Ostia's Garbatella - 1926 public housing and a WWII bomb shelter

Ostia, a town along the Mediterranean Sea not far from Rome - the new, not the ancient Ostia - is partly a creation of the Fascists. It was founded earlier, in 1884. Later the Mussolini government invested massively in it, resulting in many buildings of the 1920s and 1930s style architecture (the famous post office, among them).

Public housing ("case popolari") was first constructed in Ostia in 1926 and bears all the markings of the pre-modern architecture that was built shortly before the Fascists fell in love with modernism. The Ostia buildings most resemble those of Rome's Garbatella quarter, or of the quarter of Monte Sacro, built along the lines of a "garden city" in the1910s and 1920s. The state of the infrastructure is sadly poor, but the basic design of the complex is still lovely and worth exploring.

Above, one of the grand terraces, with an enormous Michelangelo-like cornice and citations to the Roman arches, that makes one think one is in Garbatella (as well as evidence of crumbling stucco).

The lead photo at the top gives a sense of the wonderful detail of early 19th century public housing, including small balconies, and especially portholes and the ship bas relief (top photo and photo at right), echoing Ostia's life as a port since Roman times.

The brief description of the tour we took described the housing project in these terms:

"There exists in Ostia a place where one seems to turn back in time to find oneself walking through Garbatella in the '20s...."  The architect was Camillo Palmerini, who designed the buildings "on the model of a building with an open courtyard. The arches, chimneys, the loggias, the small columns, the corners, the large cornices, all are examples of the so-called 'barocchetto romano,' a term coined by Gustavo Giovannoni in the '20s to identify the style used in Garbatella, today, an ideal dialog with the mosaics of Ostia Antica, colored with local elements of ocean inspiration - boats and marine animals."

In the basement (cantina) of the building complex were other reminders of history: exhortations to support Mussolini and the King, still visible on the walls of what was a bomb shelter for the residents. Below are two double V signs meaning "viva" or "long live" and then Il Duce and Il Re (the Duce, i.e., Mussolini, and the King) [love the brooms lined up against the wall too]/

We had a fairly intense discussion with a friend - a renown scholar of Fascism - who posits that retaining these "memories" of Fascism is not conducive to democracy. We appreciate the discourse, but in this case, disagree. [More photos of these 'writings' are at the end of this post.]

At left, the sign - in the same typescript - is an arrow pointing to the "Security Exit" (what Americans would term an Emergency Exit). Again, this is a leftover from the war, covered with modern electrical mechanics, and mostly ignored (like the one above) as text.

Above, our tour group in the basement/cantina.

The buildings also have beautiful staircases, with unusual angles, photo at right. We know the Romans love their staircases, witness the Bernini-Borromini Palazzo Barberini, as well as Luigi Moretti's in Trastevere's L'ex GIL (written about in our posts, as linked).

Our inside look at this complex, including its cantina, was courtesy of Open House Roma, which had a special focus on Ostia last year. At left, the crumbling arch through which we entered and sign at right of the OHR tour.

Adjacent to these beautiful, unrestored buildings is modern-day housing - which we eyed while having a coffee across the street.  Not bad, but one can't imagine having a tour of these 100 years after their construction.

Another stop on our tour was a brief look at this column, which once marked the end of via del Mare, the "road to the sea" that Mussolini constructed starting near the Colosseum and ending here in Ostia. The plinth now sports a bust of Pier Paolo Pasolini, the once "bad boy" of Italian arts, who was murdered on the outskirts of Ostia (another RST post features the park in his memory - near the murder site) [small photo above from Google Street View]. It once - as we recall - sported a bust of Mussolini. How times change (thankfully)!

More of the writings on the wall, beginning with the one below: "Mussolini - today more than ever - is right."

Below: not all the "saying" is visible, because of the light fixtures put over them (and note garbage cans below), but something to the effect of "don't worry about...who, for YOU it's best...."

Dianne

PS - another post on a location adjacent to Ostia is RST's on the self-built, basically squatter community of Idroscalo.

Waiting Out the Coronavirus in Ostia

Waiting Out the Coronavirus in Ostia

by Marcello Massatani (3/27/2020; photos likely 3/7/2020 or before)

This is the 4th in a series of accounts of living with the coronavirus in Rome and environs.  It takes the form of a letter/email to William and Dianne, the administrators of the romethesecondtime.com site. The author is Marcello Massatani, the genial and knowledgeable man who is usually at the front desk of the superb Anglo American Bookshop, Via della Vite 102, not far from the Spanish Steps in Rome.

Marcello has worked at the bookstore for many years--longer than any other employee. He lives in Ostia.  
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Dear William and Dianne,

I am very well and Healthy at the moment, and you?

I know in New York and in other parts of US, the situation is getting worse and worse because the coronavirus.

Here we are living a surreal situation. No one in the streets, all the shops are closed except grocery, supermarkets, newspaper stands and pharmacies.

Seems to be during a war, and yes we probably are in war, fighting against an invisible enemy.

Via delle Vite

Since the 7th of march the bookshop is closed (see photo at left of the street on which it is located), so it is almost a month that I cannot see Rome with my eyes but only on television, as I live in Ostia, just 30 km from Rome at the seaside. Also here everything's closed and we are allowed to leave home only to buy food and medicines, waiting your turn in long lines of people, taking care to be at the right distance from each other avoiding  any contact.

To be positive at the moment it is really hard, but personally I rediscovered the meaning of staying all day with family and share everything, doing gym [exercises at home; the health clubs are closed] in the morning with my wife, preparing lunch and dinner together (for the first time I did homemade gnocchi which were delicious), take really good care of my hobbies like magic, music, reading books, etc. Also the schools are closed and my son is taking online lessons from his teachers, discovering a new way to study.

All things that keep me from thinking about the terrible situation caused by the coronavirus. Many old and young People are dying with covid-19 so all of us could be infected by the virus if we do not respect the restrictions made by our Government and stay at home.

Inside the bookstore - when it was open.

Inevitably Italy will have a bad economic recession and I really don't know what will be the future for our bookshop and for everybody. I hope the Government will be able to give us a big help to start again. Same as after a war where a country has to rebuild everything step by step.

But in spite of everything, I am still positive about our future.

I look forward to see you again in Rome when the coronavirus will be only a bad remembrance for everybody.

All the best and stay well you too waiting for a global resurrection.

Marcello Massatani 

Along with his letter, Marcello sent a photo of Via delle Vite, where the bookstore is located (above), a photo of the inside of the bookstore when it was open, as well as photos of some of Rome's most famous attractions and spaces--likely taken before Marcello left Rome on March 7.  Here they are:

The Spanish Steps, with Santissma Trinita' dei Monti at top.

Piazza Navona

Piazza della Rotonda (Pantheon)

Campo de' Fiori

Looking toward Piazza di Spagna

Ostia Antica: Really Old, Really Close

RST is pleased to have as guest blogger Martha Bakerjian. Martha is one of our favorite writers on travelling in Italy.  She's knowledgeable and always has good ideas for places to visit and tips for the savvy traveler.  In this post she guides us to Ostia Antica, a magnificent under-visited archaeological site less than an hour by train from Rome. Subscribe to her monthly newsletter!  Martha has her own blog, Martha's Italy: https://www.marthasitaly.com, and she posts itineraries on Bindu.

An ancient greeting.

While most people know about Pompeii, far fewer visit the ancient Roman port of Ostia Antica, even though it's much easier to get to from Rome. At Ostia Antica you are treated to the evocative remains of a Roman working-class town, abandoned around the 5th century. You'll have the added bonus of walking through a medieval hamlet with a small castle, and, if you're there on a Thursday or Sunday morning, you can go inside the castle on a tour.

Tours of the castle--built in 1483 by the man who would become Pope Julius II--on Thursday and Sunday mornings

If you're in Ostia Antica around lunch time, try one of the local trattorias in the hamlet. After your visit to Ostia Antica, you can even go to the beach, just one stop farther along the train line at Ostia Lido. (The trattorias are much better than the snack bar, and more likely to be open; or buy food for picnicking like a Roman on the ancient grounds.)

To get to Ostia Antica, take Metro Line B to the Piramide stop. To use your same Metro ticket, stay inside the station heading left towards the "Roma Porta San Paolo" station, for the Roma-Lido train line.  (If you have more time and don't mind blowing another Metro ticket, or on your way back, go outside for a look at this well-restored 1924 "Roma-Ostia-Lido" train station.) Take the train towards the Lido (the only direction it goes from there), getting off at Ostia Antica. The trains run about every 15 minutes; less often on the weekends and holidays.  (Note all of these directions and info are at the time of this writing.) From the train station, it's a short walk to the hamlet of Ostia and then just a little farther to the archaeological site.

Ornate sarcophagus

Buy a map of the site at the Ostia Antica ticket office to give you a better idea of what you're seeing. Once inside there are restrooms, a book and souvenir shop, picnic area, and a bar selling sandwiches, drinks, and snacks. Also near the entrance is an archaeological museum with statues, busts of Roman emperors and sarcophagi. Off to one side is a small necropolis.

Toilets.  Not much privacy.

Ostia Antica is more compact than Pompeii but still quite large (Dianne: we once lost the son of friends there for about an hour). You’ll see houses, shops, ovens, a bakery, wells, fountains, and even toilets, as well as the town’s forum, temples, a theater, and baths. 

The ancient city, in use from the 4th century BC through the 5th century AD, had about 50,000 residents at its peak. It was Rome's seaport and, as such, of great importance.

Ostia was laid out along one main street, Decumanus Maximus, and more than one mile of the road has been excavated. Along this street you’ll see stores and markets, workshops, public buildings, warehouses, and a theater, built between 19 and 12 BC. Residential areas are along the side streets.

Ostia's splendid theater/arena

Some house remains have mosaic floors or frescoes on the walls. These mosaic designs have been replicated since Roman times to decorate buildings around the world, including the Fascists' extensive use of them, such as in the flooring outside the railroad train station at Ostiense. Farther along is the forum, the center of life in Roman towns. Around the forum are the large public baths, a marketplace, a temple, and a Christian basilica.

Homes and shops

Plan to spend 2 to 3 hours wandering through the ruins. The site is closed on Mondays. Check current hours and admission price (orari + tariffe) on this web site: http://www.ostiaantica.beniculturali.it/it/home. Hours change with the time of year and day; the site generally opens at 8:30 a.m. and closes anywhere from 4:30 - 7 p.m. Ticket prices change as well, based on many factors; the current regular price is Euro 10. (Use your "translate" button in Google, for example, if the Italian doesn't make sense to you.)

More about Ostia Antica: https://www.marthasitaly.com/articles/15/ostia-antica

Another view of the theater.





Renato Papagni and the Centro Olimpico Fijlkam (what?)

"Art" photo, with building framed by yellow fence in foreground. 

RST enjoys an occasional annual pilgrimage to the sea, even if neither of us goes swimming.  This past year we explored and survived the funky, off-the-books seaside hamlet of Idroscalo and ventured onto the "public" part of Ostia's "private" beaches using one of the new "varchi" (entrances).  Ostia is full of modern architectural treasures, many from the Fascist era, and though we've seen most of them, we made it a point to have another look at the Art Deco post office, a real gem.

View from the west, across the parking lot.

And then, scootering along the beach frontage road, we noticed this curious structure, all molded and floggy, if that's a word, looking something like a tilted green doughnut with white icing.  We parked the scooter and--standard operating procedure--began walking around the periphery, gated and locked, hoping for an open door--or something. That something arrived a few minutes later, in the form of a gatehouse and guard.  No, we couldn't go inside.  But yes, the guard was amicable and agreeable to explaining what he knew about the building.

Working entrance (looks fairly normal from this view).

We had found the Centro Olimpico Fijlkam, a training center for Italian athletes in specific sports. Fijlkam is an acronym (a curious one for Italians, we think).  The letters stand for La Federazione Judo Lotta Karate e Art Marziale (that is, Federation for Judo (duh!), Wrestling, Karate, and Martial Arts).  Not all of these, we're quite sure, are Olympic sports, but so be it.  The Federation is an old one, founded in 1902 in Milan; it now has some 3,000 affiliated societies.

Renato Papagni

The donut building is the handiwork of Renato Papagni (b. 1946).  An engineer, not an architect--he earned his degree in structural engineering at the University of Rome--Papagni apparently designed the building, probably his sole commission, and he also seems to have served as project manager for its construction.  All this began in 1986 and the "palazzetto" was opened in 1992.  We think it's a very interesting building in the "plastic" mode popularized by Frank Gehry, though on the clunkier side.  At least it's different.

Papagni (left) with former mayor Gianni Alemanno, with
ribbons--and
one of Papagni's pools

Papagni moved on to swimming and pools, and was involved with the pools intended for the 2009 international swimming competition held in Rome (there was a lot of controversy about pools that
weren't built and others than weren't necessary).  These days he is President of the Assobalneari, Roma, an association of beach club owners. In that job, he had a hand in developing the varchi--the passageways--that in the summer of 2014 made possible public access to a portion (near the water) of Ostia's private beaches.



Centro Olimpico Fijlkam is at via dei Sandolini 79, Ostia.  You can take the train from Rome and get off at the white building, below, lower right.
Bill

From the air, it could be a sombrero.  Quite a complex.  It's a long way around.

With Pasolini, it's all about the Body

The setting.  Dianne says the Institute's logo is adapted from
Italian Futurism.  That claim lacks confirmation.

Pier Paolo Pasolini is justly celebrated  in Rome and elsewhere as a poet, novelist, and filmmaker-- the cultural trifecta, if you will.  Yet as we learned in a brilliant exchange between LA-based artist Nicola Verlato and USC professor Gian Maria Annovi at the Italian Cultural Institute in Los Angeles, the collective memory of this cultural icon is of his body--indeed, his dead body--found in a field not far from the beach at Ostia and just steps from the village of Idroscalo. Murdered.

William Kentridge, Pasolini's body

This focus on Pasolini's body is unusual, even unique, Annovi argued, drawing a contrast between the frequent artistic representations of Pasolini's corpse--Milan-based artist Adrian Paci paints a near-photographic representation of his body, face down, at Ostia, and South African artist William Kentridge draws that same, face-down body--and the Italian conceptualization of Italian literary giants Gabriele D'Annunzio

Mike Kelley's casting call for a Pasolini, 1990.  

and Italo Calvino.  Though equally famous in their realms, the bodies of D'Annunzio and Calvino are not only not depicted, but are essentially irrelevant to how they are imagined. American artist Mike Kelley had his own way of suggesting Pasolini's body (left).

Verlato's Hostia.  The title encompasses the place where Pasolini died
and the sacramental bread of the Christian liturgy.  

Verlato, whose work treats iconic characters such as Michael Jackson ("all the elements of a tragic death"), was at the Institute to talk about his Hostia, a multi-story painting in the near-in Rome suburb of Tor Pignattara, home to the prominent gallery Wunderkammern and to one of the city's largest and most eclectic collections of high-quality street art.  He described his mannerist painting as an allegory, with Pasolini's dead body falling away from his enemies, including the Carabinieri and Pino Pelosi, his presumed (and convicted) killer, through a Dante-esque scene-scape.








Below, the boy Pasolini learns poetry from his mother as Petrarch--and, rather bizarrely, Ezra Pound--underline the accomplished adult poet that Pasolini (according to Verlato) so desperately wanted to be.  Later, Verlato noted the painting had been done under the auspices of Muro, an arts organization, and he felt reassured that its location, in the gated courtyard of a condominium, would help protect it from vandals.

When Annovi raised the issue of the centrality of Pasolini's body, Verlato could only agree.  Like St. Francis, Verlato said, in the collective imagination "he's a body."  Among the recent depictions of Pasolini, added Verlato, was a large paste-up of Pasolini carrying his own body.  Modeled on Michelangelo's Pietà

Ernest Pignon-Ernest: Pasolini carrying his own, Christlike, body (2015)

Verlato went on to explore Pasolini's tragic loss of faith in his true love, poetry, and to suggest that Pasolini and Pound, despite their political differences (Communist and Fascist, respectively), were in striking ways similar: both men struggled against the mainstream and both had "extreme ambition;" they wanted to be central figures in their cultures and times.

In addition, Verlato described his plan for a multi-media mausoleum, a temple of sorts, to honor Pasolini.  The neo-classical mausoleum, in the style of the Jefferson Memorial in Washington, D.C. and Bramante's Tempietto, would be located in Ostia, on the ground where Pasolini died.  Annovi called the idea "insane."  We're inclined to agree, although the existing memorial is inadequate.  But crazy or not, it's all about the body.   Bill

Verlato, left, with one of his designs for a Pasolini mausoleum.  Annovi may be saying "that's insane."  

Beach Politics: the Ostia "Varchi"

A (mostly) private (or pay) beach at Ostia.  Not a particularly grand operation, with legal access to anyone
through a narrow passageway just to the right of the photo.  The beach is the same one in the last two photos, below.  

Everything's political--even the beach.   But because we're not regular beach goers (when we go we don't even take suits), it took us awhile to pick up on even the basics of beach politics.  Yes, in the past we had noticed that much of the beach was occupied by fancy clubs or expensive restaurants, and we had even made the mistake of entering one of those "membership" establishments and been turned away, with directions for the one public beach within reach.  

Then we saw this poster in several locations on the Lungotevere.  It belongs to the PD--the Partito Democratico, Italy's basic center-left party--and it presents the beach at nearby Ostia as an occupied and controlled space, inaccessible to those who aren't members, or who don't have money.  It suggests that ordinary citizens have the right, under the law and Italy's constitution, to use the beach. And it offers a way to insure that that right is real rather than than a formality.  

The sign notifies beach-goers that anyone can use the last 15 meters of beach--and
cites the relevant laws.  The photographer's back is to the water.  

The method?  "Varchi"--that is, passageways--that would allow anyone to get to the water's edge. Once there, access to the water, and to about 50 feet of sand above it, is guaranteed by law, no matter how "tony" the crowd is just beyond, no matter what club or organization owns "most" of the beach or controls most of the access from the street.  Similar access rights exist in the United States and, no doubt, in many other countries.  If you can get there, you can use it.

A varco (passageway) to the beach, between the
railing of a concrete pier and the chain-link fence on the left

On our latest trip to the sands of Ostia, we came across one of the varchi.  It's not especially welcoming: a rather narrow passageway, fenced in on both sides (to avoid users inadvertently entering the sacred space of the club at its flank), and not well marked (we overheard some folks asking what it was).  But it's there, and the masses will learn its location soon enough, and the PD will have made some progress.  A happy ending, perhaps, to this episode of "Beach Politics."   

Bill

In English and German, too

Idroscalo: An unauthorized, self-built Rome community

It's not often we're "scooped" by La Repubblica, but that was the feeling I had this morning (May 24, 2015) when I opened the paper to find an entire page devoted to Idroscalo, a community of some 500 homes and 2,000 people located north of the seaside town of Ostia, about 20 miles from Rome, on a spit of land between the Tyrrhenian Sea and the mouth of the Tiber River (the part known to residents as the Fiumara Grande).  The occasion for La Repubblica's interest is a May 26 technical "tavolo"--a bunch of experts getting together--"finalmente," as the newspaper put it, to deal with the case of Idroscalo.  Don't hold your breath.

RST was in Idroscalo about 10 days ago.  This was our second, and more informed visit.  The first time we were seeking the place where Pier Paolo Pasolini was murdered in 1975.  We came upon Idroscalo and felt we had hit a dead end.  This time, we had read Ferruccio Trabalzi's superb essay on the community in the collection Global Rome--we'll draw on it extensively here--and couldn't resist seeing the place with our own eyes.  Still, we had concerns.  Idroscalo is an unauthorized, illegal, and self-built community --according to Trabalzi, the "last surviving self-built small borghetto (illegally constructed neighborhood)" in all of Rome.  Its residents are poor and rightfully suspicious of strangers, especially those taking photographs, for those strangers are more likely than not to be the advance

In early 2011, there were 100 houses on this part of Idroscalo.  The
masts of the 2000 ships in the upscale marina are in the distance.

guard of yet another effort at eviction and demolition.

The last such event took place on March 8, 2011, when residents awoke to the presence of some 200 riot police and 4 bulldozers, which then proceeded to demolish about 100 homes along the seashore.  The area is subject to frequent flooding from the sea and, especially, the Tevere, and it's likely that the action was "justified" by the authorities as a measure necessary to the safety of the inhabitants. Protests by Idroscalo residents halted the demolitions.



Trabalzi describes Idroscalo as a

The main "square".  The town's coffee bar, complete with
umbrellas.  Bus service at right.  

 "social and cultural desert", save for a small chapel:  "no shops, no community center, no library, no piazza, no gardens or city offices, let alone any pharmacies or doctors."  That's mostly true.  But the entrance to the town has the feel of a piazza (there is turnaround bus service there - the head - or end - of the line), albeit one without amenities such as a fountain, benches, or trees.

Functioning restaurant, behind the bar

There's a restaurant just off the piazza--of the
sort middle-class Romans frequent on Sunday afternoons--and one of the town's two bars is on the piazza.  On the occasion of our mid-morning visit, the bar was functioning, as Rome bars do, as an informal social center, men sitting at tables and teen-age girls and boys in bathing suits circling on bicycles.

Our first act was to have a coffee at that bar. Rather than walking through the piazza, we wanted to announce ourselves, in something of an act of reassurance - for them, but also for us. We hoped they'd get the message: that we were Americans, that we weren't from the government, that whatever photos we took weren't going to hurt them, that we were self-confidently engaged in our own activity.  Still, we were never entirely comfortable while in the town.  The coffee was served in glass cups.



For most of an hour we walked the town, up one "street" and down another, along the area near the sea where the bulldozers of 2011 had left the land barren.  One man looked suspiciously at us as we walked by his home, yet said nothing.

Dogs, visible, center left, lying down, would make
us turn back a few yards later.

In the very center of the community--not a person in sight--we were forced to retreat by 3 barking dogs that ran at us--and then stopped as we turned. To avoid being too obvious, many of the photographs were taken at waist level or from long distance.

Squalor, one could say, with satellite TV

La Repubblica's story for the most part depicts the residents of Idroscalo as victims.  In the words of the headline:  "Favelas Idroscalo/vita da miserabili/nelle case di calce/senz'acqua né luce" (Idroscalo ghetto/living miserable lives in houses of lime, without water or electric light).  As even the newspaper recognizes, that's a bit overstated.  Yes, the roads are of packed earth, there is no "proper" sewage system (Trabalzi), most of the houses would reasonably be described as substandard, and--on the grounds that the community is illegal--there is no garbage collection within the town, though bins are not far away on the road leading to Ostia, whose middle class and upscale apartment buildings are only a few kilometers away.  As for water, over the years residents have developed an informal system that collects water from three
drinking fountains, deposits it in tanks, and uses pumps driven by electricity to move the water to rooftops and distribute it from there to residents.  And, obviously, there is electricity.  Most residents are on the regular ACEA (the water and power company) city grid.  Before 1977, hookups with ACEA were the norm, but laws passed then eliminated the arrangement, and homes built after 1977 are off the grid. According to La Repubblica, Idroscalo collectively owes ACEA 71,000 Euro. Cooking is by gas cylinders (we noticed some large ones).  Each year households are fined 2000 Euro for illegally occupying the public domain.

More middle class.

If life is so bad in Idroscalo, why doesn't everyone leave?  That's Trabalzi's question, and it's a good one.  One answer is that over the years--and some have lived there decades--residents have invested most of what they have in their homes, such as they are.  Another is that they rightly fear that the government's promises of relocation to better housing isn't a dependable one, raising the specter of homelessness and, if it were, that they'd find themselves in some version of the infamous Corviale, a kilometer-long concrete block 1970s-era disaster.  In addition, it seems clear that many Idroscalians enjoy living there.  "All the residents," Trabalzi claims, "agree on one point...that they live in a beautiful place" of gorgeous sunsets, with populations of dolphins and white herons, swans and swallows--and the smell of the sea.

Not so affluent.  

The Idroscalo that exists today had its origins in the early 1960s, when fishermen from Rome neighborhoods built small, and of course illegal, huts to use in the summer and the occasional weekend.  When it became clear that the authorities tolerated the huts, they were expanded and made more permanent. Idroscalo became a year-round community in the 1970s, largely out of necessity, when a city-wide crisis of affordable, legal housing led thousands of poor Romans to take up illegal, self-made residence along via  Casilina, via Boccea, via Prenestina, Mandrione--and Idroscalo. According to Trabalzi, authorities have here and there pursued a policy of "benign neglect" in places like Idroscalo, in part because the elimination of illegal communities would require the construction of low-income housing.

But that policy--a combination of fines, raids, threats, neglect and tolerance of self-made, illegal communities--may be coming to an end.  Residents of similar communities in Valle Aurelia, Casilino, Mandrione and elsewhere have experienced relocation to high-rise housing in places like Laurentino 38.  In 2000, private investors received permission to build a 300-boat marina within a

Behind the red timbers is a second bar, serving sandwiches, gelato, and more.  The marina is back right.  

hundred meters of Idroscalo's "piazza," promising employment to Idroscalo residents (it didn't happen); the marina was expanded in 2008.  But for the protests, all of Idroscalo might have been bulldozed in 2011.  According to Trabalzi, there is talk of turning the area into a "nature park" and, more threatening still, Idroscalo has attracted interest from corporations and politicians as a possible new center of tourism, complete with elaborate hotels and other amenities to complement the marina.
That may be what Tuesday's "tavolo" is all about.  

Bill

This photo closely resembles La Repubblica's  "lead" picture, pink chairs and all.  Several efforts at comfort here:
the umbrella, a bench, chairs, flowers, a rock garden--and a madonella.