Rome's she-wolf takes many forms

The Capitoline Lupa on the column in Michelangelo's piazza.  Bill took this photo, with the three Italian officials in the background. It's a classic.

Anyone who's been in Rome for more than a few minutes will have seen the iconic image of the she-wolf suckling the infant twins.  This "lupa" (she-wolf) is the overarching symbol of Rome - succinctly reminding everyone of the story of Rome's founding.  The twins, Romulus and Remus, were the sons of the God Mars (or perhaps the demi-god, Hercules, but you know how those divinity stories go) and a Vestal Virgin, sworn to chastity  (just to make the story more interesting).  They were abandoned at a river by one of their male forefathers, who tried to prevent them from obtaining their rightful inheritance as leaders of a pre-Roman state, Alba Longa.  A she-wolf found them and suckled them and, eventually (after killing his brother, ETC.!), Romulus founded the new city-state of Rome.

The most famous statue of the lupa suckling the twins is on the Capitoline Hill.  The original is in the museum there, but a darn good replica sits on a post in Michelangelo's piazza (photo above).  We've always been attracted to the statue and the image, and it turns out we're not the only ones.




The lupa sometimes can look menacing, as in this poster; she
no doubt looks more menacing here because of the rips in the poster;
 the poster is simply advertising a concert.

The lupa is the primary symbol of Rome's soccer team, A.S. Roma, founded in 1927.  Some even go so far as to have it tattooed on their arms.

stylized lupa as the soccer team's symbol

Classic lupa as part of A.S. Roma's logo.

Perhaps my favorite.  This was on a publicity poster for the 2012 summer music festival in Villa Ada, a festival that year promoting music from around the world:  the title, Roma incontro il mondo ("Rome meets the world"). Note the ethnicities of the 3 - yes 3 - infants.  And, we have a happy lupa here.

Right-wing use of the lupa, looking threatening,
showing her smashing the Euro.

close-up of the Euro being smashed; the imagery
 argues against Italy being part of the EU.

Mainstream advertising using the lupa:
the furniture store here "offers you more."
The udder is appropriately large.

Artists like the lupa too.  We especially appreciated this image of Italy's most famous film star, Anna Magnani, "walking" the lupa - by street artist Biodpi.

And the image below, well, we couldn't quite figure out what this blogger was about.  The image speaks for itself, we think.

:

Mussolini was big on the lupa.  So her image appears in many bas reliefs and statues of the Fascist era.  The one at left is from the bas relief on the once-Fiat building at the far end (coming from the train station) of Largo Susanna in central Rome.  The others appear on two public buildings of the era around Rome; for example, below left on a school.

The lupa on a contemporary, official sticker.

Dianne
More images are available on an Italian Web site:  http://lupi.difossombrone.it/storiaeoriginelupo/main001_lupacapitolina.htm

Coins - but not in the fountain; modern Romans and money

Cultural differences over change? You bet! First we noticed many Italians (just Romans?) don't like to put change into your hand.... like dutiful Americans, we held out our hands, only to have money dropped on the counter. When we got back to the US, we had to learn to hold out our hands again.

The shops even have a small tray for you to put your money in and the cashiers to drop your change - and your "scontrino" (receipt).

On the other hand (ahem), Italian shopkeepers will reach into your hand, or your coin purse, to get the correct change, if they see you fumbling a bit. At first, we thought it was just us foreigners; they thought we didn't get the monetary system or understand them. But, no, they do it to everyone. More than once we've watched a waiter or shop person reach inside a person's coin purse (which he or she held open for him) to pick out the correct change.

Then there's just the mania (as we see it) for change. If you give a cashier anything that requires even a little bit of change, they ask you if you have coins to make it a coin of a larger denomination. For example, for a Euro 3.3 item, if you give them Euro 4, they'll ask you for the 30 cents. Or, if you don't have that, do you have 50 cents? Anything to pare down the change.

At major museums, there are signs for correct change. So, tourists at Castel Sant'Angelo are supposed to have the Euro 6 exactly? How can this be? How can they not have enough change? This is a far cry from US shops that have "we need 5s and 1s" or "we don't take anything over $20) - that's nothing compared to the Italian coin mania.

We thought maybe this coin obsession dated to the Italian conversion from Lire to Euros in 2000 - were there not enough coins to go around? But a long-time English bookstore owner told us the Italians ran out of small lire coins in the 1980s and were giving a piece of candy instead of some lire in change. She told us she saved up enough candy from the "change" her regular coffee bar had given her to pay for a cup of coffee with the candy, and the bar owners (who may have been taking advantage of the apparently coin shortage) were clearly ticked off at this.

Anyone with better explanations for these cultural differences - we'd be happy to hear them.

In the meantime, another money fact to bear in mind is a study that showed older Italians are better at math conversions than the rest of us - it appears because they had to convert all those ridiculously large amounts of lire into amounts that made sense to them. Since the lira disappeared in 2000, we assume the Italians will gradually lose this edge. Of course, 9 years later, there are still signs in shops (especially meat stalls in markets) showing prices in Euros AND lire. Some things, even if they're ridiculous (like pricing in lire) die hard.

Dianne