Love Locks on Ponte Milvio - a Rome tradition from popular teen novels?

 

These "love locks" seem to be in many cities these days. We saw them for the first time on Ponte Milvio in Rome (above), and assumed that was the only place they were then, and that the idea had spread. 

Above, Moccia with his first book translated
into English.

This year, while reading the first book in Federico Moccia's exceedingly popular contemporary Roman teen trilogy, I learned that Moccia's novels (specifically the 2006 "Ho Voglia di Te") are considered the source of the love locks (or are they?).

In an interview for the New York Times last March, Moccia said the idea came to him when he was in the army. "We had these locks for our bags, and when their service was over, people would attach them to the barracks fence....I thought it would be nice to turn a military thing into its opposite - make love, not war." He takes credit, the article says, for placing the first lock on Ponte Milvio. 

"Dianne, Jerry, Bill, Judy"

We put our own locks on (with good friends visiting from the US) in 2008, not too much later from that first act by Moccia. The locks were already exceedingly popular, with lock salesmen set up on the bridge, as the photos here show.

Bill and Jerry discuss with Judy, right,
which lock to buy - On Ponte Milvio.

Doing a bit of digging, I discovered the "love locks" originated not in Rome but 100 years earlier in Serbia during World War I. Nada and Relja, engaged lovers separated by the war, were separated for good when the young man did not return from the fighting because he had fallen in love with a woman from Corfu. Nada died of a broken heart. The women of the town, Vrnjačka Banja, bought padlocks, wrote their names on them, attached them to the bridge where Nada and Relja used to meet, and threw the keys in the river - all to protect their love. The name of the bridge always had been "The Bridge of Love" (Most ljubavi). The whole story is here. 

Cutting off locks on Ponte Milvio (likely
there goes ours).

Since the fad started in the 2000s, bridges all over the world have become burdened with locks, so much so that some bridges developed structural problems and locks are routinely cut off (see photo right). In some places special frames are set up for the locks. Somehow this seems too civilized for me, taking the raciness and perhaps love out of it. Below, a lock frame set in Toronto's Distillery District (October 2021).

Lock frame (I recall it spells out "LOVE")
in Toronto this year.

Moccia's novels continue to be popular as well, something of a mystery to us, though admittedly we're not the target demographic. The author's effort to get published is the best story here. He started writing the first novel, "One Step to You" (in Italian, "Tre metri sopra il cielo") in the 1980s. Failing at finding a decent publisher, he paid a small publisher to release it. The 3,000 copies sold out quickly but then the publisher closed before any reprints were made. Photocopies of the novel circulated and it gained cult status (reminds me of "Peyton Place" circulating in my day), apparently especially among Roma Nord teenagers, where it's set. It's now 2 film versions and multiple translations later. With the large Feltrinelli publishing house behind him, Moccia's books sold over a million copies when released in a 2004 edition. The English language edition of the first book was published just this year; the next two are slated for next year.

Set in northern Rome, which has wealthy enclaves as well as some substandard housing, the trilogy highlights many aspects of that end of the city, including Ponte Milvio itself and cafes and hangouts in the Flaminio district south across the river. To that extent, we enjoyed the novel. 

Ponte Milvio, locks restrained.

The story is a classic: rich girl/poor boy, good family/unstable family, diligent student/truant. It's so outlandish and caricatured that we found it close to laughable. But, could 1 million readers be wrong? Are we missing empathy with teenage culture of the 1980s and 1990s?  

Almost laughable, but this was the closest I
could find to a photo of a woman sitting
backwards - here she appears to be calmly
 going to market on the back of a scooter -
 hardly a racing motorcycle in the dark nights of Rome.

Several incidents involve racing motorcycles at night on city streets, with the girl riding backwards behind the guy, tied to him via a belt. Based on the brand of fashionable belts, Chamomile, the young women are called "chamomile." So Step, the truant who has put at least one person in a coma with his fighting, talks Babi, the studious young woman, into being his chamomile. There are other, fairly uncivil acts that take place in the novel (like running out of country restaurants without paying), making us question the source of its popularity. Still, if this sort of teen activity interests you, and many claim it's all based on true incidents, go for it.  We're stopping at the first book.

Dianne

Buon Pastore: Armando Brasini's complex Convent

The elegant, complex structure below opened in 1933 as a convent, to house the local congregation of the Suore di Nostra Signora della Carita' del Buon Pastore di Augiere; it is known familiarly as "Buon Pastore."  It still exists, but not quite as it appears in the photo.  The "guglie" (spires, of stone) that graced the building in its first four decades were torn down in the 1970s. There was decay, and safety was surely an issue, because the building was still in use.  But there's more to it than that.

The decade of the 1970s is perhaps best remembered architecturally for its fascination with concrete, and the "brutalist" structures--some of them fluid and remarkable, others stolid and grim--that came with its use. More than that, the architect of Buon Pastore, who died in 1965, was not then much remembered nor much respected, and his reputation, or lack of it, surely had something to do with the decision to demolish, rather than repair, the spires.

Armando Brasini

Today it would be different.  Armando Brasini has an admiring following these days, and those who care about Rome's architectural heritage are increasingly aware of his contribution to the city, which include the entrance to the Rome zoo (1909-1910), Villa Flaminia (his own residence, 1920-1925), Ponte Flaminio (begun 1933), a significant church at Piazza Euclide, and the magnificent Palazzo INAIL (1926-1933), on which he collaborated with Bruno Zevi. (He also designed a church in Buffalo which had to be torn down because of deterioration; some say he didn't understand Buffalo winters.)

Ponte Flaminio, photo from 1960s

Decades after his death, he has been justly compared to the more famous Gino Coppede', who like Brasini experimented with an eclecticism that anticipates postmodernism: the delicious combining of historical styles from the Renaissance, the baroque period, and the medieval era.  Coppede' deserves the lavish praise bestowed on the neighborhood/community in Salario that bears his name.  But no single building of his approaches the breathtaking monumentality of Brasini's Buon Pastore.

The complex, monumental, front entrance. What style is it?

Work began on Buon Pastore in 1929, and the building was opened in 1933, but construction was not completed until 1943, in the midst of the war.  In its early years the building functioned simply as a convent with chapel.  The world war brought change.  Although the nuns remained, the building also served as a military hospital--1500 beds--through the war years, first for the Italian wounded, then for the occupying Germans, then, briefly in 1944, for the American forces.

Interior courtyard, Sant'Ivo-like cupola

Courtyard detail

Courtyard, from above, looking toward front

Dome closeup

Walkway detail

In August 1945 Buon Pastore became a home for the "re-education" of adolescent girls, including 20 from Laurentina, an area destroyed during the war, and 10 from a building on via della Lungara (now the Casa Internazionale delle Donne).  The left side of the building remained a hospital (it closed in 1964), and the right side was given over to rooms for the nuns and the girls.  By 1953 there were 60 girls receiving assistance and treatment at the facility.  In 1955, Buon Pastore housed a scuola media (middle school) for girls in the quartiere, known as "Roma Gianicolense."  Since 1969 it has housed a variety of scholastic institutes.

While shockingly diverse stylistically, what appears to be a rambling, oddly shaped building is also perfectly symmetrical.  The "arms" of the building house separate (and, of course, symmetrical) cortili (courtyards), intended to bring in air and light.  The central courtyard is especially impressive.  According to one authority, the cupola replicates the cupola of Sant'Ivo alla Sapienza, Borromini's 17th-century baroque masterpiece.  On special occasions, it is still possible to climb out and around on the roofs of the building.

Symmetry

Our tour at dome level.  Great place for a cocktail party.

Brasini's powerful and yet myterious building has attracted the film industry; at least a dozen films have been shot there, including Una Vita Violenta (1962), based on the novel by Pier Paolo Pasolini; Il Cartaio (2004), directed by the Italian master of horror, Dario Argenta; and Il Papa' di Giovanna (2008), a Pupi Avati production.

Buon Pastore is at via Bravetta 383, about 3 miles SSW of the Vatican.  The interior is accessible only on special occasions, such as the spring program Open House Roma, in which we participated.  The exterior, worthy in its own right, can be circled any time.  The photos below are from a 2016 visit.

Bill

Inevitable selfie, from highest accessible point, above the entrance

Rome Aperitivo Hour: 4 RST "bar" picks.

The tasty "tagliata" at Panificio Nazzareno in Piazzale di Ponte Milvio.

For this go-round – after our trattorie recommendations previously, we are taking a second look at some quick bite places – no slow food here. Two bars that have food and two bakeries that have bars.  As with the trattorie, these are in 4 very different neighborhoods, one in the centro, 1 north of the centro (Piazza Bologna area), and 2 on the other side of the Tevere.

First, the very sweet place in the photo above right is Vesper Cafè and Enoteca, a few blocks from Piazza Bologna.  We were taken there by friends who know the young woman owner and who frequent the spot for its cocktails (mojitos are popular) and filled sandwiches.  You can see from the photos and postings on Facebook that it's a fan favorite.  Some of the tables are outside and look out over a small piazza.  Trip Advisor has a lot of reviews.  Yelp only ones in Italian.  Piazza Massa Carrara 5, 342 553 5344 (that's cell phone; no 06). 

Second, a take-out/eat-in coffee bar, bakery and buffet-type eatery all in one, this in the heart of Trastevere.  Giselda on viale di Trastevere, # 52/58, right at the corner of via San Francesco a Ripa.  Also, a killer Euro 10 buffet with wine.  Yep, RST's kind of place.  Perfect for before or after movies at the Alcazar or Nuovo Sacher.  [See glowing reviews on TripAdvisor,Yelp and Facebook.  Its own Web site is one page with basic info and the slogan, in English (!), "Your home away from home."  We did not see one tourist there.]  

The attractive outside seating at Panificio Nazzareno

Third, if you are in the Ponte Milvio area (across the Tevere from the north end of Flaminio, near Foro Italico), a true trendy hot spot for Romen's nightlife, try Panificio Nazzareno, a bakery that thinks it's a restaurant that thinks it's a bar, and for us, an outside aperitivo.

Panificio Nazzareno's restaurant before dinner hour.

We enjoyed the Ponte Milvio buzz earlier in the evening (not when it gets crazy, late night) and Panificio Nazzareno’s excellent breads and “tagliate” – slices of cheese and meats, with wine, all reasonably priced.  Some drastically different reviews on  various food Web sites, including Foursquare. http://www.yelp.com/biz/panificio-nazzareno-roma  http://www.tripadvisor.com/Restaurant_Review-g187791-d4756623-Reviews-Panificio_Nazzareno-Rome_Lazio.html.  Piazzale di Ponte Milvio, 35; tel:  06 33220720.

The crazy car traffic, not to mention the people, in Piazzale
di Ponte Milvio.

Last, a straight-forward bar.  Caffè Perù, in the Centro Storico, is an old-time favorite of RST's.  Maybe it's the cheap buffet aperitivo (with wine, of course), or the highly decorated bathroom, or the crowd that tends to grab stools and chairs and sit outside, literally in the street.  Not without ex-pats, but definitely a local locale.  

Caffè Perù does not have the wine list of nearby Il Goccetto, but it's a wonderful pit-stop after a day of seeing sights in the Centro.  (See TripAdvisor and Yelp.  It even rates a review on Slowtravel Italy; not he does not provide the correct address.)  Via Monseratto, 46, 2 steps from Piazza Farnese and around the corner from Camp de' Fiori.  Open every day pretty much all day.  tel: 06 6879548.  

Dianne

Planning Rome's Future: Modern Art? Or Domus Aurea?

Michael Kimmelman’s story, “As Rome Modernizes, Its Past Quietly Crumbles” (New York Times, July 7, 2010), is smart and full of ideas, from a critique of the new MAXXI gallery (“an air of already bygone taste”), the national modern art gallery, to the jurisdictional conflicts that have prevented concerted action on the restoration of Nero's Domus Aurea, where a gallery recently collapsed.


Note that MAXXI, Fuksas' Cloud (below) and other modern architecture are featured in our latest book, Modern Rome: 4 Great Walks for the Curious Traveler. More information on the book is at the end of this post.

The larger point for Kimmelman seems to be that Rome, lacking a thoughtful city plan, has thrown itself into questionable, arty modernizing projects (of which MAXXI--see photo above--is the best example and the addition to MACRO, the city’s modern art museum, another), while depriving its center of the money needed to maintain properly its historic heritage. The solutions that would seem to follow are for the city to cease playing around on its outskirts with designer projects, and for Rome to stop trying to be a center of modern art and architecture and focus on its past; get back to basics: shore up the Domus Aurea, fix the Coliseum, reveal the Tomb of Augustus.

But that isn’t where Kimmelman takes us. On the one hand, he is, to be sure, critical of an approach to Rome’s problems that features “a few big stars designing buildings,” and he calls architect Massimiliano Fuksas’ enormous and fanciful congress center, now going up in EUR (a suburban neighborhood and business center south of Rome’s historic district), a “giant bauble in what’s still the middle of nowhere.” (Under construction, right)

On the other hand, he seems much taken with Fuksas’ notion that Rome’s future lies in developing its periphery. “So the true city,” he quotes Fuksas, “is no longer the historic one but the one on the so-called periphery, and to become successful we need to accept a new concept of greater Rome.”

Beyond that, Kimmelman seems to believe that the congress center, along with new housing designed by Renzo Piano (two “big stars designing buildings”), may be keys to development in EUR and critical to Rome’s progress. That’s a long way from shoring up the city’s crumbling past. And at the end of his article, we’re a long way from understanding what it is that Rome needs.

The preceding by Bill; the following by Dianne -

I agree with Bill that Kimmelman's piece is on the whole "smart," but I also "smart" from his dissing of areas that are not in the historic center ("centro storico"). He calls EUR (which he never mentions by name) - "the middle of nowhere." Our guests we dragged there last month hopefully won't agree. This immense paean to monumental modernism, named for the World's Fair Mussolini hoped to have there in 1942 (Esposizione Universale di Roma; also called E42) is a fascinating suburb and in the middle of a whole lot, if one doesn't simply focus on ancient and Renaissance Rome.

To call Renzo Piano's Parco della Musica "inoffensive" also is "offensive" to me. It's a beautiful music complex, one that should be visited, and, unlike a lot of other artsy buildings, it works. To us, it's a definite visit when one is visiting MAXXI in the same neighborhood, and if you can fit in a concert at the same time, so much the better. And, they both are in the neighborhood of Flaminio, also unnamed in the NYT piece and disdained as an "obscure residential neighborhood," "outside the city center." Obscure? To Kimmelman maybe. Flaminio is full of apartments (and bars and restaurants) where Romans would die to live, along a road used even in pre-Roman times, and is very well located, beginning right outside Piazza del Popolo (where, among others, Fellini hung out and near to where he lived) and stretching to the famed Ponte Milvio. Okay so it's not in the historic city center; it's still very central.

My rant gives you some feel why we like Rome - the Second Time... because so many people treat anything that was built after 1700 as not worth looking at - unless it's a glitzy new art museum. Their loss.

Bill

As we noted above, for more on modern architecture, see our new print AND eBook,  Modern Rome: 4 Great Walks for the Curious Traveler.  Modern Rome 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.

RST Top 40. #26: Best Market in Rome...Piazza....

Romans (and tourists) are fiercely proud of and defensive about their locals markets, so in choosing a "best" market for Rome the Second Time's Top 40, we fully expect to be attacked and censured rather than applauded. Bring it on. There are dozens of markets in Rome, even excluding the ones that deal primarily in antiques, and we have personally experienced only about ten. Even so, because we've lived in a variety of areas, we claim more authority in this area than most Romans, for whom a change in neighborhoods, and in markets, would be like committing adultery.

In making our #1 selection, we eliminated Porta Portese, Rome's most famous market; too well known, too big to be intimate, too much all the same stuff (although those with sufficient stamina may find distinctive pockets), too much a Rome-the-first-time experience.

With a certain regret, we said no to indoor markets, like SPQR Mercato, a Fascist-era project on via Catania near Piazza Bologna (on Itinerary 7 in Rome the Second Time), which is a trifle cavernous;
the similar market serving Flaminio, on via Guido Reni (nice enough, but no cigar); or the recently-opened market off Piazza Vittorio, which needs a few years of wear and tear to acquire the requisite patina.

Indeed, we rejected all the new (and inevitably, covered) markets, from the oddly configured,
confusing, community-defying edifice at Ponte Milvio (left), to the monstrous mistake coming to Testaccio (lower left), which from the artists' rendering resembles an American big-box store. Thanks for playing.

Of those that remain, and that we know about, we have some fondness for the open-air markets in the Piazza Re di Roma vicinity (running uphill off via Taranto, if it's still there), where we learned many years ago not to touch the fruit; and the one out near the Ponte Lungo metro stop, just southwest of via Appia Nuova, which snakes through the streets and around corners. The old market at Testaccio has its diehard fans, and we don't doubt that it's special, but a) we haven't seen it recently and b) the victim of "progress," it's about to be replaced. You can hear the death rattle.

Our winner, then, is a market of moderate age--it dates to about 1970--located in Piazza San Giovanni di Dio, up the hill via tram #8 from the Trastevere neighborhood, in the area known as Monteverde Nuovo. See pics top and lower right. It looks and feels authentic: no English, no tourists (except us), no antiques, no sunglasses. Although open-air, its corrugated iron and tin roofs meet
to provide shelter from the elements and a comfortable, contained feeling of density. About 100 stalls: mostly food--meats, breads, nuts, cheeses, olives, fish, fruits and vegetables, the ubiquitous itinerants hawking strands of garlic--but some clothing, housewares, purses and luggage, plants and flowers. And it's surrounded by coffee bars, serving weary shoppers or delivering trays of espresso to merchants in need of the mid-morning fix.

It's our choice for Best Market in Rome. Hope you're not too upset.

Bill

Imagining Failure: Rome's New Markets

We've always been interested in artists' renderings of buildings proposed or under construction. They're fantasies. Although artists' drawings are supposed to reflect the "reality" of what's about to be built, they inevitably expand and stretch that reality to make it more compelling and more comforting than the actual structure is likely to be, usually by including people--often, lots of people (that's a key part of the fantasy) walking around enjoying the new space.

So we were surprised to find, when we passed the billboard-size artist renderings of the new, under-construction Testaccio market, that the fantasy they projected was so lifeless, so sterile, so brittle.

As our readers may know, the old, semi-enclosed, outdoor markets of Rome, conglomerations of metal sheds, really--are rapidly being replaced by fully covered and enclosed structures in which merchants have their own interior shops and stands. This has already happened at Ponte Milvio, where the sheds have been replaced with a confusing brick building that isolates the merchants, and, to better effect, near Piazza Vittorio, where the new building's interior manages to retain something of the dynamics of movement, sound and community that are essential characteristics of the old markets. There are plans afoot, we're told, to replace the hundred or so stands of our own market at Piazza San Giovanni di Dio (see photo), in Monte Verde Nuovo, with something new. Many Italians, among them some of our friends, welcome the trend; they want markets that are clean, spacious, and attractive.

Elbow-to-elbow shopping among tattered and rusted metal sheds is not for everyone, we understand. But something is being lost, we think, when even the artists whose job it is to imagine the new markets--and make them objects of desire--seem unable to offer an enticing vision of the future, one that at the very least ought to combine the "modern" elements of the new markets with the energy and communal intensity of the old ones. All too often that doesn't happen--at Ponte Milvio and, as we look at the artists' renderings, in Testaccio. Bill