sundays and Thursdays to celebrate in the countryside, especially in the Castelli Romani. Frascati, Marino: villages where long tables were laid under vine-covered pergolas, wine flowed freely, and the day stretched endlessly. These feasts echoed even older traditions, the Baccanali, those celebrations of the god of wine where ritual, abundance and collective joy became one. From the eighteenth century onwards, the custom grew into a true ritual, uniting nobles and commoners alike around food, nature, and the light of October.

The word remains, though the ritual has changed. Today the Ottobrata is no longer about escaping the city but about returning to a Rome made liveable again. The tourist crowds have thinned, the oppressive heat has lifted. The city breathes once more, and so do those who live it. Terraces fill not from necessity but from the pleasure of lingering in the sun. Tables outdoors are places to stay, not to shelter. At sunset, the Tiber catches coppery reflections that shift from moment to moment. This is when Rome stops being a stage set and returns to being a place to inhabit.

And here, in the Casa al Colosseo, the Ottobrata takes shape. Not only outside, in the streets and piazzas, but within these rooms where the light falls differently: neither the violence of summer nor the timidity of winter, but a softer, more insistent intensity.
The walls reveal their history in layers, colours uncovered by the restoration, blue, green, pink, all of them heightened by the October light. In the kitchen, the afternoon sun strikes the small courtyard painted in pale rose, flooding everything with a warm, almost unreal glow.

October is the month when this house breathes most deeply. Windows can stay open from dawn until dusk, the air crossing the rooms and carrying the sounds of the city without their weight. The old patterned tiles keep the right coolness. From the shared terrace, laundry flutters in the breeze while the Colosseum stands below, indifferent.
A detail that tells more than any postcard about what it truly means to live here.

Choosing a seat depending on the hour, following the sun like a cat, opening a book and realising three hours have slipped by: this is the Ottobrata. The art of staying still instead of chasing.

October teaches something simple: slowing down doesn’t mean wasting time, but recovering it. And the Ottobrata is that moment when Rome stops urging you to run and simply invites you to dwell.