Packers, Steelers bars just two blocks from each other … in Italy

While most of Rome, Italy obsesses over a football of the round, paneled variety, the oblong football will be the featured attraction in one corner of the city on Sunday. That’s where Packers fans and Steelers fans will gather to watch the Super Bowl … at their respective sports bar hangouts, which are only two blocks apart.

Yep. The Abbey Theatre, an Irish Pub on the Via del Governo Vecchio in downtown Rome, is The Eternal City’s official Packers bar. And just a few hundred yards away, on the Via di Tor Millina, is La Botticella, which is Rome’s Steelers’ fan hangout.

Carl, an Irishman who works there, tells us that they have shown every Packers game there for the last three years, and dozens of fans show up on Packers gamedays.

“On average, maybe 25 or 30,” Carl said to Newsradio 620 WTMJ’s Jay Sorgi about his bar that suddenly has two green-related themes to sport on Super Bowl Sunday.

“(The Abbey is) one of our rival bars for business,” admitted Giovanni Poggi, a Steelers fanatic whose bar has become a bit of a pilgrimage point for Pittsburghers who vacation in Rome.

He’s a Steelers fan who was born in Italy, but grew up in Canada. and a neighbor turned him onto the Steelers during their championship years in the 70′s.

Patrons of the two bars hope to meet somewhere in between the two establishments after the game, with the winners buying the losers a beer.

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Super Bowl Frenzy: Packers, Steelers Bars Two Blocks Apart in Rome [TodaySTMJ4]