The name Termini is derived from the proximity of the place at the Baths of Diocletian, because here there was a large cistern trapezoidal called "Botte di Termini", whose last remains were demolished in 1876. Even the current Piazza dei Cinquecento, until 1888, was named "Piazza di Termini", after which he was entitled to the 500 Italian soldiers who fell at Dogali. The first commissioned to Termini railway station, at the end of 1862, served the Roma-Ceprano, but more than one station had a booth made of wood. In September 1863 the other two lines to Frascati and to Civitavecchia are bound up here. In 1865 he left the project for the construction of a large railway station el'esproprio land fruit to Maximus, but the owners of the beautiful Villa Massimo, also known as Villa Montalto, the tidy sum of 62,485 scudi. The first building that came to supplant the precarious wooden structure was built in 1867 to designs by architect Salvatore Bianchi, with the blessing of Pope Pio IX.

The station is made then consist of a central body with iron and glass roof, a popular solution for the architecture of the century, and two buildings "twins" who understood him. Just fifteen years after implementation, however, term it is insufficient to meet the needs of innovation and the plant growing number of travelers. The need for change brought about in the late '30s, building from scratch a complex of buildings. "See you under the clock": was the magic formula of appointments end of century. Later the quadrant of the Termini station would find a substitute for more in keeping with the times: the publicity of the Osram lamp.

Was far from a station buffet restaurant of the Cavaliere Angiolo Valiani, from Pistoia. Meeting place for poets and artists, had as its most famous of habitués Trilussa, who never failed to be put aside for the remains of the cat. Here is a menu of 1923, which, in line with the diktats of the regime, had to give up foreign names: “il potage alla reine” (the soup of the Queen), lost a bit of royalty, the queen became a soup (one lira and 25 cents); veneer of mullet in mayonnaise (6 lire and 50), marrow-bone in "gremolata" (7,50), breast of veal with Madera and squashes, and chicken ragout and tart peaches. But the classic was the Valiani artichokes served in all ways: the Cavaliere till it and famous harbor embroidered waistcoats and embroidered in gold on four corners of the handkerchief.

For him the beneficial vegetable had nothing to envy to other flowers on the memorial even took an artichoke carved crown. This, which is the old station Termini "inherited" in part by the Papal States, were made to change. Until the complete replacement of marble with the cathedral and the "dinosauro" front today. The obelisk to the fallen of Dogali, right in the photo, moved in the gardens of Piazza Esedra for the Holy Year 1925. Before the arrival side, the "barrels" that led to the center.