C'era Una Volta: Once Upon a Time, there was a Tram

San Lorenzo is known for its wall art, and justly so, and most of it is where one would expect--on the exterior walls of the neighborhood's buildings. But one that caught our fancy is located not only inside, but inside a commercial establishment that's only been around a few years: C'era Una Volta [Once Upon a Time There Was...] Il Caffe--basically a bar like any other bar, serving coffee and sandwiches. On some evenings, men gather to watch a soccer game on a small TV. There's a place to bet on sports. 

C'era Una Volta is located at a critical intersection in San Lorenzo, where the historic via Tiburtina (San Lorenzo's "Main Street") and via dei Reti (the core of the area's transportation system) come together.

A grey day in San Lorenzo, looking straight up via dei Reti, with C'era Una Volta at right

The back room, usually open only for lunch, is a pizzeria/cafeteria, and on its back wall is that mural. "Once Upon a Time," the mural tell us--and it was only a few years ago at most--via dei Reti was a thorough for trams, though cars and trucks used it too. As far as we know, the only tram that ran on those lines--one in each direction, between Piazza Verano and Porta Maggiore--was the #19, right there in the mural. Until earlier this  year, several miles of the tracks used by the #19 tram were being repaired. The tram had been replaced by a bus--yes, the #19.

The mural (above) doesn't do justice to the bar's clientele. While C'era Una Volta has women customers, most of its patrons are men. Indeed, of the 5 or 6 tables on the sidewalk outside the bar, one or two are usually occupied by older men (or one older man), using the table as a space for social interaction, sometimes without any purchase. Just a place to hang out. 

Inside, too, most of the patrons are men

In contrast, the only patrons in the mural are women, and upper-class women at that, with fancy coats and vintage hats out of the 1930s. Their red lips--and the empty chair covered in red--are a nice touch, suggesting an elegance that the caffe', comfortable and efficient as it is, doesn't possess. On the sidewalk, a woman in more ordinary dress appears to roll up a sleeve, and another, behind her, seems to be picking something up. 

There's only one obvious male in the mural, and not a single student, or so it would seem, even though today's San Lorenzo is populated by, and enjoyed by, students from the nearby university. 

Prominently featured, although it hasn't been in operation for more than a year, is the #19 tram. 

Bill 

San Lorenzo is a fascinating neighborhood. Here are a couple prior posts featuring it.

San Lorenzo: Where Maria Montessori Got Her Start

The Mural on Scalo San Lorenzo: Reading the Politics of the Neighborhood

Rome's Public Markets: a Cautionary Tale

Cemetery wanderings - a great trek through Cimitero Verano in Rome

Sites of Anti-Fascism: Trionfale, Garbatella, and San Lorenzo

 

In Search of the 1950s: The Aqua-Blue Building on via Bari

 

We lived this year just a few blocks from one of my favorite modernist Rome buildings. Romans might call it "particolare"--one of a kind, sui generis, unique, maybe odd. You'll find it at via Bari 5, corner of via Rovigo, just a few blocks uphill along via Catania from Piazzale delle Provincie, one of two large circular piazze in the Piazza Bologna area. 

Same building, via Bari 5, from the less than 90 degree corner with via Rovigo -
 a very different look, no camera tricks employed.

he palazzina, in the mid-century-modern style, was constructed between 1958, when Jerry Lee Lewis's "Great Balls of Fire" was #1on the US charts, and 1961, when teens were doing the "Twist" to Chubby Checker's hit song. In architecture, post-modernism had yet to assert itself as the next wave, but architects everywhere were experimenting with forms that went beyond the severe rectilinear modernism of the 1930s and 1940s (a good example of that sort of modernism is Rome's university--La Sapienza, nearby). The late 1950s and 1960s were also decades in which architects and planners experimented with buildings and other structures that were elevated--in the US, "skyways"--elevated highways--were the rage, and in Rome, planners decided to place the "sopraelevata" [1966-1975] down the center of Scalo San Lorenzo (a 15-minute walk from via Bari 5). 

Above, the sopraelevata from the street.

Architect Renato Valle framed the via Bari building in aqua-blue glass (now an iconic 1950s color), and used the less-than-90-degree corner at via Rovigo to give his structure an angular shape that defined the rectilinear tradition. And it's elevated. Today, under the building, there's a gas station. Significantly, the building is owned by, and houses offices of, Enerpetroli, a company that operates 150 gas stations in central Italy. 

Unfortunately, I have been unable to find other information about architect Valle. If you can contribute, please do!

Bill 

A Night at the University: Mario Sironi's monumental Aula Magna Mural

We were attracted.

We're always eager to get official access to Rome buildings we haven't been in, and so in mid-May we headed off eagerly to the university--La Sapienza, as this one is known--to explore an evening open house.  Not much was open, actually, but the dinosaurs in front of one of the science buildings caught our attention, and we headed over.  That building is standard Fascist-era issue (most of the buildings here are of mid-1930s vintage), nothing about it of significant interest, really, even for RST, a fan of most of the era's architecture (including Gio Ponti's mathematics building on this campus).

Lots of people enjoy looking at rocks.

Still, we enjoyed puttering around in an old-fashioned museum of mineralogy, about which we know nothing.

Nude miners, mining

We were surprised to learn that Sicily was a center of sulfur mining, and that the mining was done by nude men.  Why nudity was required is not clear, though the poster's fine print might have offered an explanation.

Aula exterior

Having had enough of even very beautiful rocks, we took a chance and headed to the Aula Magna--the big hall on the campus that hosts concerts and other events (the official name is Aula Magna del Rettorato della Sapienza).  We had seen the exterior before, but had never been inside the building or its main hall, which features an important mural by Mario Sironi, a significant artist of the era (and the subject of a large retrospective a year or so ago). The outside of the Aula was suggestively lit for the evening, and--lo and behold--the doors to the auditorium were open.

Students with photos of themselves portraying very different
types of people (bride, hipster, etc.)

Inside, art students presented their work, a quartet offered music, and free wine was being served. We had talked to the students at the table (see left), and they were watching us.










And inside the hall, an orchestra was playing. And there was the Sironi mural.  We sat down, listened, and looked.

The mural is enormous--90 square meters--but even so, it can be difficult, as I'm sure readers will understand, to absorb the contents of such a work when there are distractions--an illuminated

The hall from our seats

audience, the music, the contours of an 80-year old modernist space, the thrill of being there. Here's what we later learned:

The mural is titled "L'Italia fra le Arti e le Scienze"--Italy between [probably better translated and] the Arts and Sciences.  As the story goes, the lead architect for the new university, Marcello Piacentini, approached the Duce with Sironi's name.  In 1933, Mussolini received the artist and acknowledged the great difficulty of presenting Fascism on the grand wall of the grand hall of the grand new university.

Sironi took the commission (we wonder if he had any choice) and, in two months, produced his mural.  It includes representations of astronomy, mineralogy, botany, geography, architecture, literature, painting, and history--the latter symbolized by the woman, at front/right, back turned, a book in her hands.  When it was unveiled, along with the rest of the university, in 1935 or 1936, it included a triumphal arch--the symbol of Roman conquests--a Fascist eagle, the Fascist date XIV (14th year of Fascism, or 1936), and a figure, presumably Mussolini, on horseback.  He liked to ride.
The mural was severely damaged a few years later, during World War II, and the early 1950s restoration by Carlo Siviero was freighted with guilt and embarrassment over Mussolini's regime and Fascism.  As a result, the restoration eliminated the man and the horse, re-sized the arch and the eagle (although we can't see the eagle), eliminated the Fascist-era date, and changed the "looks" of some of the figures.  Much was painted over.

Another, quite limited restoration took place in 1982.  The current restoration, which promises to restore the mural to something like its original state, began on July 1, 2015, just 6 weeks after our visit.  A reason to return.

Bill

Exiting the university through a Fascist-era arcade, its lines softened by the contemporary banners.