Rome's first Drive-in Theater: Casal Palocco

When we first saw this photograph, from the New York bureau of United Press International, we thought it might be of early construction on the Palazetto dello Sport, designed by Annibale Vitellozzi and engineered by Pier Luigi Nervi. It isn't, but it's likely not a coincidence--given the angled, concrete supports--that the Palazzetto and the structure in the photograph were completed in the same year: 1957. [Thanks to Dianne's cousin, Jim Bennett--an Italophile, for sending us this original UPI photo.] 

The concrete in the photo is there to support a 540 square meter screen for Italy's first drive-in movie theater, then--and perhaps still--the largest ever in Europe, with 60,000 square meters of parking for 700 cars.

Another view of the construction

The completed screen. 

The drive-in was built near Axa in Casal Palocco, a then-new Rome suburb (completed in 1961) on the north side of via Cristoforo Colombo, well beyond the GRA and not far from the coastal town of Ostia. 

The theater was very successful through the 1960s, then fell on hard times until, sometime in the 1980s, it closed. 

In the 1960s

It was briefly reopened in the late 1990s and again, briefly, in 2015, by the committee behind the Trastevere group, Cinema America Occupato (an "illegal" sit-in or squatter type arrangement). 

How it looks today--assuming it's still there. 

Designed to resemble the American suburbs of the 1950s, Casal Palocco was a planned community with design links to Adalberto Libera, whose vision produced Foro Mussolini (now Foro Italico) under the Fascist regime, and to Raffaele de Vico, Rome's most famous and prolific landscape designer. 

The plan for Casal Palocco

Because of its many parks and gardens and athletic fields, Casal Palocco--actually a part of Rome--was known was known as the "Quartiere Verde" ("Green Quarter"). Many of the homes were large and sumptuous. A central shopping plaza had, and has, a rationalist flair. 

Late '50s rationalism

Today, about 32,000 people live in the community. 

. 

Not sure of the date of this photo, but the cars are vintage, and that's Charlton Heston on the screen in the 1956 film, "The Ten Commandments." On the horizon, back left, the Alban Hills.  

The Best Contemporary Art in Rome is in the....State Department!

One is greeted on the ground floor by Michelangelo Pistoletto's "L'Etrusco" (The Etruscan), 1976, with Pistoletto's
classic use of mirrors, inviting one to join the Etruscan, we we did.

"La paura" (Fear), 2004 by Mimmo Rotella.  How could
  we--film reviewers, and one of us an author of an article
on Zombie films and the Holocaust--not like this one?

The best collection of contemporary art in Rome is not in any museum--not in MAXXI, the nation's 21st-century art gallery, not in MACRO, the City's contemporary art gallery, not in the Gagosian, the city's largest private art gallery, but in the country's State Department building, colloquially known as The Farnesina. 


That's not the Palazzo Farnese, where the French Embassy resides, nor the Villa Farnesina, in the heart of Trastevere where Raphael painted rooms. The Farnesina is the enormous structure designed to be the headquarters of the Fascist party, across the Tevere (therefore, literally Trastevere) but up river adjacent to the Foro Italico, once the Foro Mussolini, the sports complex housing the city's soccer stadium, once its Olympic stadium.

Back to art.  Beginning in 2001, the government convinced artists to loan their works to the Ministero degi Affari Esteri (Ministry of Foreign Affairs, equivalent to the U.S.'s state department).  It apparently purchased some works, but most are on long-term loan, now comprising the Collezione Farnesina, and open from time to time (hey, it's Rome!).

"Battesimi Umanoi"  (Human
Baptisms) by Oliviero Rainaldi,
2006, cement.

The "di quando in quando" openings began just last year to include the last Friday of every month, except July and August, along with an early May weekend opening for Open House Roma, which is when we went.  I'd say run, don't walk, to make your appointment for one of these visits.

The work is also available on Google, but if you think you might go, save your first-time experience for the real thing.
Links are at the end of this post.

The collection is astoundingly rich and unabashedly contemporary.  The works fill the walls and halls of this building, whose construction began in 1937.  The building itself is filled with artwork from the period of its construction and decoration, which occurred mainly in the post-World War II period, with artists such as Sciajola.

From Elena Bellantoni's "The struggle for power, the fox and the wolf," 2014 video.  This video was
filmed in The Farnesina itself.

Our tour included an extensive look at the building and its hallways and rooms, which is essential to view all the artwork.

The large meeting room where Bellantoni's video was filmed.

Mosaics by Sciajola and ceiling art, part of the building decor.

Grand stairway, with original designs on sconces; classic
Fascist use of travertine marble, and use of Roman designs,
including the painting at the end, with a modernist take. 

The collection also includes some original drawings of the building by architect Enrico del Debbio (whose work we've admired in previous posts).

Del Debbio's "first solution" to the "Casa Littoria a Foro Mussolini." The building sits at the base of Monte Mario.

Today's exterior is not too different from del Debbio's "first solution" - minus the marching military, plinth and horses:

For visits, consult the Web site (it says it's in English, but it is not: http://www.collezionefarnesina.esteri.it/collezionefarnesina/it/visita/
Google's "virtual tour" is here: http://www.collezionefarnesina.esteri.it/collezionefarnesina/it/visita/google-art-visita-virtuale

Dianne

Mario Sironi's Il lavoratore  ("The worker"), 1936.

Fascist Design--in Miami Beach

RST is pleased to once again have Paul Baxa, an outstanding scholar and interpreter of the Fascist experience, as a guest blogger.  Here, Baxa takes us through the Wolfsonian Museum in Miami Beach, currently (through May 18) hosting 3 exhibits on the Fascist era.  A smaller, fourth exhibit on Italo Balbo's air exploits, closes April 29.  Baxa is Associate Professor of History at Ave Maria University in Naples, Florida and the author of  (University of Toronto Press, Roads and Ruins: The Symbolic Landscape of Fascist Rome (20l0).  

Mural study, Antonio Santagata

Ferruccio Ferrazzi's Il Mito di Roma, 1940

For those interested in the intersection of Modernist design and twentieth-century politics, a visit to current exhibitions at the Wolfsonian Museum in Miami Beach cannot be missed.  This museum, run by Florida International University, was established by Mitchell Wolfson Jr. who collected documents and artifacts of modernism and was especially interested in materials that connected modernist design with totalitarian regimes.  As a result, there is a wealth of material from Fascist Italy.  I’ve had the good fortune of spending many hours in the Wolfsonian reading room this past fall and also to visit their three special exhibits pertaining to Italy:  The Birth of Rome; Rendering War: The Murals of A.G. Santagata; and Echoes and Origins: Italian Interwar Design.  All opened in the fall of 2013 and will close May 18, 2014. 

The Birth of Rome exhibit displays materials related to Mussolini’s attempts to revive ancient Rome in a Fascist mode.  On display are renderings of the E42 (EUR) as it might have been—including sketches of the never-to-be-built arch.*  Next to these are posters, sketches, and photographs of the Foro Mussolini and its sports complex.  Included are maquettes of statues from the Foro Mussolini designed by Eugenio Baroni.  The centerpiece of the exhibit is a massive detail for Ferruccio Ferrazzi’s tempera on paper drawing, Il Mito di Roma, designed in 1940. Spanning two floors of the Wolfsonian's atrium, the detail is an allegory of the Tiber River holding the twins with the she-wolf at its feet.  To be sure, Baroni and Ferrazzi were not star names of the interwar generation of artists but they figured prominently in the attempts to make a Fascist aesthetic.

Antonio Santagata.  Fascism looks back at the
Great War 

Off to the right of the Birth of Rome exhibit are several rooms filled with large-scale mural studies by Antonio G. Santagata.  These superb studies were designed for the walls of Marcello Piacentini’s Casa dei Mutilati in Rome (on the Tevere, sandwiched between the Palace of Justice and Hadrian's Castle).  The subjects of the murals all deal with the First World War and provide a glimpse of the myth of the Grande Guerra under Fascism. 

Up a floor, one finds the Echoes and Origins exhibit.  This is a perfect complement to the propaganda of the previous exhibits as it demonstrates another side of Fascist Italy—that of consumerism and style.  Here one finds vases and furniture by Giò Ponti, as well as exquisite cupboards by Gustavo Pulitzer Finali.  There is some wonderful kitsch here as well including a 

Fascist-inspired wall lamp

wall lamp designed as lictors rods.  A magnificent La Cimbali espresso machine is one corner next to artifacts from the famous ocean liner Rex.  Posters advertising FIAT, chocolates and cruises are plastered on the wall.  This was another face of Fascist Italy—no less propagandistic than the Imperial Roman bluster but revealing a desire to create a modern, consumerist culture. 

The magic of the Wolfsonian exhibit is found not just in the materials on display but also in the mounting of the exhibits.  The curators create spaces that enhance the impact of the displays.  For example, the Birth of Rome exhibit is displayed in an all-white, minimalist space which emphasizes the Novecento (20th-century) style of the drawings.  In the Echoes and Origins space the visitor is greeted by a massive, amber-glass bowl and pedestal from the Fontana Arte group next to a pillar containing the famous, Futurist-style bust of Mussolini by Renato Bertelli. 

The effect of the exhibits is to immerse the visitor into the visions of the Fascist regime as interpreted by less famous artists and sculptors.  None of these artists had the fame of the likes of Piacentini, Terragni, Sironi et al, but they all in their own way contributed to the Fascist program of reviving Rome in a way that harmonized modernism with classicism.


Paul Baxa 

*  The arch for E42 was intended to span the multiple lanes of the via Cristoforo Colombo, a task that proved beyond the skills of Italian engineers at the time.  Many designs were offered, among them a poster rendering by architect Ludovico Quaroni (left), which closely resembled Eero Saarinen's winning entry in a 1948 competition to honor Thomas Jefferson's Louisiana Purchase--the design that in 1966 became the St. Louis Arch.  The site of the E42 arch is on Walk 2, "EUR: Mid-Century Spectacle," in RST's new guidebook, Modern Rome: 4 Great Walks for the Curious Traveler  (2014).  On the Quaroni/Saarinen controversy, see William Graebner, "Gateway to Empire: An Interpretation of Eero Saarinen's 1948 Design for the St. Louis Arch," Prospects: An Annual of American Cultural Studies, vol, 18 (1993).  Ed.

MODERN ROME: 4 Great Walks for the Curious Traveler, now in paper edition

Dianne Bennett and William Graebner are pleased to announce that Modern Rome: 4 Great Walks for the Curious Traveler (Curious Traveler Press, 2014), is now available in paperback ($5.99, 92 pages, 63 color photos, maps) as well as in eBook format ($1.99, same color photos and maps, over 100 hyperlinks, in all e-formats).  Both versions are available at amazon.com and other retail outlets, including independent bookstores.  Both books are in Kindle's "Matchbook" program, qualifying for heavily discounted Kindle versions; see details below.

Following Rome the Second Time's successful format, Modern Rome offers four new Rome walks, all outside the city's tourist core, all easily accessible by Metro or tram, and all in neighborhoods where Romans live and work.  Together, Rome the Second Time and Modern

Rome constitute, we believe, the most important alternative guide to the modern city ever published.

Garbatella: Garden City Suburb is a guided tour through one of the world's most engaging and mysterious planned communities, a 1920s creation featuring curving streets, enchanting stairways, interior courtyards, some of the most unusual public housing ever built--and a café where Pier Paolo Pasolini enjoyed the local scene.

EUR: Mid-Century Spectacle features a dramatic locale, now a center of Rome's business community, but planned and constructed in monumental style to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the 1922 Fascist March on Rome.  Highlights include the striking Square Coliseum, Massimiliano Fuksas' Cloud (incredible even under construction), a mosaic by Fortunato Depero and a mural by Gino Severini, and Adalberto Libera's remarkable Palazzo dei Congressi.  Near the end of this walk, you can have lunch in Caffè Palombini, a 1940-vintage gem with artwork from the period.

From Mussolini to MAXXI: The Changing World of Flaminio. On the opposite end of the city, a walk through Flaminio introduces Rome's sensational 21st-century, starchitect designed (Renzo Piano and Zaha Hadid) cultural centers, and across the Tevere, the suggestive site of the 1960 Olympic Games, the Foro Italico, a virtual Mussolini theme park built by the Duce in the 1930s. And you can enjoy the splendor of the Foro while relaxing in one of our favorite outdoor bars.

The Stairs of Trastevere. A fourth walk begins just beyond the Trastevere so well known to tourists, winding up, down, and around Rome's 8th hill, the Gianicolo, traversing a multi-layered 17th-century villa, a compelling and seldom visited Fascist-era monument to the Italian unification movement (don't miss the incredible underground portion), and one of the smallest and most charming temples in all of Italy.  Lots to see, calories to burn!

Pack your bags.  Or enjoy the walks in a comfortable armchair.  In any case, bring your curiosity!

Kindle Matchbook program: Under Kindle's Matchbook program, the Kindle version of Rome the Second Time  is available for $1.99 if you buy the paperback from amazon.com.  The Kindle version of Modern Rome  is only 99 cents if you buy the paperback from amazon.

Dianne Bennett is a tax attorney and former managing partner of Buffalo's largest law firm. William Graebner is a widely published author of books on American history, including Patty's Got a Gun: Patricia Hearst in 1970s America (University of Chicago Press).  They live in Buffalo, Los Angeles, and Rome, where they get around on a Bologna-made Malaguti 250, a large scooter.

Dianne and Bill

Del Debbio's hidden masterpiece - out-buildings at Foro Mussolini

A few years after restoration, still in
need of TLC

           Officine Farneto (“Farneto Offices”) is a recently restored out-building from the construction of what was Foro Mussolini (now Foro Italico) in the 1930s. It's a shining example of Fascist era architecture that continues to be rediscovered and rehabbed in 21^st century Rome.  Note RST gave Foro Italico its #5 position in RST’s Top 40.  At the time, we didn't know about this complex of out-buildings.

[A new expanded itinerary of Foro Italico (including Officine Farneto) and the area across the Tevere from it, Flaminio, is now one of 4 walks in the new guide: Modern Rome: 4 Great Walks for the Curious Traveler.  See more information below.]

            We found Officine Farneto a couple years ago (while meandering off the more beaten paths, as we are wont to do).  More recently the developers, who saw us poking around their complex, invited us in, gave us a tour and showed us their library of information about the architect, Enrico Del Debbio.  We found Del Debbio's work has been given new life here as an exposition and office complex – perhaps more a labor of love by the developers/architects than a profit-making proposition at this point.

Multi-use visible here

           Del Debbio, who designed this construction site warehouse and office, was one of the premier Fascist era modernist architects and the chief architect for Foro Mussolini.  It’s amazing that a simple out-building had such architectural attention paid to it, and that the current owners have restored it so faithfully. 



One of the developer/architects showing off
the roll-in ceramics kiln that they kept - part of
industrial chic

            Post World War II, the building housed an artisan ceramics factory up until the 1970s, and the owners have left the enormous kiln in place. 

Former Fascist sports complex construction warehouse,
then artisan ceramics factory, now "open space" for
exhibitions - or wedding receptions (we saw one in process)

            Officine Farneto was called by one web site “the chicest open space in Rome.”  The owners are pitching the space for weddings, exhibitions, any type of show or conference.  In addition to their architectural offices, there’s also a wellness center with gym and roof terrace.  When we asked the architect/restorers/owners how they were doing from a business perspective, they shrugged their shoulders.  They have hopes for the future.  Modern Romans still shy away from Fascist buildings, they said.

            Bill made an interesting comparison of a Michael Graves building to Officine Farneto in his 2011 post on Rome’s influence on Graves. 

            The complex now sports a bistro and restaurant; so during most reasonable (for Rome) hours, you can stop for refreshments.

            Officine Farneto is definitely worth a visit.  The address is Via dei Monti della Farnesina 77, the street that shoots up directly north in back of the Olympic Stadium.  Or you can use our hyperlinked map of Itinerary 9 (Monte Mario) from the eBook version of Rome the Second Time.  

For more information, Officine Farneto has its own, rather too elaborate, Web site, which includes historical photos and a zip version of the current brochure.  Some of that brochure is in English.

Another Foro Mussolini out-building along the road (via dei Monti della Farnesina)
to Officine Farneto; this one is now a riding club

Dianne
Along with the tour of Foro Italico and the 21st century art and music quarter, Flaminio, Modern Rome: 4 Great Walks for the Curious Traveler features three other walks: the 20th-century "garden" suburb of Garbatella, the Fascist-designed suburb of EUR; and a stairways walk in classic 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.]

           

Updates to Rome the Second Time

New in 2012 - the Metro B1 stop Sant'Agnese-Annibaliano -
perhaps more glamour than function

        Rome may be the Eternal City, but it also is eternally changing.  Everyone who visits has some experience with a museum that is supposed to be open, but isn’t; a restaurant that is supposed to be there but now is run by someone else; an ancient ruin that one should be able to see but now is blocked by high walls. 

                Writing a guidebook to Rome, and perhaps especially an alternative guidebook, means many things do not stay the same and the book needs Updates!  And so we try to keep up with ever-changing Rome through our Updates document, available with a click here, or on one of the tabs at the right of this blog.  The Updates themselves are updated periodically, and we just did a new set of Updates – so we encourage you to try it.

We like this combination of athletes and mythical sea
creatures in the Foro Italico swim complex of 1937



                Our Updates include new, and improved, hyperlinks.  The hyperlink you all have been clicking on madly – that has nice photos of the mosaics in the Foro Italico (then Foro Mussolini) swim complex – doesn’t work any longer.  So we provided a new one.   

                There is a new Metro line, the B1, that runs out of Piazza Bologna.  So our Itinerary for Piazza Bologna, and the maps that relate to it, have been modified, and our links take you to those revised maps.  See our map for the Piazza Bologna Itinerary 8:  https://maps.google.com/maps/ms?ie=UTF8&hq=&hnear=Rome,+Lazio,+Italy&msa=0&msid=115234173574934358486.00048bff8c1136f67d863&ll=41.917104,12.515616&spn=0.021523,0.037723&z=15

Rome's Eataly - just opened

                We found more restaurants we liked near one of our itineraries – and so we included those restaurants in our Updates.   We’ll give you a hint – we like L’Oste de Coste next to the Jolly Theater off Piazza delle Provincie.  via Giano della Bella, 2; tel. 06.999.24.609.  We had very mixed feelings about another blockbuster, Eataly, that we've included in our Updates.

Now missing - the plaque to Primo Levi
and the more than 1,000 Jews  taken from
Rome to the Nazi camps October 16, 1943

                The Lion Bookshop – the oldest English language bookstore in Rome—simply closed its doors last year. 

                The plaque to honor Primo Levi, and the Jews who were transported from Rome to extermination camps, has disappeared from the Tiburtina Station.  The old station was torn down; a new one takes its place. 

                And you’ll find much more in the 17 page list of Updates (coordinated to the pages of RST).  If you’re using the book version of RST, we urge you to print out those Updates right before you leave for Rome.  If you’re using the eBook versions, your click on “Updates” – hyperlinked - will take you to the Update list.

                Buon viaggio!

Dianne