To Dub or Not to Dub? Rome Has the Answer

The prestige of Italian dubbers is obvious in this projection on Rome's Coliseum of dubber Gigi Proietti the day after his 2020 death at 80. Proietti "voiced" Robert De Niro, Sylvester Stallone, Richard Burton, Richard Harris, Dustin Hoffman, Paul Newman, Charlton Heston and Marlon Brando.

To dub or not to dub; that is...not a silly question. Italians especially have taught us the value of a dubber (doppiatore, literally a “doubler”), make that “voice actor,” a respected profession in Italy.

The value Italians give to the craft is exhibited by what are known as the “Italian Oscars”—The International Grand Prize of Dubbing, il Gran Premio Internazionale del Doppiaggio. The 14^th annual prizes were handed out at the recent March 27 ceremonies. Italians’ attraction to dubbed films was also underscored recently, when the dubbers went on strike for 3 weeks, protesting a contract that expired 12 years ago. As a consequence, no dubbing took place, and no shows were aired dubbed. When, during the strike (it’s now on pause), Sky TV streamed the 7^th episode of HBO’s smash hit “The Last of Us” in its original language, English, Italian audiences reportedly were disoriented.

Above, Simone D'Andrea, who won the jury prize
for "Best Male Voice" this year for his dubbing
of Colin Farrell in "The Banshees of Inishirin."
He's also known for anime voicing.

Chiara Colizzi won this year's jury
award at the International Grand
Prize for Dubbing for "Best 
 Female Voice" for her dubbing of
 Michele Williams in "The
Fablemans." She's also been
the voice of Nicole Kidman
and Kate Winslet.

Unlike most Italians, Americans generally devalue dubbed films. For those of us who were introduced to “foreign films” in church basements or tiny art houses, “dubbed” films were considered vastly inferior to subtitled ones. We might not have known one word in Swedish, but we considered it critical to hear the sounds of the original actors in those Ingmar Bergman classics. Were we wrong?

Edward Lynch, a dual citizen and multi-lingual professor in Rome, who created a website devoted to films in original language showing in that capital city, seems to be the perfect person to defend subtitles. But, like us, he’s modified his views somewhat over the years. “I used to see dubbing as something really bad. But maybe it’s not all that bad. The problem in Italy was that there wasn’t much of a choice in the past. All films were dubbed.”

Above, the dubbers at left of three leads in "The Godfather."
From the top, Giancarlo Giannini (a famous actor in his own right)
 for Al Pacino, Leo Gullotta for Joe Pesci, and Stefano De Santo 
for Robert De Niro.

Lynch points to “Parasite,” the 2019 Korean movie that went on to win the Oscar for Best Picture, one of the few foreign films to do so. He saw it with subtitles, and says that by spending time focusing on reading the words, “I think I missed a lot.” He adds, “Even if it’s in a language I don’t know, I want to see it in the original with subtitles. But maybe I’m being too stubborn. I think I would have liked to have seen ‘Parasite’ dubbed.”

Dubbing may be coming more into its own internationally with streaming. The film that won this year’s Oscar for Best Foreign Film, Germany’s “All Quiet on the Western Front,” was offered (on Netflix) in several versions, including a dubbed English version. A non-German speaker can choose to watch it either dubbed or subtitled. Streaming at home would seem to encourage this multiplicity of versions.

At least in Rome, one also has some of that choice at Director Nanni Moretti’s “Nuovo Sacher” theater in Trastevere, where the programming alternates showing a film one night dubbed in Italian and another in “v.o.”, versione originale (original version, i.e. with subtitles). Lynch asked the Nuovo Sacher box office whether one version was more popular than the other, and they responded that each attracted about the same number of viewers. Bear in mind, Nuovo Sacher is essentially an art house, attracting a clientele that might lean more towards subtitles than would the general public.

Italians’ attraction to dubbing means that Italy is one of the world’s premier dubbing countries. Along with France and Germany, it historically resisted subtitling on the grounds that dubbing would better promote the country’s native language. A perhaps unintended consequence is that people in Northern European countries (like the Scandinavian ones) speak English more readily, because they’ve been hearing the original more often.

This map of dubbing and subtitling depicts
in red the countries where dubbing is used 
exclusively in film and TV; in blue, the countries
where dubbing is exclusively for children's fare
and all else is subtitled. Orange are countries that
use dubbing occasionally, but otherwise only subtitling.

By now the Italian public is accustomed to dubbing, a practice dating back to the Fascist era. The first dubbing facility opened in Rome in 1932. Under a 1934 law, dubbing was required to be done in Italy by Italians to obtain screening permits. Other reasons given for the more expensive practice of dubbing, over subtitling, is that Italy had a relatively high illiteracy rate in that era, 21% in 1931, and that standard Italian did not start to become widespread until the 1950s (helped by dubbers). Apparently part of the Marshall Plan money after World War II also went into dubbing so that American movies could be popularized in the Italian market. Dubbing (as well as subtitling) also allowed a kind of stealth censorship. In 1943’s “Casablanca,” Rick (Humphrey Bogart) helped the Ethiopians against the Italian Army. In the Italian dubbed version, there’s no mention of this; instead Rick fought with Spaniards against the Fascists.

In 2018, 570,000 minutes were dubbed by professionals in Italy, and likely even more are being dubbed today. A 2019 headline in the Hollywood Reporter blared, “Netflix’s Global Reach Sparks Dubbing Debate: ‘The Public Demands It.’” One of their VP’s explained, “People say they prefer the original, but our figures show they watch the dubbed version.” Netflix now works with more than 100 facilities worldwide to meet increasing demand for dubbed content. It has 7 dubbing-approved studios in Italy, 6 of those in Rome.

Proietti, right, who voiced Gandalf (Ian McKellen)
in the "Lord of the Rings" series.

There are schools and programs in Italy today dedicated to dubbing. It’s considered a high art form there, equivalent to regular acting. The voice actors, as they prefer to be called, are famous throughout the country, as the “Italian Oscars” demonstrate. Roman Gigi Proietti, who died in 2020 at age 80, began as a stage and film actor, but he was most famous for his voice acting. As with many other voice actors, Proietti was the voice of multiple stars, among them Robert De Niro, Sylvester Stallone, Richard Burton, Richard Harris, Dustin Hoffman, Paul Newman, Charlton Heston and Marlon Brando. When Hoffman, De Niro or Stallone make new films, Italians will have a tough adjustment to make.

Italians like dubbed films because, says Lynch, “they can recognize all the dubbed voices. It’s something that the Italian audience gets used to, these actors who dub and always dub the same actors.”

Proietti was recently honored with
an enormous mural on a wall in the
Tufello quarter of Rome, the
working class area where he was
born and raised.

It’s hard not to see those many flyers and ads around Rome that promote dubbing schools. The field generally is referred to as audiovisual translation or AVT, and is popular in all of Europe. Massimo Vizzaccaro is a professor at one of the more illustrious of those schools (one that doesn’t have to slap paste-ups on telephone poles). The program at his university is an intensive 12-month Master di Primo Livello (“Master’s first level”; the full name is Master in traduzione e adattamento delle opere audiovisivi e multimediali per il doppiaggio e il sottotitolo - “Master’s in translation and adaptation of audiovisual and multimedia works for dubbing and subtitling” or Master TEA for short). To apply, one must have a (minimum) 3-year undergraduate degree.

“It’s a hands-on course,” says Vizzaccaro, “because these students are physically taken into dubbing studios; so they see how you need to work.” It’s the longest standing program of its type in Italy, founded some 20 years ago by Sergio Patou Patucchi, a scholar of the subject who was the voice of, among others, Yogi Bear and his companion Boo-Boo. The program also provides a number of different courses, including Vizzaccaro’s own “British and American Civilizations.” His course is essential, the Roman professor points out, because to be good at their trade, dubbers need to understand the culture that produces the content they are dubbing.

Ferruccio Amendola, left, the "king"
of voice actors before his 2001 death,
with one of his actors: Sylvester Stallone.

Schools notwithstanding, a lot of the business in Italy is passed through the family, like many other Italian professions (e.g. notaries – a much more important position there than in the U.S.), Vizzaccaro notes. (“Nepo babies” are also common in Hollywood, as we know.) Carlo Valli, the voice of Robin Williams among many others, and Cristina Giachero (voice of Scarlett Johanssen and Laura Dern among dozens) are the parents of two voice actors, Ruggero and Arturo, both of whom got their start as voices of children or animated figures (Arturo as the young Andy in “Toy Story”). Ferruccio Amendola, considered the “king” of voice actors (before his 2001 death, he voiced De Niro, Stallone and Hoffman), was married to voice actress Rita Savignone (Vanessa Redgrave, Whoopi Goldberg).

Carlo Valli, right, who was the voice of
Robin Williams.

Dubbing, as well as subtitling, raises fascinating issues of cultural exchange and transmission, as does any translation. Decisions have to be made about everything from titles of films (“Scandalo a Filadelfia” [“Scandal in Philadelphia”] instead of “Philadelphia Story” [1940]) to names of characters (Rossella O’Hara instead of Scarlett O’Hara in “Gone with the Wind” [1939]), from regional accents to puns. Example of the last is how does one differentiate in Italian “where wolf”/“werewolf” to make a joke make sense in 1974’s “Young Frankenstein”? Apparently that was one of the more successful translations; we've quoted the English and Italian versions at the end of this post.

“Translating” regional accents into dubbed foreign language versions can be a challenge as well. According to Vizzaccaro, it's generally not feasible in Italian; the equivalent would be more cultural than regional and might be offensive or perceived as silly. There are attempts to make the transition. In the TV show “The Simpsons,” the Protestant Reverend Lovejoy has a Southern accent. In Italian, points out Italian language and cultural educator Valeria Mancuso, his dubber speaks with a Sicilian or Calabrian accent. Apu, the Indian proprietor of the Kwik-E-Mart in that series, in Italian speaks with a sing-song cadence and grammatical errors, both indicating he’s an immigrant.

The dubber also has to provide content that at least minimally resembles the words coming out of the actor’s mouth, basically lip-synching. Except in one anomalous case. Vizzaccaro pointed out Scarlett Johansson was an awards nominee for Best Actress for 2013’s “Her,” in which only her voice is present. In Italy, the dubbed version obviously featured someone else. As a result, Italian audiences had no chance to witness the award-winning performance. We might think it strange to have the same voice coming out of the mouths of Dustin Hoffman and Marlon Brando, but the Italians don’t. The “famous” quality of voice actors may have its counterpart in American animated features that often employ Hollywood stars, like Tom Hanks playing Woody in the “Toy Story” series.

Lynch also points out that some Italian films in the past were dubbed—Italian into Italian—because the dubbers have better voices. Elsa Martinelli won best actress at the 1956 Berlin film festival for her role in Mario Monicelli’s “Donatella,” even though her voice in the film is that of another actress. The Italian Wikipedia lists the doppiatori—there were at least 9—for the film (https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donatella_(film)). This point evokes the transition in American films from silents to talkies, which, it’s generally agreed, ended the career of some of those whose voices didn’t match their screen personas.

The prestige of dubbing over subtitling is reflected not only in the economic and artistic commitment Italians have to the craft, but also in some cartoons. We end these ruminations on dubbing with this reminder of that prestige:

The top figure is labeled "Italian Dubbing"
and the bottom, "Subtitled Original"

Dianne

From "Young Frankenstein":

Inga: Werewolf!
Frankenstein: Werewolf?
Igor: There
Frankenstein: What?
Igor: There wolf, there castle!

Inga: Lupo ululà
Frankenstein: Lupo ululà?
Igor: Là!
Frankenstein: Cosa?
Igor: Lupu ululà, castello ululì!

Rome's Pantheon, and the Origins of Hitler's Great Hall of the People

On the 2nd page of a Martin Fuller essay in the New York Review of Books (12/17/15),  on the architecture of the Third Reich, I found this image:

Architect's rendering, the Volkshalle

It's an architectural drawing for what was intended to be the Volkshalle, the Great Hall of the People, the centerpiece of a project to transform Berlin into a city called "Germania."  What I saw, however, was Rome's Pantheon, or some version of it.  That's hardly a novel, or even an interesting observation. Almost anyone who has stood inside the ancient Rome building would have a similar perception.


Rome's Pantheon

As I was soon to discover, there is, indeed, a connection between Hadrian's Pantheon and the German architect Albert Speer's design for the Volkshalle.


Hitler's interest in the project dates at least to 1925, when he sketched an early idea of what the hall might look like, and it deepened in May 1938, when he toured the Pantheon as part of his only trip to Rome, where he met Mussolini and laid the groundwork for the Axis.


Hitler's admiration for Rome, and its Pantheon, surfaced again in 1940

Speer and Hitler, examining a model of Germania

when, with Speer and other German architects, he toured Paris and that city's Pantheon, only to be disappointed.  By that point, he imagined that his Germania would "only be comparable with ancient Egypt, Babylon or Rome.  What is London," he asked, "what is Paris by comparison?"

Well, Hitler was right about that, anyway.  But he and Speer--according to Martin Kitchen's recent book, a pedestrian architect with delusions of grandeur, and an evil man--had conceived of a project that even they couldn't pull off.

The overall plan for Germania included two grand boulevards (Mussolini, too, loved his broad boulevards), each 120 meters wide, lined with triumphal arches and

Imagining the exterior

grand buildings, including the Volkshalle.  As with Mussolini's Rome, the reconstruction of Berlin would have required tearing down hundreds of existing buildings and relocating tens of thousands of people.  Speer had designed the Volkshalle along stupendous lines.  While the interior skin of the dome resembled Rome's Pantheon, the German version was to have been much, much larger: 320 meters high; the podium on which the dome was placed was figured at 315 meters square, roughly the length of 3 football fields; the dome's oculus, at 46 meters in diameter, would, apparently, have been large enough to place inside the entire rotunda of Hadrian's Pantheon.  On top would rest an enormous eagle, holding in its claws a ball--the earth.  So subtle!

Hitler and Speer, who spent night after night mulling over plans and models of Germania, imagined a building in which Hitler would mesmerize the great throngs: 180,000 people at a time, most of them standing,

A rally outside

if the preliminary drawings are an indication. There was also a seating area along the sides, resembling the Congress Hall at Nuremberg--which, according to one source, was modeled on the Coliseum.  So large was the interior of the Volkshalle that even Speer, during time spent in prison after the war, speculated that so many bodies (and, therefore, so much humidity) in one great space would produce the dome's own "weather"--drizzle and rain.

Mussolini had grand plans, too, but he had the common sense to position his equivalent of Germania--EUR--in a largely undeveloped area south of the city center.  In contrast, Hitler's Germania was in the heart of Berlin.  According to one authority, had it been built, "Berlin's historic center would have forever been destroyed."


The dictators differed on their cities.  Mussolini was fond of Rome, and one could argue that his interventions, while hardly minimal and undeniably damaging, were designed to improve the city. Hitler, in contrast, disliked Berlin, most of whose voters had refused to support him in 1932-33. Germania was his revenge.  

Of course it wasn't built, nor was EUR completed until the 1950s.  The war intervened.  How sad!
Bill
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                         

A Cynic Abroad: Mark Twain in Rome

Twain, 1871, photo by Mathew Brady

In 1867, Mark Twain toured Europe and the Holy Land.  His usually acerbic comments were published two years later in The Innocents Abroad--to this day his best-selling book.  Rome was on the itinerary, but by the time he reached the Eternal City he had seen other Italian cities, including Genoa, whose palaces he found rather stolid and ordinary, making "no pretensions to architectural magnificence," and where he discovered that Italian "vagabonds" were sure to pounce with glee on his cigar butts. There as elsewhere, he found too many churches and too many "well-fed priests."  "These worthies suffer in the flesh and do penance all their lives, I suppose, but they look like consummate famine-breeders.  They are all fat and serene."

The itinerary

Genoa

Perhaps with some justification, he was suspicious of the relics he found in every church.  "As for the
bones of St. Denis," he wrote, "I feel certain we have seen enough of them to duplicate him if necessary."  While acknowledging Genoa's historic greatness, it was to Twain a thing of the past, having "degenerated into an unostentatious commerce in velvets and silver-filigree work."

Milan fared better, or at least its enormous cathedral did.  "Surely," wrote Twain with nary a jot of irony, "it must be the princeliest creation that ever brain of man conceived."  Da Vinci's "Last Supper," on the other hand, was a "mournful wreck," "stained and discolored," something akin to a

Da Vinci's Last Supper. Were the disciples Hebrews, or Italians?

"decayed, blind, toothless, pock-marked Cleopatra," indeed, so awful that for Twain any of the 12 copies being made while he visited was superior to the original.  So damaged that "the spectator cannot really tell, now, whether the disciples are Hebrews or Italians."  "After reading so much about it," Twain concluded, "I am satisfied that the Last Supper was a miracle of art once.  But it was 300 years ago." 

Lake Como?  Disappointingly small and narrow, and its waters "dull" in comparison "with the wonderful transparence of Lake Tahoe," where, Twain claimed, "one can count the scales on a trout at a depth of a hundred and eighty feet," and whose reputation suffers only because of an unfelicitous name: Tahoe means "grasshopper soup."

Italy's interior?  Populated by peasants and their children, "idle, as a general thing" and the "home of priest craft--of a happy, cheerful, contented ignorance, superstition, degradation,  poverty, indolence, and everlasting unaspiring worthlessness."

Tintoretto, Finding the Body of
St. Mark

Venice?  A shadow of its former self, "her piers [are] deserted, her warehouses are empty, her armies and her navies are but memories.  Her glory is departed, and with her crumbling grandeur of wharves and palaces about her she sits among her stagnant lagoons, forlorn and beggared, forgotten of the world....a peddler of glass beads for women, and trifling toys and trinkets for school-girls and children."  It was in Venice, too, that Twain began to experience something like tourist burnout.  "We have seen famous pictures until our eyes are weary with looking at them and refuse to find interest in them any longer.  And what wonder, when here are twelve hundred pictures by Palma the Younger in Venice and fifteen hundred by Tintoretto?"  The same, he thought, could be said of all-too-frequent depictions of martyrs:  "...it seemed to me that when I had seen one of these martyrs I had seen them all."

Florence?  The required visit to the Pitti Palace and the Ufizzi, where "we tried indolently to recollect something about the Guelphs and Ghibelines and the other historical cut-throats whose quarrels and assassinations make up so large a share of Florentine history, but the subject was not attractive."  Twain admired the city's mosaics.  Of the Arno, he wrote, "it would be a very plausible river if they would pump some water into it.  They call it a river....They even help out the delusion by building bridges over it."

Civita Vecchia?  "...the finest nest of dirt, vermin and ignorance we have found yet, except that African perdition they call Tangier, which is just like it."  "All this country belongs to the Papal States.  They do not appear to have any schools here, and only one billiard table."  "We are going to Rome.  There is nothing to see here." 

Rome was for Twain an intimidating place that threatened to deny him the joy of discovery,  His introduction to his first experience of the city begins with a long discourse on discovery, "the noblest delight."  "To be the first," he adds, "that is the idea."  And therein lay the problem.  "What is there in Rome," Twain lamented, "for me to see that others have not seen before?  What is there for me to touch that others have not touched?  What is there for me to feel, to learn, to hear, to know, that shall thrill me before it pass to others?  What can I discover?--Nothing.  Nothing whatsoever.  One charm of travel dies here."

There's hope in that last sentence--"One charm of travel dies here," for it implies some knowledge of travel's other charms, as if Twain might slough off his despair and dig into Rome's other charms.  No.  So invested is he in the city's denial of discovery that he immediately reverses the field and imagines himself a modern inhabitant of the Roman Campagna--slothful, superstitious, ignorant--traveling to wondrous America to experience the joys of discovery.  In a passage long enough to make me wonder if the man was sane, Twain describes what his Roman peasant would see, for the first time:  a nation with "no overshadowing Mother Church, and yet the people survive; common country children actually reading books; cities where people drink milk but the streets are not crowded with goats; houses with "real glass windows"; fire engines and fire departments; newspapers, printed by "a great machine...by thousands every hour"; common men who own land not rented from the church or nobles; and Jews "treated just like human beings, instead of dogs." 

St. Peter's.  Just too damn big.  

Emerging from his Rome-induced depression, Twain visits the Vatican, only to experience more disappointment.  St. Peter's is big, yes, but despite its mass it "did not look nearly so large as the [US] capitol, and certainly [was] not a twentieth part as beautiful, from the outside."  Inside, the building was on such a vast scale that "there were no contrasts to judge by--none but the people, and I had not noticed them.  They were insects,"  "lost in the vast spaces."  He tells the story of an army officer, searching for 10,000 troops he knew to be inside the cathedral--and failing to find them.  From the dome, he finds the distant Coliseum, only to describe it as the place where ignorant Romans killed Christians in order to "teach the people to abhor and fear the new doctrine that followers of Christ were teaching."  And this lesson--we're still apparently in the Dome--segues into an indictment of the Inquisition, for Twain an even worse phenomenon, the product not of Roman "barbarians" but of "civilized people."

Later, perhaps in a state of regret, Twain visits the Coliseum.  He's still intimidated; "Every body knows the picture of the Coliseum."  But he's also appreciative of the structure's "reserve," "that royal seclusion which is proper to majesty," in sum a building that "more vividly than all the written histories...tells the story of Rome's grandeur and Rome's decay."  Then, oddly, swept away by his own ruminations on the pomp, pageantry, and drama that once characterized the "theatre of Rome," Twain imagines discovering the only extant playbill for one of those Coliseum productions, then adds the discovery of "a stained and mutilated copy of the Roman Daily Battle-Ax, containing a critique upon this very performance."  Page upon page follow, of what can only be called drivel.  Faced with a city that thwarted his desires for original experience, Twain had found a way to "discover": he invented historical documents, then writes endlessly about them.  He concludes this exercise with self-praise for not using the clichéd phrase "butchered to make a Roman holiday." 

There is more to this section on Rome.  More pages are filled with a rant on Michelangelo: "I did not want Michael Angelo for breakfast--for luncheon--for dinner--for tea--for supper--for between meals.  I like a change, occasionally." "In Rome, especially, Michelangelo is a force, designing St.

One of too many Michelangelos

Peter's, the Pantheon, the Tiber, even the Roman sewer known as the Cloaca Maxima--which of course he did not design."  Funny, perhaps, but also a sign of the novelist's failure to find a way into a real Rome that he could enjoy.  Another rant follows, this one about their Roman tour guide, whom they befuddle and mock by asking him if (for example) the Roman Forum was a work by Michael Angelo.  "This guide," he writes, "must continue to suffer.  If he does not enjoy it, so much the worse for him.  We do."  At the Vatican museums, the same guide is again victimized, this time by an exaggerated boredom: "we never showed any interest in any thing." 


There's some serious relief from the well-intentioned but failed, and revealing, humor.  A visit to the catacombs of St. Callixtus, under the Church of St. Sebastian, finds Twain attentive and moderately involved, if again overwhelmed at the scope of the phenomenon: 160 catacombs under Rome, he observes, and 7 million graves.  Similarly, the spectacle of bones at.the Capuchin Convent elicits a kind of wide-eyed awe, if also some good-natured ribbing of their Monk guide, for whom

The catacombs of St. Callixtus.  Too many graves.  

this skull or that femur identified Brother Carlo or Brother Thomas.  Twain is serious, too, when he observes on a return to the Vatican, that despite all the Raphaels and Guidos and other old masters, "the sublime history of Rome remains unpainted!  They painted Virgins enough, and popes enough and saintly scarecrows enough, to people Paradise, almost, and these things are all they did paint."  (Twain as social historian, lacking material.)  The church comes in for criticism again at the Scala Santa, where Twain observes that "the Saviour...seems to be little importance any where in Rome"; it's all about Mary or the Popes, especially St. Peter. 

As the long chapter concludes, Twain confronts Rome's ghosts.  "I wished to write a real 'guide-book' chapter on this fascinating city, but I could not do it, because I have felt all the time like a boy in a candy-shop--there was everything to choose from, and yet no choice."  And that was that.  He was done.  "The surest way to stop writing about Rome," he wrote, "is to stop."  And he did.

Bill

Colle Oppio: In the Shadow of the Coliseum

So you've "done" the Coliseum.  It's not yet lunchtime [1-3 in Rome outside the tourist areas], you've given the fenced-in Arch of Constantine its due, and you're tired of being surrounded by tourists and badgered by folks wanting to sell you stuff. Where do you go?  What's next?

You wouldn't know it, but you're just due passi--literally two steps, but generally meaning "nearby"--from Colle Oppio [Oppio Hill], a fascinating, compact, Roman park, filled with attractions from the historic to the funky.  You can get onto, or into, the Colle Oppio through the gate, and then the path, that runs roughly north from the Coliseum, paralleling via Labicana. This is one of Rome's famous seven hills, and some say one of the most inspiring in Rome, with the Coliseum as its backdrop.

One of the first things you see, on your left, is a statue to Alfredo Oriani [1852-1909].  On the side it says A Roma Madre Ravenna.  It's a creation of the Fascist era--XIII, the 13th year of the Fascist regime, or 1935.  A novelist, poet, and social critic, Oriani's work received little attention until the end of the Great War, when it was discovered by the Fascist regime and, with Mussolini as editor, republished in 30 volumes.  Oddly, Oriani was also appreciated by leftist and anti-Fascist Antonio Gramsci, who wrote about him in his prison notebooks.  When we saw the statue, it had been lightly defaced with a right-wing symbol.







Shortly after the statue, turn up to the left.  Ahead is a large pool/fountain--another, somewhat earlier Fascist-era monument.














Perhaps its outstanding feature is the amphorae that decorate it--symbols of ancient Rome, when clay vessels of this kind were used to transport oil and other commodities.  The smaller fountains at the sides of the larger ones are of interest as well.  Above each of them is the letter "A" [for Anno, year] and the number VI [the sixth year of Fascism, or 1928].









Beyond the fountain, on a wall to the right, is some intriguing and, we assume, relatively permanent graffiti: Omnia Vincit Amore [sounds to us, who have never studied Latin, like Love Conquers All/Colle Oppio, and in the center a symbol we haven't seen before.  And just ahead, the remains of a substantial and once-elegant complex of ancient Roman baths.  These are what remains of the magnificent, 10,000 square meter Baths of Trajan (Emperor 98-117 AD), designed by the brilliant architect Apollodorus of Damascusa in 109 AD above Nero's famous - or infamous - Golden House (closed/open/closed - we think now truly closed - the conservationists can't seem to prevent its collapse.  Luckily we saw it in its brief open period a few years ago). [See Marco's update in the first comment below - there may be hope here.]  There's another piece to your left and back--we'll get there in a moment.






This park has another aspect, one that you may--or may not--appreciate.  It's a gathering and resting place for black immigrants, some of them the itinerant merchants who are ubiquitous in Rome's tourist areas, others, perhaps, unemployed or underemployed.  When we visited in May, the field next to the baths was dotted with sleeping young men.





As you move more or less back toward the fountain, and somewhat to the right, you'll find a second set of
ancient bath ruins.  These are more of the Baths of Trajan.  When we last were there, the city had put up some informative placards near the various ruin sites.  Since the baths covered 10,000 square meters and had gyms, saunas, hot and cold rooms, etc., you will find ruins dotting Colle Oppio, which has been called an archaeologist's dream.  No crowds here.

Next to this piece of the baths is another treasure, from the 1930s: a stone fountain in the modernist style, once elegant but now broken and defaced.  The marble bowl is beautiful, nonetheless.  And the fasces on the side of the fountain are remarkably well preserved.












Two more sights to see.  One is a modest, 2-story building of unknown origins--it could be hundreds of years old, or only a century--fenced in and circled by bushes and trees.  As the sign says, it's the property of the Comune di Roma--the city government--and houses the Centro Anziani "Colle Oppio": a social center for the neighborhood's population of older, retired people--of which Italy has plenty.




Our last stop is a small athletic field, in sight of the Coliseum, where we began our journey.  On our visit it wasn't being used for soccer or any other sport, but rather as a meeting place for the the area's itinerant merchants.  They often carry their wares in blue plastic bags.  On this day, these merchants also hoped to sell umbrellas.  A broader view of the field is at the end of this post.

Bill  

Roman or Romanian? Will the true gladiator stand up?

We can't help but get a chuckle out of those guys hanging outside the Coliseum, persuading (amazingly enough, often successfully) tourists to pay to have their photos taken with them. Guess they're centurions, tho' everyone calls them gladiators, and, whatever, they add to the local color.

But this year they also added to the Roman/Romanian debate. Turns out there is territory to be protected and with tourism down, the pie to be divided is smaller. Today's Romans solicit business outside not only the Coliseum but other places, like Castel Sant'Angelo (Hadrian's Castle)--where the photo above was taken.

And, the Roman centurions decided it was un... well, unRoman, for Romanians to be horning in on their business. The Romanians were taking up positions outside Castel Sant'Angelo, leaving the Coliseum to the "Romans" (and how "Roman" are they, one could ask?).

All this can seem a bit silly, when Italians often complain the Romanians don't engage in legitimate businesses and um.... that they're not really "Romans". Romanians, on the other hand, claim a special tie to Rome, going back to Trajan (conqueror of Dacia, present-day Romania) and, of course, to their related Latin language. The tourists, of course, can't tell the difference.

So should we care? Let the games begin.

Dianne - for more on the Romanian immigrant presence, see Bill's post.