Walking to Trullo: for Art's Sake

The plan seemed reasonable, to Bill, anyway.  We had had heard that the working-class Rome suburb of Trullo--we'd been there once before--had been redecorated by volunteer street artists, and we wanted to see the community in all its new glory.  We decided to walk--Bill did, anyway--from our apartment in Monteverde Vecchio, 6.4 google map kms (3-3/4 miles one way): down via dei Quattro Venti, right on via Portuense, across via Isacco Newton, left on via del Trullo.  Voila!





Via Portuense is one of Rome's less fashionable streets, but even so, not without interest.  Early on we noticed (right) a building that had once been a gas station, perhaps a car wash. Many elements, frequently modified.  Concrete block, air conditioning, a covered terrace, a nice old wall, a tattered banner and, of course, graffiti.  In a curious way, a delight.

Further on, a sad memorial to a tragic accident: a young woman, Valentina, had died at that spot.













And two very different buildings, side by side: on the left, what appeared to be a municipal building, constructed in the 1930s; on the right, an apartment complex, perhaps of 1970s vintage, with its brazen rounded balconies.

An architectural find on via
dell'Imbreciatto.  Modernist
brutalism, recent vintage.  

Just beyond, we discovered a flaw in our plan.  Via Isacco Newton is an enormous highway, and there are no sidewalks on the fast-moving portion of via Portuense that crosses it.  Only Evil Knievel would walk that route.  So we doubled back to via Pietro Frattini and turned south through the 'hoods, onto via dell'Imbreciatto, right onto a country road, right again along Isacco Newton and over it, on a bridge, then up the hill and down the hill into Trullo.  Including the doubling back, this route is about 8.2 km, or roughly 5 miles.









Trullo has, indeed, been upgraded, as your exhausted duo discovered.  We didn't see any burning trash cans this time around.  Many of the 1930s housing project buildings that dominate the area have been decorated in one way or another: some simply and playfully--the kind of work that could be done by an untrained crew with a bit of direction. There's lots of poetry, too.




Others have benefited from the first-rate work by professionals.   Several examples follow.

Many other buildings, including the market, sport wall art.  At left, the decorated wall of an eyeglass store. Below, the market.

"The voyage is a search for hidden courage that knows no bounds."

View from the bar.

There's a comfortable bar in the center of town where you can sit outside on the covered patio and watch the main street traffic and the kids playing in the park across the street.  Best on a Saturday.

Worth it.  But don't walk.  We took the bus home. Weak!
Bill

PS - Posts on other areas 'upgraded' with street art include those on Quadraro and the Nomentana train station.  The book, "Global Rome" also investigates this phenomenon.

In Trullo, even the trucks are painted!  The graffiti on the building at center is older, not part of the remodeling. 

Anna Magnani, Rome Icon

Anna Magnani died in 1973 in Rome.  The story goes that a passer-by at a funeral observance in Piazza della Minerva, behind the Pantheon (above), impressed by the enormous crowd--much too large for the space--asked one of the participants: "What's going on?  Did the Pope die?"  "No," was the reply. "Much more important than that--Anna Magnani."

Almost a half century later, the actress who personified postwar Italian neo-realist cinema remains an iconic figure.  Images of Magnani--her face, especially, but her body, too--continue to appear on

Rome's walls and, recently, on a set of stairs at one of Rome's large public markets.

In 2013, the artist Biodpi explored Magnani imagery in an exhibition at one of Rome's alternative galleries, an ex-factory space known as the Lanificio. 

Front gate of the Lanificio (wool factory)

Part of the Biodpi show on Magnani

A chic Magnani walking a hip she-wolf.  Biodpi  

An unattractive rendering, Pigneto

Anna Magnani was born in Rome March 7, 1908, and not at Porta Pia (as some claim) but in a house at via Salaria 126.  Her mother, Marina, was 20 years old, unmarried, and Roman; her father, who had left the household for good before she was born, was Calabrese.  For reasons that remain unclear, Marina spent much of Anna's childhood in Egypt, leaving her daughter in Rome to be raised by her grandmother and five aunts.  As a young child, Anna lived briefly in an apartment in Piazza Costaguti, then for some time in a substantial 4th floor apartment on via di San Teodoro--in a neighborhood between the Campidoglio and Circo Massimo.  She recalled those years fondly: a large living room, an expansive terrace, and a pet hen.

Pigneto 

When she was about 12 years old, Anna left elementary school and enrolled as a piano student (she took 6 years of lessons) at the Academy of Santa Cecilia in via Vittoria, not far from via del Corso (and still there).


At some point she discovered that the same building housed a well-known acting school--the Eleonora Duse Royal School of Acting--and at age 18 (1926), she began to study acting.  For several years she financed her lessons by singing in clubs while accompanying herself on the piano.  She was good enough to be known as the "Edith Piaf of Rome."  By 1930/31 she was traveling around Italy to take a variety of acting jobs.








Magnani married film director and script writer Goffredo Alessandrini in October 1935, in a civil ceremony at the Campidoglio, then took religious vows in December at the church of San Roberto Bellarmino in Piazza Ungheria (Parioli).  The couple lived for a time at viale Parioli 48. The marriage lasted until 1950.

Rome, Open City (1945).  Magnani as Pina, moments before her death.

Magnani became a star in 1945, in the now-classic film Rome, Open City.  She played Pina, the fiancée of Francesco, a resistance fighter.  With the Nazis occupying Rome, Francesco and others in the neighborhood are arrested in a Gestapo raid and put in a truck to be taken to a place of interrogation--or worse.  In one of the most famous scenes in all of Italian cinema, a distraught Pina runs after the truck, and is shot and killed.

In Mama Roma (1963), the Pier Paolo Pasolini film set in Rome, Magnani played a prostitute and mother.

Magnani, wearing the wolf.  Rome's Nomentana train station, 2016. LAC 68.

In both these films, and in many others, Magnani played a tough, no-nonsense, working-class woman, usually wearing a simple house dress.  Perhaps as a result, she is often identified with the Lupa (the mythic she-wolf that nourished Romulus and Remus, the founders of Rome)--indeed, she was sometimes referred to as "La Lupa" or a "living she-wolf symbol."





Anna Magnani died in Rome in 1973.  She is buried in the Verano cemetery.
Bill

Somewhere

1962

Street Artists Transform Nomentana Train Station

This artist has a number of pieces of a similar nature in the underpass.  They're presented in homage to street artist Blu.  The artist may work under the name qwerty.

Most of the "letters to the editor" that appear in the newspaper La Repubblica are from citizens complaining about something: potholes, garbage collection, bus service and the like.  But this one was different.  It was a feel-good story, about a place--an underpass serving the train station at via Nomentana--that had been filthy and a bit intimidating for years, but that had recently been fixed up--by volunteers.  So we went.  We had our doubts that there still was a train station in Nomentana, since we'd never heard of it.  And we knew we'd have trouble finding the underpass.

Wrong on both counts.  There is, indeed, a via Nomentana station, and the underpass was easy to find: on viale Etiopia, just south of the circonvallazione and just east of Piazza Gondar.

One of several by the artist LAC 68.  

Urban scene.  By BOL?

Lots of affection here, but also bla bla bla

Thelma senza (without) Luise (Louise), aqueducts as background.  LAC 68.  The figure at right is a regular feature
of the artist's work, as is the shopping cart (which also appears frequently in Banksy's drawings).  

Dianne with bird, who's been reading
The Jungle Book and appears to be
a commuter

What we found was inspiring.  A group of street artists have decorated hundreds of feet of passageway--the main passage and long side ramps, too.

Save the whales.  

Animal images--rhinos, Moby Dick, fish, a wolf--- abound,
giving much of the space a playful look.  "Love" is another theme.



Some of the art is not up to "international" standards, in our opinion, but some of it very good, indeed.  We especially enjoyed the broad brushwork and humor of LAC 68, and the evocative stick figures of the artist we identified (perhaps incorrectly) as qwerty.












We talked briefly with two artists who were working on one of the few unfinished sections before moving on to another town (Pavona, if we remember correctly).

All the artists were brought in through the efforts of a retired railroad worker, Francesco Galvano, who, as one article stated, created this as an homage to the station in which he spent his working life. The overall project is to decorate 120 stations, under the heading Arte in stazione e citta' a colori - Art in stations and cities in color, coordinated by the group Nucleo Sicurezza Ambientale (perhaps the best translation - Secure or Healthy Environment Group), of which Galvano is the Roma Nord head.  More pics below.

Bill

Side ramp

Another side ramp

There are things to read, too

Mermaid with red hair.  LAC 68

Northern entrance.  No longer intimidating.