Shopping for Gloves in Rome - One of Life's Little Pleasures

A work of art?  In some ways. In reality a few of the many gloves stacked floor to ceiling in the delightful, tiny Mieli glove store in central Rome.

Just off Piazza San Silvestro, this shop is a regular stop for me. I need leather gloves to ride on the scooter, and they get rather worn after a season of that use. So I head back every Spring to Mieli to buy a new pair, and pick a new color.  Last year dark green; this year vibrant purple.

In the same family hands since the 1920s, the store
features dozens of photos of luminaries, some with
notes to the owners.

The store is easy to miss, because it literally takes up about 15' square (5 m sq) of floor space.

Gloves of every style are on sale: lined with cashmere, lined with silk, unlined, fingers closed, fingers open, dappled leather, smooth leather, short, long.  The only requirements? Leather and gloves (guanti) and "made in Italy."

You'll see Josephine Baker, Gregory Peck and Gina Lollobrigida, Enrico Caruso, on what little wall space remains.

The affable salesclerk told me about the family's long-time ownership. An older woman came in while we were talking and sat in the one chair.  At the time, I didn't have the guts to engage her in a conversation, but I should have.  She's a current owner.

The prices are reasonable.  My rather long (protect those hands and wrists!) purple unlined leather gloves were about 40 Euros ($44 today).

Mieli Gloves, via di San Claudio, 70; tel. 06 678 5979. hours generally 10:30 a.m. - 7:30 p.m. (except Mondays opens at 2; closed Sundays).

And not too far from Orologeria Senzacqua, where I get leather watch bands.

Dianne

Before and After Series: Piazza San Silvestro

It's better, right?  Piazza San Silvestro, located in the heart of commercial and tourist Rome--2 minutes from Galleria Sardi and 5 minutes from the Trevi Fountain--used to be a major bus depot of the open air kind.  Dozens of buses stopped or turned around there.  It was convenient for shoppers, but arguably a waste of a large piazza, not to mention a source of pollution.

And so the authorities decided the bus depot would have to go--indeed, cars, too, would be banned from most of the piazza, which would become a place for pedestrians to chill out, for mothers to walk the baby in the stroller without worrying about traffic, and for tourists to sit down at one of the long, curving benches, have a look at their maps, and admire the piazza's churches.  

Demolition of the bus structures began in 2012.

And here's the result:

Today, people sit in the piazza (though not much in the heat of the day, for there are no umbrellas or other shelters from the sun), and mothers walk their babies, and no doubt tourists are glad to have place to sit and browse their guidebooks for what's in the area.  So in some sense the new piazza works.  But there's something missing, too: energy, a focus of activity, trees, enough people to more or less fill the vastness and give the space proportion--and a place to get relief from the sun.  In some sense, it doesn't work.

Bill

Caught! A Small Drama in Piazza San Silvestro

It was early evening when we passed through Piazza San Silvestro.  Not long ago it would have been full of buses and people waiting for them, but the piazza has been reinvented, its function as a bus depot eliminated, and what we found was a huge empty space, filled with rubble and machinery, surrounded by a plastic and chain-link fence.  To serve businesses on the piazza--including the restaurant at far right, above--the sidewalks remained accessible. 

As we were walking by, a young woman mounted her scooter and, cautiously, but on the sidewalk, and with a shopping bag over one arm, headed north on the east side of the piazza.  Scooters using the sidewalk for a few yards, to find a place to park, are commonplace in Rome, but this woman's sidewalk journey was a longer one than usual: a whole block of sidewalk to cover before she reached a usable street. 

She didn't make it.  As luck would have it, as she neared the end of the block and was passing in front of the restaurant (with outside tables, also on the sidewalk), a police officer approached and--from what we could observe from afar--ordered her to turn around and walk the scooter back to where she had begun her sidewalk ride.  No ticket, but embarrassing.

Bill