From the outside, the museum on Palatine Hill looks like another elegant Roman palazzo, its entrance decorated with statues of Roman soldiers and decorative urns.
However, once you step inside, it's clear that it's not just another Roman villa.
Hundreds of pieces of kitchen utensils are displayed in glass cases: massive pasta machines from the 19th century, 220-year-old bowls used by monks and old metal pots for preparing meals. Osso bucco, a classic recipe from the north of Italy in which the main star is veal shank.
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What at first glance looks like medieval armor were actually 500-year-old metal models.
Some were used for baking cakes, some for making chocolate or ice cream.
There are books in other showcases.
I stopped in front of one illustration to study pieces of meat roasting over an open flame on a 16th-century spit; in the next picture, the men are sitting at the banquet table and eating.
These drawings decorate the cover of one of the oldest cookbooks on display in the museum Il Trincijate (Il Trinciante), written in 1593 by Vincenzo Servio.
The author of the cookbook was an engraver (trinciante) for the Italian Cardinal Alessandro Farnese.
Servio's work contains 64 chapters explaining how to cut fish, pies, leaders and vegetables, but above all meat and poultry, from pork, chicken, turkey to pheasant and peacock.
The detailed drawings show exactly where to cut so that the slices are juicy and tasty.
Il Trinciante is one of the 120 chefs on display at the Cooking Museum, which opened in May 2020 and is the first museum in this city that deals with the history of food and cooking.
Since the first mass-printed cookbook was published nearly 550 years ago, many Italian recipes have all but disappeared, stored away in old writings in warehouses, says museum director Matteo Girigini.
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The Cooking Museum wants to right that injustice.
The museum's collection consists of the books of the Italian chef Rosano Boscola, and among them are some of the oldest and rarest cookbooks on all meridians, such as a collection of recipes intended only for popes.
Boskol's cooking school in Tuscany - Campus Etoile Academy, will help the museum by growing rare ingredients, and there will also be perfected forgotten recipes that were once enjoyed only by the nobility.
I had the opportunity to visit the museum briefly in November 2021, while preparations were underway for the opening.
I stumbled upon this building by accident.
Rome is full of incredible attractions, so it's easy to overlook the monumental churches and remains of palaces two thousand years old, let alone the cooking museum that still hasn't opened.
But the Museo della Cucina is already marked on Google Maps.
And while I was looking for the location on the phone, I saw the address of the museum.
The location of the museum immediately intrigued me - it is located between two of the most important historical sites in Rome: the Circus Maximus stadium, which is 2.600 years old, and the Palatine Hill, where Rome was founded and where the remains of ancient palaces and temples are located.
As it turns out, the museum is not only on the Palatine Hill, but also on the exact spot where the she-wolf Lupa nursed Romulus and Remus, the legendary founders of Rome more than 2.700 years ago.
According to the myth, Romulus later founded Rome in that place.
It is fitting for Myzej to be located in that historic location, says Girigini.
"Though underrated, cooking can help us see contemporary history," he says.
"It is a product of its time and can tell us a lot about customs, ways of thinking, specific economic and political situations."
"The chef has a far greater importance than he is often given credit for."
These impressions are shared by Laila Tentoni, the president of the famous Italian gastronomy center Casa Artusi in the city of Forlimpopoli in the north of Italy.
She explains that Italian food reveals a lot about the passions that reign in this country.
On the other hand, chefs have largely shaped the history and direction of Italian cuisine.
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Casa Artusi is dedicated to Pellegrino Artusi, one of the most respected chef authors in Italy.
Tentoni says that Artusi's 1891 book The Science of the Kitchen and the Art of the Good Bite attempted to demystify Italian cuisine, which until then had been reserved for the country's elite.
"Artuzi was the first food blogger," Tentoni says.
"He suggests using local quality ingredients, and only in season."
"You must always choose the best ingredients because they will make you famous," he wrote.
I admired a rare first edition of Artusius's influential text on the second floor of the Cooking Museum.
Artusi's cookbook is not richly illustrated like some other books, but it makes up for it with a colorful style.
"Many people will read this recipe and exclaim, 'This pasta is pointless!'" says the recipe for lean spaghetti in the English version of his cookbook, which I found online.
Made with walnuts, breadcrumbs, powdered sugar and allspice, known as Jamaican pepper or allspice, this sweet spaghetti was a hit with the kids, Artuzzi says.
Some of Artusius's recipes are outdated today, such as the eel pie recipe.
Not only is this long, thin fish difficult to prepare and cook, so much so that there are chefs in Japan who specialize only in eel dishes, but Artuzi prepares it with raisins, rose water and almond milk.
Since I forgot Italian a long time ago (I learned it in high school), I couldn't decipher what was written on the open pages of the cookbooks displayed in the museum.
But Girigini told me that I will be able to read them in English when the site, announced as very rich, is completed.
"You'll actually have access to a virtual, illustrated, guided tour through five centuries of gastronomy," he says.
From that rich collection, he selected a few texts for me to review.
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In addition to Artusi's classic, there was also About honorable enjoyment and health, by the Italian author Bartolomeo Platina, the first cookbook to be printed in bulk in 1474.
That book, about preparing individual meals rather than decadent banquets, was very popular in Italy and was later translated into French and German.
Another important cookbook, according to Giriginije, is entitled Opera Bartolomeo Scapi, and was written in 1570. the highly respected Scapi, at that moment the private chef of Pope Pius V.
This cookbook, filled with drawings of meals being prepared in large kitchens, was remarkable for giving Italian audiences for the first time a glimpse of recipes for dishes that no one outside the Vatican had ever tried before.
Scapi wrote that Pope Pius IV loved frogs. And not just any frogs, but the ones from Bologna because they were particularly plump and tasty.
For the Pope's meal, Skapi would remove astonishingly large frog livers, roll them in egg, flour and milk, then fry them until they were crispy nuggets.
That was the Pope's snack.
The rest of this tadpole was prepared as a full meal for his holiness.
Skapi would remove the head and the tips of the frog's legs, and roll the rest in flour and then fry them.
Then he would dip the frog in a sour sauce, made from unripe grapes, which was once a popular ingredient among Italian chefs, but has since been replaced by vinegar.
Because of the significant influence of French cuisine on the gastronomy of northern Italy and because of the proximity of the border, but also mutual admiration for the culinary abilities of the two then leading neighbors on the continent.
The museum also exhibits the best French cookbooks, written by authors such as Marie-Antoine Karem, François Masillat and Urban François Dubois.
"The books in the museum contain the first printed recipes of authentic dishes in the gastronomic cultures of France and Italy, from tomato sauce to rice croquettes and panettone, as well as macaroni and puddings," says Girigini.
As a self-confessed sweet tooth, my mouth watered as I admired the eye-catching drawings of giant cakes in Kareme's book Le Patissier Royal Parisien.
He perfected a grandiose approach to cooking, based on spectacle as much as technique.
Using dough, sugar and marzipan, Karem created huge replicas of famous buildings.
In addition to books and other exhibits, Girigini says that the plan is to prepare dishes from the past in the museum, and that the public can try them, such as the first recipe in Italy for tomato sauce from the 17th century.
Taken from Antonio Latini's cookbook from 1692, this recipe is more like a spicy salsa due to the presence of fresh chili peppers, instead of the mild tomato sauce we all know today.
Old-time banquets from cooks from the museum's collection, some of which haven't been prepared in centuries, are also planned, although Girigini didn't reveal exactly which dishes he was referring to.
"The Museum of Chefs and Food in Rome is something very special," says Flaminia Belloni, a tour guide in Rome for the past 20 years.
"This is a great opportunity to learn how cooking and food were an essential part of the lifestyle and thinking of all Italians."
Girifini hopes others will agree.
On top of all that, few things can be more difficult than trying to sum up the impressions after viewing the exhibition that follows more than 500 years of Italian cuisine, i.e. paying tribute to one of the most valued and fascinating aspects of Italian culture.
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