The Colonial Museum in a Post-Colonial World

What remains on display of the original "Colonial Museum" is half-way down these stairs on either side of the landing.

There is, buried in the complex of Italian museums that sit mostly unvisited in EUR (about 8 kilometers/5 miles from the Coliseum but easily accessible by metro) a "museum" that purports to display, and deal with, Italy's colonial past. Just finding this collection tells one something about the country's failure to confront its activities in northern Africa, colonial activities that stretched from the 1890s to the fall of Fascism in World War II. (encyclopedia.com has excellent historical background on the Italian colonies.)

Changes in the museum's name and location over the years underscore Italy's approach to the colonies. 

Likely the entrance near the zoo,
before the museum acquired
its new name.  

The museum opened in 1924, in the early years of Fascism, as Museo Coloniale, the Colonial Museum, on the Quirinale, near the seat of government, and it was designed to create pride in Italy's quests. It was not conceived of as scientific (as were similar museums in other European countries), but very much like a trade show, under the Ministry of the Colonies. There were 20 rooms, each featuring a different city or region. (There was an earlier version, dating from 1904, featuring flora from the colonies, located near a botanical institute on via Panisperna in the Monti quarter).

In 1932, the Colonial Museum was moved next to the zoo, perhaps indicating the attraction of the "exotic other," including animals like the lion. Mussolini inaugurated it with a new name a year or so later, "Museo dell'Africa Italiana" (Museum of Italian Africa). It showcased "dangerous" African fauna and the bravery of collectors, deemed "pioneers." In addition to animal trophies, there was the blood-stained uniform of General Rodolfo Graziani, known as the "butcher of Fezzan" for his brutal methods in Libya. (There's a fascinating, unsympathetic portrayal of him [by Oliver Reed] in The Lion in the Desert, an excellent 1980 film by Moustapha Akkad [Anthony Quinn plays the heroic Bedouin leader, Omar Mukhtar]. Banned in Italy when released, it was first available there in 2009 via pay TV, and now one can purchase it on DVD - worth the price.)

The museum remained closed from 1937 (ostensibly to be redesigned; there's some dispute over this date - Wikipedia [Italian] suggests it remained open until 1943) to 1947. 

The museum reopened after World War II as "Museo Africano" ("African Museum"), but even then, the Italians described it (in a 1948 memo to the United Nations) as dealing with "previously unproductive tribes." It remained open until 1970, when it was essentially abandoned. There was also a major theft in 1977. None of this information appears in Wikipedia, which simply says its tutelage was "then entrusted to the Italian-African Institute, which from 1995 was reorganized as the Italian Institute for Africa and the East, both placed under the supervision of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. In 2011 that Institute was considered defunct, and the collection (in very poor condition and without proper labelling) was transferred again to the overall Ministero dei beni culturali (Ministry of cultural works) and warehoused.

So where is it, and where are the 12,000 objects - objects of "others" gathered to be observed by Europeans - and what is its name now?

From EUR's central Piazza Marconi, we trooped around to
several of the museum buildings, past many entrances closed
and others open to other activities, finally to find a
temporary entrance to "the Pigorini" and a woman behind
the desk who finally knew what we were talking about.

We had read the museum was located in the newly-reorganized complex under the overall name "Museo della Civiltà" - which was the name of one of the several museums in EUR, and whose entrance graced the cover of our second guidebook, "Modern Rome" (that entrance now leads to the planetarium! - yes, we tried asking there about the "Museo Africano," which the visitor desk had never heard of), re-branded as "MuCiv" (!) and incorporating the several museums that were in EUR, including the original "Museo della Civiltà," which has been closed "for renovations" since 2014 (and it's unfortunate that the public cannot see its great model of ancient Rome). In 2022, MuCiv is asking the public for input on its plans for a radical refashioning of its collections. In English and Italian you can find those current plans here and here.

The entrance on our book cover
won't get you there.

Success! of a sort.  We found our way to a temporary, new entrance to another part of MuCiv, the crown jewel of the museums, Museo Nazionale Preistorico Etnografico Luigi Pigorini (known as "the Pigorini"), and after some discussion with the ticket seller, she gave us free journalists' passes, and we found what is now called the Museo Italo Africano Ilaria Alpi, or the Italian-African Museum, now named for a young Italian journalist killed in Mogadishu in 1994. 

What exists are a few objects (photos right and left and below) on either side of the landing of a stairway (albeit a monumental, large stairway, photo at top of post), accompanied by some plastic sheets indicating the questions raised by retaining and showing objects collected by colonists. 

The object at right is a "statuette of the Konso," "donated" by a Captain. It's hard to read the inscription (left) but it says something to the effect that "when a Konso (from SW Ethiopia) husband died, his wives were buried with him, and that this (I assume the tall statuette next to the plaque) was the tomb of a woman buried alive, according to superstition...

and that this was the first of the objects the Captain "astutely brought back - in 1927."

The plastic sheet hanging alongside these objects says, in Italian and English, "From the seventies of the last century up to 2017, the colonial collections had been locked in cases. They were moved, over several decades, between various institutions in Rome. The colonial Museum, and the history that it represents, were never challenged either on a museographic stage or in a public debate. Opening the cases through the collections, rescuing the latter with conservation interventions and making them accessible to the civil society are the first necessary steps so as to not allow the Italian colonial experience to be forgotten."

Italy is one of many countries confronting its colonial past. According to the panel discussion I observed at the Swiss Institute in Rome, "Erased Memories: Italian colonialism and its material legacies," it has done a very poor job so far in this regard. The scholars talked about "historical amnesia, cancelling, and the failure of Italian memory to accept" its colonial past. Waves of ex-colonial subjects, including Albanians as well as Africans, came into Italy in the 1990s, raising issues of responsibility and acceptance. The new prime minister, Giorgia Meloni, has run, like Trump, on a fiercely anti-immigrant platform. I should point out as well that while the objects were put under the auspices of the Ministry of beni culturali, the paper objects, including labels and such material as there is on provenance, were given to the National Library, according to the speakers at the Swiss Institute, which included Beatrice Falcucci who has written on  "The former Museo Coloniale in Rome and beyond: colonial collections in Italy between history and the present." The separation of objects and paper does not auger well for placing the materials in their proper context. In other words, it will be difficult for Italy, given its current custody arrangements, to make the claim that it can do a better job of preserving these materials than can their places of origin.

Admittedly, this project (the objects we saw and their measly space) is a first step and is designed to let the public participate in the "unveiling." It is in fact called "Unveiled storages" and is described as "an installation that aims to place the former Museo coloniale collections at the heart of the MuCiv's museum spaces...to render objects accessible to everyone, even if only partially, that seem hidden from view and that had been hidden for several decades."

Above, the well-designed hall on the first floor of the Pigorini ethnographic museum.
This floor is mostly devoted to objects from Africa.

On the first floor (second floor, English style) of the Pigorini is a very high-quality exhibition of African objects collected before the Fascist era. But don't these raise similar questions? Where do they belong? Who "gave" them and why? The Swiss Institute speakers asked if there even could be a post-colonial museum. Should the main purpose be a cross-cultural approach, or preservation, or repatriation?

There is an informative video, in English by the Goethe Institute, on the ongoing project.

I've put more photos at the end of this post. The first one describes the Fascists' use of ancient Roman imagery, including colonialism; most of the rest are of the ethnographic exhibit.

Dianne

Certainly looks like the artworks that inspired Picasso.

A beautiful stained glass window is at the end of the large staircase.

It's signed by "Giulio Rosso, dis. [designed by],
Art glass window. G.C. Giuliani, es. [the window maker]
Rome 1942 - XXI [Fascist year 21]"

Rome's E-Prix and the Ghosts of Fascism

We are pleased to welcome back guest-blogger Paul Baxa, writing here on an all-electric (Formula E) car race to be held in EUR, a Fascist/modernist suburb to the south of Rome, on April 14.  Car racing is all about speed and roads, and Baxa, author of Roads and Ruins: The Symbolic Landscape of Fascist Rome (University of Toronto Press, 2010), knows more about Fascism's enchantment with both than anyone else, as well as being an expert on Fascist architecture.  He teaches history at Ave Maria University, Florida. [A walk through EUR is one of the itineraries in our more recent book:  Modern Rome: 4 Great Walks for the Curious Traveler.]

Looks like a test run for the race.  The cars are on Viale
Cristoforo Colombo.  The Marconi Obelisk, the starting line for the race,
 is at right.  

On April 14, 2018, Rome will host a round of the all-electric racing car series, Formula E.  Created in 2014, the series is designed to promote the automobile’s supposed electric future.  In order to do this effectively, the series’ creators have sought venues in the world’s capitals and major cities.  The inaugural race was held in Beijing, and since then electric races have been run in London, Berlin, Paris, Mexico City, and Moscow, among others.  It was only logical that Rome would be the next desired site for an E-Prix and this came about in October 2017 when the Eternal City’s mayor, Virginia Raggi, announced that Rome would host an event in 2018.  Although the photo-ops of the announcement showed some of Rome’s familiar landmarks like the Coliseum and the Campidoglio, the race will be run in Rome’s “modernist” suburb, EUR [the letters stand for Esposizione Universale di Roma--more on that below], southwest of the city on the road to Ostia.

E42 (EUR) as it was imagined in the late 1930s.  It looks very much like
this, today.  The arch was never built.  

            That EUR was chosen as the site of the temporary, 21-turn, 1.77-mile street course came as no surprise.  When the possibility of a Roman Formula 1 race was floated back in 2009, EUR was tapped as the desired location for the event.  La Repubblica, one of Italy’s leading national newspapers, declared the choice as a natural given the wide streets, the “rationalist architecture,” and futurist atmosphere of the place.[1 - footnotes at end of post]  Since the 1950s, EUR has been Rome’s most concentrated area of steel and glass architecture, providing a home for some of Italy’s largest multinationals like ENI, and several government ministries.  Its public spaces and patrimony are managed by a corporation called EUR S.p.A which, since 2000, has attempted to make EUR a center of innovation as well as environmental stewardship.  One of its initiatives, Smart City Lab Eur, aims to implement European Union goals of sustainability in energy, which happens to fit in neatly with the aims of the Formula Electric series.  

           The chairman of EUR S.p.A, Roberto Diacetti, recently lauded the Rome E-Prix as part of the district’s goal to become Rome’s capital for conferences, leisure, and tourism exemplified by the long-awaited opening of Massimiliano Fuksas’ new conference center, La Nuvola ("The Cloud"), in 2016.[2]  All of this comes in the year that EUR celebrates its 80^th anniversary, as demonstrated by a slick video presentation on the corporation’s website.

            It is precisely this anniversary that raises questions about EUR’s past—specifically its Fascist origins.  In the midst of all this innovation and future-oriented work, EUR remains one of Italy’s most emblematic centers of Fascist-era architecture.  The “rationalist architecture” celebrated by the Repubblica article is, to be more precise, the Stile Littorio, a combination of modernist, classicist, and monumentalist architecture associated with Marcello Piacentini, Mussolini’s favorite architect and the

Under construction.  Top, the Square Coliseum.  Top right, Palazzo
Ufficci (see text below)

man in charge of overseeing what was, at the time, called the E42.  

          What is now EUR was the brainchild of Giuseppe Bottai, Fascist of the First Hour and Governor of Rome who, in 1935, suggested to Mussolini that Rome host the 1942 World’s Fair.[3]  The architecture and the overall design of the complex was informed by a desire to exalt the achievements of the Fascist regime and of Italian civilization.  First among these “achievements” was the recent acquisition of Ethiopia and the extension of Italy’s Empire in Africa.  As Richard Etlin has pointed out, this celebration of empire became the leitmotif of the project.[4]  Fascist ideology and pomposity informed every street and building in the original plan of the E42.  By the time World War II interrupted the work, several buildings were left in various stages of completion. 

Pier Lugi Nervi's Palazzo dello Sport 

            
          When the new Italian Republic again began working on the project, the Fascist buildings were joined by modernist skyscrapers, residential apartments, parks, a picturesque lake, and sports complexes to host the 1960 Rome Olympic Games.  

Originally conceived as a Fascist showcase, the newly-named EUR became, instead, a site to celebrate the Italy of the Economic Miracle in the 1950s.  Some famous celebrities and cultural figures like Pier Paolo Pasolini and Giuseppe Ungaretti took up residence there.  Muore recently it has been the home of one of Rome’s most celebrated football icons, Francesco Totti.  EUR has also served as the setting of classic Italian films directed by Federico Fellini and Michelangelo Antonioni among others.  [Clips from their films are in the video on the EUR S.p.A. site linked above.]

EUR as seen from the roof of the Square Coliseum.  The white building with the rounded top (center left) is Libera's
Palazzo dei Congressi--the pit stop area for the race.  The street in front of it, leading back toward the Square
Coliseum, is part of the race course.  The Marconi Obelisk is at center right.  

          The Stile Littorio buildings have become “heritage sites” blended into the landscape of EUR’s modernism.  Only days before the E-Prix announcement last October, a leading expert on Italian Fascism, Professor Ruth Ben-Ghiat of NYU, published an article in New Yorker Magazine asking why Fascist landmarks remain standing.  On the article’s front page was a photograph of EUR’s “Square Coliseum”, the Palazzo della Civiltà, probably Fascism’s most distinctive architectural landmark.[5]  After standing vacant for many years, the building is now the headquarters of one of Italy’s leading fashion houses, Fendi.  The flood of condemnation for Ben-Ghiat’s article in Italy reflects the unwillingness or inability of some Italians to think critically about the Fascist heritage that surrounds them.[6]  Whereas Americans are tearing down Confederate-era statues—the context of Ben-Ghiat’s article—Italy seems content to keep its Fascist landmarks up and even use them as contemporary symbols of the new Italy.  

The Square Coliseum, c. 1950

Dianne and Bill at the race starting line (the obelisk is behind
the camera.  The foot was part of a temporary public sculpture.
Looking north, toward the city center.  2010.  

The design for the Rome E-Prix’s course seems to confirm this desire to use the Fascist buildings in such a manner. Despite Diacetti’s desire to promote EUR’s future-oriented vision, the course is almost entirely located in the “Pentagon” section of the district, which is where the highest concentration of Fascist architecture is located.  The course’s starting line is on the Viale Cristoforo Colombo (formerly the Via Imperiale) under the shadow of Arturo Dazzi’s Marconi Obelisk, dedicated to the pioneer of modern communications.  Although the obelisk was inaugurated on the occasion of the 1960 Olympic Games, it was conceived in 1939 to honor the celebrated inventor and Fascist fellow traveler who died in 1937.  

Fuksas' Cloud, nearing completion, 2016

The course then goes past Fuksas’ La  Nuvola and snakes its way past the museums built by the Fascist regime to celebrate Italy’s heritage. Here, the drivers slow down to negotiate a chicane (a sharp double-bend) directly in front of the prominent colonnaded portico that links the museums.  

1957.  These famous folks (sorry, Bill and Dianne can't recall

their names; perhaps some of you recognize some of them) appear

to be crossing Viale Cristoforo Colombo, walking away from the

 Square Coliseum and toward the Palazzo dei Congressi.  

The pit stop area, meanwhile, goes around Adalberto Libera’s celebrated Palazzo dei Congressi, a good example of a structure that attempts to harmonize classicism and modernism in the Stile Littorio.  In recent years, the building has become a prime night spot with a rooftop theater.  

The paving of the beveled stones (sanpietrini) outside the building to accommodate the E-Prix pit lane, has sparked outrage from those concerned with the site’s heritage.[7]  Libera’s building was central to the Fascist vision of the E42.  It was placed at one end of an axis opposite the “Square Coliseum” with two esedra (semi-circular)-like structures on the Viale Cristofero Colombo in the center of the axis.  In what is now the Piazza United Nations the two main axial roads of the E42 project intersect in a manner that echoes Ancient Roman urban planning.  Fans of the E-Prix, sitting in the grandstands or atop Libera’s Palazzo in the hospitality area of the race will thus have an unobstructed view of the E42’s original plan.  The circuit, meanwhile, on its return leg to the start/finish line will use the opposite side of the axial road showcasing the “Square Coliseum”. 

The Fascist salute, it seems, on display at the Palazzo
Uffici.  The mosaic is at right.  

But it doesn’t end there.  As the cars snake through the back end of the course through turns 8 and 9, they will pass in front of Minicucci’s Palazzo Uffici, designed to house the administrative offices of the Ente E42, the forerunner of today’s EUR S.p.A.  This building, whose main hall is today rented out for luxury banquets, includes a large, stone mosaic dedicated to Eternal Rome which boasts a prominent image of Mussolini on horseback giving the Fascist salute.  Near this mosaic is a bronze statue of a young athlete giving a similar salute.[8]  

Thus, the course seems to be designed to exalt the “heritage” section of the EUR, and this means the Fascist-era sites.  Mussolini’s E42 lives on in the design of the Rome E-Prix, which is fitting considering the Fascist regime’s strong support of motorsport in the 1930s.  The ghosts of Fascism are everywhere, including the promo video of the race which shows the series’ leading drivers walking down the Via dei Fori Imperiali ("Way of the Imperial Forums") in the center of Rome.  This road, once called the Via dell’Impero ("Empire Way"), was inaugurated by the Fascist regime in 1932 on the occasion of the its 10^th anniversary.  After their short walk, the drivers then get into their cars and make their way to EU,  past the ruins of the Roman Forum.[9]  Unbeknownst to them, they have taken the Fascist itinerary to the New Rome. 

           

Paul Baxa

P.S.  Dianne has an upcoming post that features both the Palazzo della Civiltà and the Palazzo degli Uffici, which we toured last year.  We will cross-link these posts when the second one is published.

---

[1] Marco Mensurati and Eduardo Lubrano, “Formula 1 Roma. Ecco il circuito,” La Repubblica, 5 febbraio 2009: http://www.repubblica.it/2008/12/motori/formulauno/stagione-2009/f1-roma/f1-roma.html

[2] Askanews, “Formula E: Diacetti (Eur Spa), accende i riflettori sull’Eur,” 23 marzo 2018: http://www.askanews.it/cronaca/2018/03/23/formula-e-diacetti-eur-spa-accende-i-riflettori-sulleur-pn_20180323_00078/

[3] Luigi Di Majo and Italo Insolera, L’Eur e Roma dagli anni Trenta al Duemila (Laterza, 1986), 11.

[4] Richard A. Etlin, Modernism in Italian Architecture, 1890-1940 (MIT Press, 1991), 483-85.

[5] Ruth Ben-Ghiat, “Why are so many Fascist Monuments in Italy still standing in Italy?” The New Yorker, October 5, 2017: https://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/why-are-so-many-fascist-monuments-still-standing-in-italy

[6] “Perchè l’Italia ha ancora così tanti monumenti fascisti? Il New Yorker provoca, la rete lo stronca,” Il Sole 24 Ore, 8 ottobre 2017: http://www.ilsole24ore.com/art/notizie/2017-10-08/perche-l-italia-ha-ancora-cosi-tanti-monumenti-fascisti-new-yorker-provoca-rete-stronca-121459.shtml?uuid=AEiYSLhC

[7] ANSA, “Formula E, sanpietrini coperti è polemica,” 18 marzo 2018: http://www.ansa.it/lazio/notizie/2018/03/18/formula-esanpietrini-coperti-e-polemica_324443c7-f6ec-4b94-a9d2-c38a3e39b3ad.html

[8] Borden Painter, Jr., Mussolini’s Rome: Rebuilding the Eternal City (Palgrave MacMillan, 2005), 130, 160.

[9] The promo video can be viewed on the Rome E-Prix’s homepage: http://info.fiaformulae.com/it/rome and on YouTube.

Zaha Hadid, Rome "Starchitect" and Designer of MAXXI, dies at 65

The Iraq-born "starchitect" Zaha Hadid died Thursday, March 31.  Her architecture has been widely praised for its ground-breaking, geometrical forms, constructions that owe more than a little to her background in mathematics and study in London with Rem Koolhaas.  She designed only one building in Rome--the state's contemporary art gallery known as MAXXI, which opened in 2010.  In our opinion, it's not her best, but we're glad Rome has this example of her work, described in the New York Times as "voluptuous and muscular, muscular...with ramps that flowed like streams and floors tilted like hills, many walls swerving and swooning."  That's the best description we've read of the building's atrium, though we remain ambivalent about MAXXI, in part because of the way it interacts with the surrounding Flaminio neighborhood.  We expressed that concern in a 2010 post, reprinted below.  An indication of her enormous influence, even with one building in Rome, Hadid shows up in more than a dozen RST posts.  We've provided links to the most significant ones just above the 2010 re-post.  Today, we, too, mourn the loss of a superb and influential architect. 
 
Significant past RST posts on Hadid and MAXXI:
As #30 on RST's Top 40: http://romethesecondtime.blogspot.com/2010/01/rst-top-40-30-zaha-hadids-maxxi.html
Hadid as one of Rome's "Starchitects": http://romethesecondtime.blogspot.com/2010/11/romes-starchitects-meier-piano-hadid.html
One evening at MAXXI: http://romethesecondtime.blogspot.com/2012/03/evening-at-maxxi.html
A comparison of MAXXI to the City's contemporary art gallery, MACRO: http://romethesecondtime.blogspot.com/2012/09/the-building-wars-maxxi-vs-macro-romes.html
A walk-through of a major exhibit at the collection-deprived MAXXI: http://romethesecondtime.blogspot.com/2013/09/maxxi-francesco-vezzoli-performance.html
And the October 7, 2010 re-post:
We opened the Monday morning New York Times to discover that Zaha Hadid had won the RIBA (Royal Institute of British Architects) Stirling Prize for MAXXI, Rome's new modern art gallery.  The prize is given to the architect of the building that has "made the greatest contribution to British architecture in the past year."  It made us wonder about the state of British architecture.  Our doubts were confirmed when we checked a website that handicapped (like the horse races) the finalists in the competition, recently listing MAXXI as the odds-on favorite at 4:6, with another exciting and glamorous entry, Clapham Manor Primary School, at 8:1. 

Regular readers of this blog will know that the massive MAXXI, the Titanic of Museums, is not our favorite building; we're already on record suggesting that it doesn't really fit into the Flaminio neighborhood (or any neighborhood, for that matter).  And it may seem unfair that we should take another potshot at it.  But the RIBA announcement offered new inspiration.

And we were inspired enough to include MAXXI on the Flaminio walk of our new book, Modern Rome: 4 Great Walks for the Curious Traveler.  See more on the book at the end of this post. 

In awarding the RIBA prize, the judges described MAXXI as the "quintessence of Zaha's [what's with the first name stuff?] constant attempt to create a landscape as a series of cavernous spaces drawn with a free, roving line."  Cavernous, yes, and the caverns are not all that badly connected inside, if that's what's meant by a "free, roving line."  So maybe the award's for the interior.  [We added the two interior photos below to the original post]

MAXXI lobby, 2010

Cavenous gallery

Outside, things are different.  We discovered the problem on a very hot day in June, escorting New York City friends to MAXXI for their first visit.  After a miserable bus ride (the tram lines were under construction), we found ourselves on the block north of the only entry point, looking forlornly at the entrance--only 50 yards away, but inacessible--and faced with a MAXXI-walk around the block with an unsettled companion who was both irritated and near prostrate with the heat by the time we were able to enter the museum's air-conditioned interior.

Maybe we should have known better where we were going, but the experience made clear to us that MAXXI's mass--its dominance of nearly an entire block--and lack of accessibility were real and related problems. 

And so we returned one evening to document the source of our irritation--and maybe have some fun.  On this occasion, the museum's offer of free admission and music had brought young people out in droves and long lines--so many that we immediately gave up any thought of gaining access to the courtyard, let alone those roving caverns inside.

Instead, we scootered around back and took some photos (above and left) of MAXXI's intimidating,  inaccessible, and ugly back side, dominated by windowless concrete massifs, colorful barriers, and fencing.

Watch for icebergs! 



Bill

The large space outside the gallery entrance works well with "big" art [photo added to original post]

(Dianne points out MAXXI is #30 on our Rome the Second Time  Top 40.) And, as noted above, it is on our Flaminio tour - both its front and its back.  Modern Rome: 4 Great Walks for the Curious Traveler 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.

Rome: Not Always Eternal; the Changing Itineraries of Trastevere

Right in the middle of Modern Rome's  Stairs of Trastevere walk.

Suggesting itineraries for visitors to Rome is a hazardous activity.  In some ways, yes, Rome is eternal and some things have not changed for 2,000 years - and more.  But in other ways, Rome changes all the time.

We discovered the latter principle recently when we decided to use some of the stairs in an itinerary in our last book - Modern Rome: 4 Great Walks for the Curious Traveler.  The itinerary plays off of the popularity of stairways walks in the US, especially on the West Coast.  It's titled: The Stairs of Trastevere.  Ooops!  We were greeted by the nemesis of all Rome walkers: orange netted fencing.

Path looks okay here - note the grotto-like effect.

But, as we looked more closely, we could see there was an easy entrance in spite of the fencing and signs, and that we wouldn't be the first people to use the stairway. These particular stairways use the rough, country-ish, 'grotto' look so prized in the 19th century - ala Tivoli's Villa Gregoriana.  And, they continued to seem that way to us.  Then we saw that the rocks were falling from the supporting walls.

This could be seen as just more authentic looking grotto effect,
but the city likely closed the stairway because of these rocks.

 And, no doubt that danger is what has closed the stairways.

There had been some heavy rains recently; so we guessed the stairways had just been closed and would reopen soon.  Think again! The signs posted said the stairways had been closed since Fall, 2014 (not long after Modern Rome was published), and the residents were sick and tired of waiting for them to be fixed and re-open.

It looked as though no one had tried to get through this fence.
So we didn't try either.

A second set of stairs has no opening and appears to be completely unused.  Better not to try that one.

So for the hundreds of  people trying this stairways walk (p. 70 in the print version, right before the heading "A Fascist-Era Ossuary"), go ahead and walk up the stairs after the hairpin turn.  But when you cross the road to get to the second set of stairs, well-blocked off, turn left instead and walk up to the U-curve and take the stairs in front of you as you round the curve (under the original itinerary you would have been coming down the road to that curve and these steps were  on your right). You'll miss 52 steps.  BTW, we did walk the rest of the itinerary and it's all good.

Lessons learned:  Don't expect any itinerary to stay the same.  Sometimes you can get through barriers, but we don't recommend it unless it's fairly clear others have done so.  Once closed, a monument or site won't reopen anytime soon.  Going off-itinerary isn't all bad.  When the going gets bad, have a coffee or glass of wine.

Bar across from first closed stairway.  It's better than it looks in
this photo.  Lots of nice outdoor tables, fairly large inside.
"Il Baretto" - "the cute little bar."

Other people (that's not RST there) were using this stairway;
a clue that it's fine to use it.

Dianne