The ancient Pharmacy of Santa Maria della Scala is located in the heart of Trastevere, and the Carmelites were running it. In that period, the doctor profession was separate from the job of who prepares medicines. The Pharmacy, as you can already understand from its name, belongs to the nearby church of Santa Maria della Scala, where there is a miraculous image of the Virgin.
This Pharmacy was the first in Rome (second in Italy after a pharmacy opened in Venice). During the Italian uprisings in 1849, the Pharmacy was used as an infirmary. At the time of the unification of Italy, the monastery became a place of detention.
At that historical moment, all the monks were chased away except two. At the beginning of the 1900s, the monks repurchased it from the ministry of foreign affairs. At the time, knowledge, as regards medicines, was still empirical and not medical; part of the plants used for medications prepared at the old Pharmacy of Santa Maria della Scala were grown in the Casaletto and Affogalasino area. After a first historical introduction outside the Pharmacy, we enter the first room, which already gives a good idea of ​​how particular and precious this place is. Inside there are shelves full of containers used to hold preparations and medicines; there is also a cash register dating back to the 1900s, such as the floor. Even the paintings on the ceiling seem more recent than when the Pharmacy was built. Unfortunately, we don’t know which is the
period of their creation. Among the various wardrobes in the room, there is one dedicated only to poisons, which in the past were also used to treat (obviously only in small quantities). From a small door, you can see a small laboratory, which perhaps served for last-minute preparations. The visit continues in a second room, “on the back”. This room could be the one dedicated to medical examinations. Always this little room there was the drawer of the “examination tour”: here people left a ticket with name and address, which the doctor took to go around the home visits. At one time there was also a library of the monastery, with 8000 volumes. When the foreign affairs ministry took over the complex, many books remain in the library, and others went lost; today, unfortunately, the remains are in a wardrobe.
When Italy was a monarchy, the Savoia family was about to choose it as the royal pharmacy. In the end, “unfortunately” the royals decided to rely on another pharmacy, but this became the papal Pharmacy (and of the Pope’s family). The visit ends with a quick tour of what used to be a laboratory for the creation of medicines. In this room, there is still the original floor from ‘500 – ‘600 century. Always in the same part of the building, there are two rooms with the machines for creating the pills. How to visit the Ancient Pharmacy of Santa Maria della Scala? Unfortunately, it is not possible to see the Pharmacy by ourselves, and you must take part in one of the guided tours organized by different associations.