Things SHE misses in Rome - Part 2 of a series

 1. The Spanish artist Borondo's artwork where one least expects it - in an abandoned store window.

(We featured another one of his works - now painted over - here.)    

2. Threatening  political posters ("Liberate us from the 'liberators'") 

We explained this poster in an earlier post.  No al TTIP refers to the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership, a proposed trade agreement between the EU and the United States that was finally killed off in 2019. The anti-TTIP folks were concerned that the nation states of Europe would have been victimized by transnational corporations--especially, according to the poster's graphic, American companies. Nice "Uncle Sam" look!

3. Creative use of bread (this restaurant is in Ariccia)

4. The mystery of what's being protected with orange plastic fencing

Dianne

La Lega a Roma: a Story of Politics, Food, and History

This post--our 788th--isn't easy to categorize.  It's obviously about Italian politics.  But it's also about Roman food, and about food, politics, and history.

On a recent walk through the near-in suburb of Aurelia, we found two posters, both on the back of stalls in a traditional open-air market.  They were obviously part of a poster series, starting with the line "La Lega a Roma?"  La Lega is "The League," once "The Northern League," a conservative, anti-immigrant (it used to be anti-the Italian South, which includes Rome), business-oriented political party with its origins in northern Italy.  Today, especially after the European elections in May 2019, it's a national party, with the right-wing, Trump-like demagogue Matteo Salvini its popular leader.  So the posters ask us to think about what it would be like to have The League in Rome--that is, as the dominant party in Rome.

The first poster features a likeness of Julius Caesar, speaking these words:  "E' n'artra cortellata!"
A Roman friend helped us understand the words.  "'N'artra," she explained, "is Roman (as in the modern-day Roman dialect) for 'un'altra,' that is,"another," while 'cortellata' is Roman for cotellata, that is, 'stab.'"  For La Lega to be in Rome, then, is "like being stabbed one more time."  Caesar would know.

The second of the posters featured a woman who deals with the issue La Lega a Roma this way: "'E' come a carbonara co' la panna!"  Our correspondent explained:  "The woman in the picture was a very famous character in Roma: Sora Lella, sister of actor Aldo Fabrizi (you'll remember him as the priest in [Rosellini's 1946 film] Roma citta' aperta) and owner of a renowned restaurant on Isola Tiberina, considered the temple of traditional Italian cuisine in its heyday."

It was clear to me, then, that "panna" (cream) was not a good thing to put in pasta carbonara, one of Rome's classic dishes.  As food critic Mitch Orr writes on the Vice website, "Carbonara has egg yolk, Pecorino Romano, guanciale, black pepper, and pasta.  Under no circumstances can there be any other additions, and that goes double for cream."  To imagine the League in Rome is to imagine carbonara with cream. Disgusting.

The hashtag #Romanonfalastupida can be translated, "Rome, don't be stupid," or "Rome, don't be silly."  Romans took notice.  La Lega did very poorly in Rome in the 2019 elections for the European parliament (although that didn't stop Salvini from putting up posters thanking Rome).

Sora Lella (Elena Fabrizi), who was also an actress, began working in her family's restaurant in 1959.  She died in 1993.  The restaurant, known as Sora Lella, is still there.

Bill

Testaccio.  Difficult to decipher, but filling in the blanks:  "This time, I'll set myself on fire!"
Giordano Bruno, burned at the stake as a heretic in  1600. 

Best Posters, 2017

I was encouraged to begin the 2017 version of "the year's best posters" by a remark made by Larry David, the creator of the popular television comedy series, "Curb Your Enthusiasm."  Asked about the show going into still another season--its 10th--David responded: "When one has the opportunity to annoy someone, one should do so."

So I'll get to it--annoying someone, that is.  Here's the first poster of this year's bunch.  It's included not for any aesthetic reason, but because it was the most widely disseminated poster of the year.  Ubiquitous and unavoidable.  Note the use of English. Intimissimi is one of the largest Italian lingerie chains.

I hope I haven't lost all my female audience, because the annoying part is pretty much over.  Actually, I'm a moderately sensitive guy on gender issues (yes, it was required).  To prove it, here's a poster from Ostiense (probably November 2016):

Call for meeting at Forte Prenestino, an avant-garde leftist space.  Solidarity.
The second line is famous:  "If I can't dance it's not my revolution."

The following poster, too, uses the words/slogan/manifesto "Non una di meno" (literally "not one less," though perhaps better translated "no one (female) left behind").  It calls for a struggle (lotto) and a global strike by women ("if our lives are not valued, we strike"). 

I also have a sense of humor. I found this one in the Re di Roma area, walking around while Dianne was getting her hair done.

The next one's a mystery.  Found in Trastevere, it seems to advertise an art fair--or more likely takes issue with the "art market."  It presents artists as mere money grubbers with silly ideas (the cover of the book seems to identify the work of street artists with sandwiches: "nuove figurini panini"). Wish I could blow it up just a bit more. 

In any given year, most of the posters are political, and 2017 was no exception.  I was intrigued by this poster, featuring Martin Luther King, Jr., on a corner in the ethnically mixed neighborhood of Torpignattara. 

The same community yielded the rather dramatic poster below.  It identifies a number of issues--unemployment, "cementification" (paving over paradise), and the distribution of wealth--that make the quartieri invivibili "unlivable."  The line in black reads:  "He who does not revolt remains a slave (male or female)."

Whether leftist or rightist or beyond politics, some made the list because they're colorful or pretty.
Of the three posters immediately below, the first two are products of the radical right.  The third advertises the annual flower festival in Genzano di Roma, in the Colli Albani (a wonderful event). For an explanation of the torch poster, we recommend Paul Baxa's history of Acca Laurenzia. 

Lovely

There's still some interest in Communism.  Don't miss the new biography of Lenin!  Not such a nice guy, we hear. 

"Power to those who work and those who are unemployed.  All power to the proletariat."

The next one's another mystery.  I looked up "Etere" on the internet but was unable to make much progress.  I originally translated it "to be or not to be," but it's not clear that Etere (one meaning is "ether") means "to be," even in Latin.  Help me out here.

At the intersection of Via Po and Viale Regina Margherita

Opposition to the European Union, here depicted as the chains of servitude, has been a  major poster theme for years. 

Bill
For some previous editions, see:
2016
2014
2013
2012
etc.

The Walls of Rome: 4 Hours in the Life of a Poster

Not all posters dealing with immigration are negative.  This one, found
in the immigrant-heavy (mostly Bangladeshi) suburb of Torpignattara, is critical of the
local government for its failure to make documents available to immigrants.

It's no secret that many Italians are concerned about immigration; under EU rules, the country where an immigrant first makes land must make provision for that immigrant.  There is no plan for dividing up immigrants equally.  This is a particular problem for Italy, which has a long and vulnerable coastline and is a short (but often deadly) boat ride from troubled Tunisia. As elsewhere in Europe, there are those in Italy who identify immigration with terrorism--and, those who don't.

These issues were brought home forcefully on the day we "landed" in Monteverde Vecchio, an upper-middle-class neighborhood on the hill above what is commonly thought of as Trastevere.  Here's the poster we found:

Stop Terrorism, Stop Immigration..  Not sure what "Fdl" is.
 There is an anti-immigration Facebook group known as Patria e Liberta

Four hours later, when we passed that way again, the poster looked like this:

  In the weeks that followed, we found other posters dealing with immigration:

This political poster was part of the 2016 mayoral election.  "Let's Stop
the Alien Invasion" 

CasaPound's poster, in Casal Bertone: Defend Rome/Enough Immigration, Enough "Welcoming"

Rome Posters: Lines of Excess

A mobile poster, in Piazza dei Rei di Roma.

Rome is the poster child for....posters!  They're in every neighborhood, often long lines of them, often long lines of the same poster, usually framed in iron racks that line the sidewalks, holes having been driven in the asphalt.  At the height of political campaigns, huge posters are driven around the city on trucks.  Most of the posters are political in one way or another, featuring a candidate, a party, and/or a position on some crucial issue of the day, such as immigration, waste disposal, or Italy's relationship with the European Union. 

The poster at top is for a party on the right (destra); it calls for the "immediate expulsion of undocumented immigrants," as well as for the re-election of the right-wing Mayor, Gianni Alemanno (he lost). 

Poster line along a Metro construction site.

We enjoy reading the posters and gathering from them information about the city's elections, politicians, and shared concerns.  That much is good.  What isn't good is that the poster lines are too often a blight on the urban landscape.  They're tolerable when the landscape is itself a mess, so that a poster line placed on an already disruptive Metro construction site doesn't make much difference. 








But this sort of modest restraint, if one could call if that, is seldom practiced.  One line in Prati runs down the middle of what would otherwise be an elegant, treed median/parkway. 

Those that cleave to the sidewalks leave little room for pedestrians and bring clutter--and often refuse--to nice residential areas (see the poster at end). 

Messy.  And badly positioned between a park and a church.

This line borders a park in the Marconi area and is directly across the street from Santo Volto, a lovely and important new church designed by Rome architects Piero Sartogo and Nathalie Grenon. 

Blocking the view of Acqua Paola (visible at upper left) and
the city below

And now and then, a poster line is placed especially ineptly.  On one side of this line (in back of the photographer) is a comely park on the Gianicolo.  On the other side (if the poster line were miraculously removed, it would be right in front  of you) is one of Rome's treasures: the enormous, elaborate fountain known as Acqua Paola (no. 19 on RST's Top 40). 

Bill

Neighborhood blight, this time in San Giovanni

Poster Lies: Alemanno Advertisements in the 2013 Mayoral Campaign

It's not unlikely that the average Roman gets most of his or her information about the political scene from, of all things, posters.  These ephemera are everywhere in the eternal city, and unavoidable.  Usually they're innocuous--along the lines of "I Love Rome" so vote for me, or "I was born in Rome, so vote for me."  But in the just-concluded mayoral run-off election, won handily by the center-left candidate, Ignazio Marino, the center-right, in a last-minute attempt to get votes for the their flailing incumbent, Gianni Alemanno, issued two posters of questionable ethical content. 

The one above reads "Zingaretti invita a votare Alemanno Sindaco"--Zingaretti invites you to vote for Alemano for mayor.  Straightforward.  Except that the poster seems to be suggesting that the well-known and widely respected governor of the province of Lazio (a sort of county executive), Nicola Zingaretti, is an Alemanno supporter.  Not so.  That Zingaretti is solidly center-left, a strong backer of Marino.  So what gives?  It seems the Zingaretti in the poster is--must be--Alessandro Zingaretti, a comparatively minor figure on the center-right and then a candidate for Rome's city council.  The old Zingaretti switcheroo. 

The second poster attacks the challenger by focusing on his career as a transplant surgeon.  The ad contrasts Marino's supposed attitude toward animal vivisection--enriching the pharmaceutical companies, with Alemanno's humane view--he asks people to contribute to families (human families?  animal families?) by adopting strays.  The large letters say, "For Marino it's a guinea pig," "For Alemanno it's a life."  At the bottom, the conclusion: those who love Rome--well, at least we're back to loving Rome--respect animals. 

Marino took 64% of the vote. 

Bill

For an earlier post on Marino's "Daje" campaign, see:

http://romethesecondtime.blogspot.com/2013/05/daje-note-on-mayoral-election-in-rome.html