alternative views: lost and found in rome

Alternative Views: Lost and Found in Rome

by Nick De Pace

It was a surprise to find the Eternal City transformed in the 12 years since I last lived there. Rome is overwhelmed with new immigrant communities and a growing passion for hands-free cellular technology. The legendary handcrafted leather shoe from Molise has been exchanged for a more comfortable brand-name sneaker made in Malaysia and a barrage of discount supermarkets now offers a less-than-savory alternative to the fresh market stalls of greengrocers.

This aside, Rome is still a testament to the mind-set that certain things never change. Millennia of this city’s history have shown that despite innovation, the past is hard to forget and even harder to dispose of. Take a perennial favorite like the Colosseum, for example: even after being exploited as a quarry for centuries, it’s still too large to remove.

Today’s romani are the faithful, if hesitant, custodians of such impervious remnants of antiquity whose presence is a constant reminder of a sometimes-burdensome patrimony and a staple tourist economy. Both seem to be impediments to achieving a modern-day metropolis and providing the services needed to navigate through the archeological mess.

Rome’s transit system is a paradox, more often than not at a stalemate with traffic, buried under ancient ruins, or suffering the consequences of drivers who are truly left to their own devices. Occasionally, one might find bus drivers sharing a cigarette and idle chatter at the capolinea (terminal), where they tend to chat at great length. An especially cozy wisteria-covered veranda in front of the kiosk at Piazza S. Lorenzo Fuori le Mura often explains the sudden disappearance of bus 492 on a pleasant, sunny afternoon. To best accommodate their transportation objectives, seasoned travelers patiently await their drivers in front of the kiosks instead of at the bus stop.

Unable to sufficiently make sense of the textures of the ancient city and the inefficiency of the modern, I find consolation in the housewares at IKEA – dependable products at consistent prices and with familiar faces, affordable accoutrements for my new apartment. Equally welcome: IKEA’s Swedish meatballs, questionable Nordic fish paste and Sicilian arancini (scrumptious deep-fried rice balls filled with meat sauce, peas and mozzarella). The latter are only one Euro for lunch on weekdays, a real steal considering the incomprehensible strength of the Euro compared to the weakening dollar.

In Rome, ancient treasures often go unnoticed and are left to waste away in the most unlikely places. It was curious, however, to find the original costumes from Federico Fellini’s films displayed in one of the city’s peripheral shopping malls. Sultry mannequins standing under cool fluorescent lights sport the silken robes worn by Donald Sutherland in Casanova and the burlesque sequins and lace bikinis from City of Women. Like bargain basement merchandise in storefront displays pleading for veneration, jewel-encrusted miters from Fellini’s Roma (mounted atop hefty papier-mâché bishops’ robes as weighty as St. Peter’s itself) crumble behind glass, to no one’s apparent interest or concern.

This curatorial choice is similar to another unlikely, but truly Felliniesque juxtaposition of the sacred and the profane. At the Centrale Montemartini, marble deities are exhibited against the backdrop of a defunct turn-of-the-century power plant. Diesel engines and exhaust valves provide an appropriate contrast to the abundant pristine white sculptures from the Capitoline Museum Collection.

I walk home every day from the centro storico (old quarter) through the bulwark of elevated train tracks that protects my neighborhood from the tourist onslaught. After crossing an exhaust-ridden underpass, magically and like a hidden keep, the quarter of San Lorenzo reveals itself behind the formidable Aurelian walls and the viaducts of Stazione Termini.

The opposite side of the ancient wall contains an improvised shrine of wreaths, votive candles and marble plaques that reference the atrocities of modern war, Jewish deportation, partisans killed during the Resistance and a very specific and singular day in Italian history: July 19, 1943. San Lorenzo holds the dubious distinction of being one of the only residential areas of Rome flattened by Allied bombing during World War II. The buttressed tenements and deserted lots are not due to strategic archeological digs or failed Fascist-era transportation projects but instead are the relics of a single day of Anglo- American bombing when 1,492 Italians were killed.

Historically, the quarter has harbored Rome’s radical left, bohemian artists, student activists and working-class communists, all of whose families have maintained ties in the neighborhood for generations. Thankfully, home cooking is still offered at unpretentious prices in family-run osterie and to my delight agnellotti, tender tripe and minted artichokes are still served with the traditional rudeness and haste one could only expect in Rome.

San Lorenzo is where Pasolini spent much of his time and where Montessori founded her school. It was a stronghold for the anti-Fascist resistance during the war and even now the hammer-and-sickle icon clearly overshadows Italy’s tri-colored flag. Since I have been here, rainbow peace banners have hung like laundry from windows, grayed in evidence of Rome’s pollution and the tenacity of ongoing protest against the war in Iraq. They are a reminder that in the Eternal City even the things that are new are old somehow, like relics of a future we have yet to live.

An architect and RISD faculty member, Nick De Pace BAR ’95 is on a Fulbright Grant in Rome this year, where he is researching Roman hydraulic engineering and documenting a 2000-year-old subterranean drainage conduit. Next Wintersession (2006) he plans to teach a travel course with Associate Professor of English Mark Sherman called The Other Italy: Mapping the Mezzogiorno.