City to Mountain Top, Life to Death: Signs of Summer in Rome

If Americans can't get there, at least we can have some dreams of Rome.  Below some photos from an earlier summer, exhibiting some of Rome's uniqueness - and markers of life and death

Here's life  - a bra ad - and death - notices of death pasted over them. In Castel Gandolfo (summer home of the Popes - and featured in the award-winning 2019 film, "The Two Popes"). "In forma smagliante"  is a sort of double entendre  here, trans. "In great shape" "In top form" "Fit as a fiddle" etc.

 Though from 2012, these graffiti faces at left remind us of our 2020 "mask-up" days.

On the "life" side (mostly), right - "Brigata Peroni" or "Peroni [as in the beer] Brigade."  One doesn't normally associate brigades, as in armed forces or the anarchical - and deadly (they killed Aldo Moro)- leftists, the "Red Brigade," with beer.

Left, a fully-stocked outdoor bar/cafe', complete with the requisite photo of iconic actor Alberto Sordi, in the iconic still of him eating spaghetti (from the film "Un Americano a Roma") - we've probably seen a hundred of these in restaurants and cafes and bars - and books!

Okay - we've posted photos of the nonsensical writings on shirts and jackets, but we think not this one, which does have the word "death" in it - seen in a Rome market. I just finished reading Bill Bryson's "The Mother Tongue: English and How It Got That Way" in which he quotes some of these.  None is better than this one at right.

Eating IN the streets of Trastevere. This could be a good model for restaurants in the US
trying to expand their outside service.  Not exactly social distancing.  And no
worries from those actually standing in the street that they could be run over.

For the death end, here are two photos from the top of a mountain an hour or two outside Rome in the Abruzzi (the Gran Sasso). Yes, the ubiquitous cross was there, but also Mary, complete with rosary, and several plaques to hikers who had gone on to other heights.

In the photo below, the plaque on the right says, "Friendship doesn't need time or space. We know you will always be at our side.  Ciao Nicola."

And in that same photo, the plaque on the left reads, "In memory of Ezio Noce. Your mountain friends affectionately remember you, in this place familiar to you."

Dianne

Cemetery wanderings - a great trek through Cimitero Verano in Rome

We should've known from the size of the huge green oval on Rome maps that the main Rome cemetery, Cimitero Verano, was much, much larger than it first appears.  We had visited it many years ago and appreciated its almost Rococo excesses in funerary monuments as well as notables buried there. Like much else in Rome, it was (and is) in a state of disrepair.

Also, like much else in Rome, burials in this location--along the via Tiburtina consular road and adjacent to the Basilica of San Lorenzo fuori le mura ("San Lorenzo outside the walls")--have been going on for over 2,000 years.  

Virginio Vespignani's "Meditation," at the entrance
to Rome's Verano Cemetery. Note the skull under
her foot.  She is meditating on death. About 1880.

The current cemetery is basically attributable to Napoleon, who wanted to displace the Church. During his 1805-14 reign, he established the rule that burials must be outside Rome's walls (and not within church yards) and brought in Rome's notable architect, Giuseppe Valadier, to design Verano. Although the Popes took over again after Napoleon, the cemetery was expanded just after the establishment of the secular Italy monarchy in 1870.  As a result the basic design of the cemetery is not particularly religious.  The imposing entrance is dominated by four huge statues of  Meditation, Hope, Charity and Silence, rather than statues to saints.

The monument to Goffredo Mameli, who, on July 6, 1849 [here in Roman numerals]
 died at 22 of wounds in the campaign to free Italy from the Popes (the Risorgimento).
Mameli also wrote the lyrics for what is now the Italian national anthem "Il Canto degli Italiani,"
also known as Inno di Mameli (Mameli's Hymn). The monument has the Rome she-wolf
and the twins Romulus and Remus at the top. It has fasci on the sides, indicating
it might have been erected in the Fascist era. The quote on the back is from
Mameli's friend and Risorgimento giant, Giuseppe Mazzini.

Once through the entrance, and once through the older part of the cemetery, enormous newer areas open up, often in mid-20th-century architectural styles. One reason for the newer parts of the cemetery as well is the extensive bombing by the Allies of the church, the cemetery and the areas around it in World War II. 

The cemetery also is rightly famous for the famous people buried there, from actors to politicians. We found particularly interesting the monument to Goffredo Mameli in the older part.

Actor Alberto Sordi's mausoleum is one,
if not the only one, with an alarm system.
Apparently Sordi was known for wanting
to make sure no one took his "stuff,"
even in death.

The mausoleums of beloved comedic actor Alberto Sordi and Mussolini Mistress Clara Petacci are in the newer part. 

The cemetery also was divided into Catholic and Jewish sections, with an additional World War I section.  Today the burials are not so divided.  There is also a powerful memorial to those who died in the German concentration camps.

But Sordi couldn't prevent a bit of
fan graffiti.

More on those monuments and other parts of the cemetery in the captions of the photos below. There are also lists of notable people buried in the cemetery on both English and Italian sites.
And the "Find a Grave" site has Verano listed with many "Famous Memorials." such as philosopher George Santayana (who famously said, "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it") and author Alberto Moravia, about whom we've written.

After I wrote this post but before it was published, Cynthia Coco Camille Korzekwa posted in RST's Facebook site on work she had done and an excellent Web site (in English), with descriptions of art work in the cemetery.

One of the 20th century mausoleums and our guide,
Diego, with "lo zainetto rosso," his little red
backpack.

We owe our great trek through the newer parts of the cemetery to the guide, "Lo zainetto rosso" ("the little red backpack), aka Diego Cruciani.  Diego has an unusual sensibility and is incredibly knowledgeable.  He guides in two languages at once, basically--Italian and English. You can see his latest plans on his Facebook page. And you can join his email list (diego1cruciani@gmail.com). You just show up - no prior reservations. And he accepts very modest donations at the end (I think - after asking our other fellow followers - we contributed 5 Euros each after 2.5 hours of a tour with about 10 people).

The cemetery's Web site in English: http://www.cimitericapitolini.it/english-version/list-of-cemeteries/79-the-verano-monumental-cemetery.html.  The site also lists all the trams and buses that go to the cemetery (and San Lorenzo fuori le mura), and the hours it's open.

More photos and history below.  Dianne

And for another capital city and its history through the cemetery, see Abby A. Johnson and Ronald M. Johnson's "In the Shadow of the United States Capitol: Congressional Cemetery and the Memory of the Nation."

"In memory of the 2,728 Roman citizens eliminated in the Nazi extermination camps, 1943-1945."

Diego explains this monument to Attilio Ferraris, which calls him "Champion of the world,"
and has a bas-relief of a fallen soccer player.  Ferraris was part of Italy's 1934 World
Championship team and died at 43, in 1947,  while playing an old-timers game.

The mausoleum of  Clara Petacci, Mussolini's mistress
 who was executed with him by partisans near Lake Como in 1945.
The monument was at one time in shambles, but somebody obviously
 paid to restore it. The people in our tour group who approached
the mausoleum (several declined) are reading a recent
hand-written note to Clara.

.

A children's section.

An elaborate monument to architect Vittorio Ballio Morpurgo. He was notably active in Rome in the 1930s, including working on what was to be the Fascist Party Headquarters (now "La Farnesina," the State Department) and the
Fascist Piazza Augusto Imperatore, where Mussolini wanted to be buried (in Emperor Augustus's tomb). That didn't work out, but the piazza still carries its rationalist design and is in RST's Top 40. Interestingly Morpurgo was Jewish. One biographical note says simply "He was not much affected by the race laws." And he added his mother's name to his last name (Ballio) after World War II and managed to continue his profession, as did many architect's associated with the Fascist regime. He died in 1966.

A small part of a lovely grotto-like section, composed mainly of "in
memento mori" - memorials rather than tombs.

I can't find out anything more about this Guglielmotti
family.  We rather liked the mausoleum, and the sculpture--
which looks like it's from the 1970s.

Un Americano a Roma

In one of the most famous scenes in postwar Italian cinema, Nando Moriconi (Albert Sordi), a Roman infatuated with everything American, sits down to what he understands to be an appropriately American feast: white bread, jam, and mustard, with milk poured over it, mumbling in some combination of dialect and American syllables as he assembles--and tries to eat--this concoction. 

Then, shoving the dish aside, he turns to real Italian food--a flask of Chianti and a huge bowl of spaghetti that he refers to in the film as "maccheroni." (According to my local authority on things Italian, Buffalo pizzeria owner Gino Pinzone, the word
"maccheroni" has two meanings: macaroni as
Americans know it, as in "macaroni and cheese,"
and an older, Italian meaning: any "pasta," including spaghetti). 

The 1954 film, directed by Steno (Stefano Vanzina) is Un Americano a Roma (an American in Rome).  It was filmed in Rome.  In the film, Moriconi lives in via Santa Maria in Monticelli.  It's the door on the right in the accompanying photo. 

There are other scenes in the film that have captured the Italian imagination, including one in which Moriconi threatens to throw himself off the Coliseum if a way isn't found to send him to America.  Because of the many references to Kansas City in the film, that city granted Sordi honorary citizenship.  But it's the food scene, and especially that bowl of macaroni, that have come to represent the film to later generations. 

While we've never been fans of Sordi's work--we prefer the anguish of neo-realism to wacky comedies--we're well aware of his reputation, especially in Rome, and especially in Garbatella, where he grew up, and where one day we found a tribute to the prolific actor, painted on a wall. 

We couldn't resist purchasing the poster of the maccheroni scene, which is available at any of the dozens of stands that cater to tourists.  And we began to notice the image, or similar ones, in restaurants and bars.

On the one hand, they're just come-ons, designed to put tourists at ease with an iconic image that spans two cultures and whose presence suggests that the place doesn't take itself too seriously. 

On the other hand, the film represented by that image has a larger meaning, or meanings: it stands for an era of postwar American world hegemony, before Vietnam forever changed the anti-colonial image of the United States, before world competition and de-industrialization, when most everything American was admired and desired, when the United States could do no wrong (or at least not as much).  And it stands for an era of mutual affection between the two countries, when America beckoned to Italians and Italy to Americans.



RST is a product of that era.  In 1962, your correspondents found themselves in Rome, brought there by a college foreign-campus program that was one consequence of the golden age of Italian-American relations.  It's 50 years later, and we're still at it.  Pass the maccheroni.

Bill

Alberto Sordi: a Roman in Rome

If you're shopping for movie posters in Rome, three, as we recall, are ubiquitous: Anita Ekberg cavorting in the Trevi Fountain in La Dolce Vita (1960); Audrey Hepburn and Gregory Peck on a Vespa in Roman Holiday (1953); and Alberto Sordi putting spaghetti into his mouth in Un Americano a Roma (An American in Rome) [1954]. 

If you've never heard of Sordi, you're not alone, though if you expressed that ignorance to an Italian you'd be judged insane or demented.  Sordi's illustrious career as an actor spanned 61 years and included 148 roles.  Among his best-known films were The White Sheik (1952) and  I Vitelloni  (1953), both directed by Fellini, and Lo Scapolo  (The Bachelor) [1955] and Un Borghese Piccolo (An Average Little Man) 1977, whose title suggests one of his most common roles.  He also directed 18 films.

Sordi was Roman to the core--so much so, the story goes, that he was kicked out of Milan's dramatic arts academy for his thick Roman accent.  He was born in Rome, raised in the quartiere of Garbatella and by his schoolteacher mother and musician father, and when he died in Rome in February 2003, more than a million people came to the Basilica of San Giovanni in Laterano to pay their respects (these days, an equal number appear in that square only for free rock concerts), and some 250,000 came to the funeral (right).  (For more on Garbatella, see the first itinerary in our new book, Modern Rome: 4 Great Walks for the Curious Traveler. More on the book at the end of this post.)

Garbatella remains proud of its native son.  On one of its curvy streets, you'll find evidence of that pride: a wall-size painting, featuring Sordi's portrait and an abbreviated--if still impressively long--filmography.

Remember the name--Alberto Sordi, also known as Albertone (big Albert)--especially when talking to an Italian, especially in Rome, and above all in Garbatella.
Bill

The wall painting at right is featured in the Garbatella itinerary of our new print AND eBook,  Modern Rome: 4 Great Walks for the Curious Traveler.  Modern Rome features tours of the "garden" suburb of Garbatella; the 20th-century suburb of EUR, designed by the Fascists; the 21st-century music and art center of Flaminio, along with Mussolini's Foro Italico, also the site of the 1960 summer Olympics; and a stairways walk in Trastevere.

This 4-walk book is available in all print and eBook formats The eBook is $1.99 through amazon.com and all other eBook sellers.  See the various formats at smashwords.com. 

Modern Rome: 4 Great Walks for the Curious Traveler now is also available in print, at amazon.com, Barnes and Noble, independent bookstores, and other retailers; retail price $5.99.