Rome's Public Markets: a Cautionary Tale

Rome's neighborhoods remain vibrant communities in most respects, in part because the big box stores and malls that have damaged American cities are generally located far on the city's outskirts. Yet we have noticed that one element of the traditional Roman neighborhood appears to be in trouble: the neighborhood's central market. 

Our first recognition of the problem emerged in San Lorenzo, where it was clear that the central market, and the local, traditional system of food distribution, was in difficulty. Roughly half that market had been replaced by tables and chairs for drinkers (mostly) and diners of nearby restaurants and bars. And the half that remained was only partially populated. Only one butcher--a 72 year old man--continues to practice the craft in San Lorenzo. We talked to him, and he bemoaned the fate of his trade. He had very few offerings compared to butcher shops we've seen in other neighborhoods. He clearly saw himself as the "last butcher in San Lorenzo." And we counted only two fresh fruit and vegetables shops in the area. 

More than half of San Lorenzo's public market is now tables and chairs--or empty.

Friends tell us that the new indoor market in Testaccio is also troubled--more cafés and bars than traditional market offerings. The newish Trionfale market appears to be suffering too, Several years ago, the outdoor/shed market at Quarto Miglio was transformed into a children's playground and a center for street art.

The Quarto Miglio market, on a Saturday, at noon, in 2019. Only one stand was open.

An elaborate program of street art had failed to revive the Quarto Miglio market

Something similar is happening more slowly in the area around Piazza Bologna, where the large indoor public market on via Catania has been serving the community for decades. The market is located in a densely populated area--apartment buildings of up to 10 stories--that ought to be capable of supporting even a large public market. 

 At first glance the market looks healthy. 

But there are empty stalls.

We decided to do a survey. We walked the market, Dianne counting the total number of stores and stalls, Bill counting the number of empty stores and stalls. It was 10:30 in the morning, when one would expect the market to be in full swing.

Dianne's results: 148 stores and stalls

Bill's results: 49 stores and stalls closed (roughly 1/3)

Unfortunately, it's likely that the story of the via Catania market--a story of decline--is being repeated across the city. Chain grocery stores, with expanded hours, are proliferating.  Many of the daily (and mostly women) shoppers that once had their mornings free to shop at the market are now working. Young Romans are getting married at an average age of 32--and then having few children, or none at all. Fewer households having regular meals, fewer families and fewer family members to shop for. And, of course, the supermarkets have taken business away from the public markets. The future looks grim.

Bill 

For other posts on public markets, of the many references on this blog, see the following:

On Testaccio's "new" market: https://www.romethesecondtime.com/2012/08/testaccios-new-market-rst-weighs-in.html

On our favorite public market: https://www.romethesecondtime.com/2010/02/rst-top-40-26-best-market-in-romepiazza.html

The Holidays in Rome, Part I: Markets, Displays, The Vatican, Worshipping

RST is pleased to welcome back guest blogger Theresa Potenza (her last RST post was in 2018 on holidays in Rome and before that on the Etruscans in nearby Cerveteri  - she's a scholar of Etruscan history). Based in Rome, Potenza is an art historian, private tour guide, and freelance writer. To learn more about her private tours of Rome and read her travel and feature stories about Italy, check out: www.tourwiththeresa.com. (Also, her article here, on giving birth in Rome during Covid - an amazing tale [yes, they both got Covid] - and at the end of the post a photo of Theresa and her family.)

This is the first of two posts - since there is so much happening in Rome over the holidays. Part II, which will go up in a week or so, features "Listen" (music apart from the religious context, which is detailed below), "Taste" (special holiday restaurant meals), and "See" (exhibitions and light shows).

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There is no better place to visit than Rome during the holidays.  A city that is eternally enchanting becomes even more so during the magic of Christmastime. The holiday season traditionally begins in Italy with the feast of the Immaculate Conception on December 8 and ends with the feast of the Epiphany on January 6.  The Eternal City is the center of the action and provides many opportunities and occasions to celebrate. Whether you want to shop, eat, pray, or witness the great spectacles of holiday cheer, here is an updated list of what to do and where in Rome during winter 2023.

Holiday markets

Above, another photo of the Piazza Navona market
(photo at top of post also is from the market).

One of the city’s oldest Christmas traditions is the Mercatino della Befana in Piazza Navona.  The Baroque square with Bernini’s fountain has been a backdrop for holiday magic and events for hundreds of years. In the ancient times the area was a stadium for track and field competitions, and in the 17th century it was the stage for elaborate events for the Papal Pamphili family. Since about the 18th century when the legend of the Italian witch known as the befana became popular, the square has been a favorite destination for Roman families and tourists alike shopping for, among other things, candy “coal." According to Italian legend, the befana witch delivers presents or coal in stockings for children the night before the Epiphany. As the legend has it, the three Magi stopped the befana to ask for directions on their way to bring gifts to newborn Jesus. She apparently did not have directions and is still out wandering, visiting families. The story began in Rome and is still thriving in Italian households and especially in Piazza Navona. At the market you can enjoy a carousel ride, puppet shows, games, and stalls selling candy, hand-crafted befana, nativity sets and other crafts. The festival will be open until the day of Epiphany of January 6.

The largest Christmas festival in the city, Il Natale nel Mondo, will be held in Villa Borghese. Covering an area of 60,000 mq, it hosts everything you can dream of for Christmas. You will find original folklore shows, gospel concerts, a chocolate factory, an ice-skating rink, Santa’s house, a double-decker carousel, life-sized nativity scenes, reproductions of cities around the world, and food and wine stalls. What more could you ask for Christmas? https://christmasworld.net/, [Website in Italian; try your translator if you need it. Tickets may be purchased online through the website.]

The city hosts several small artisan markets throughout December in various locations where you can shop for anything from hand-made ornaments to specialty chocolates. Most of the markets run earlier in the month and finish by Christmas Eve, designed for those getting a head start on gift shopping. For some of the best local Italian food items, check out the Testaccio market until December 24. You can find the program for Rome’s markets on the city’s website,  https://www.comune.roma.it/web/it/notizia.page?contentId=NWS1114598 [Great information, again, in Italian.]

Christmas displays

This year, Rome’s Christmas tree will be displayed in Piazza del Popolo, instead of its usual location in Piazza Venezia. The tree comes from Como in northern Italy [a shout-out to Dianne's relatives' home province] and was lit today, December 8, a public holiday in Italy.

The Vatican Christmas tree will be lit and the nativity scene unveiled instead on December 9, following the Pope’s celebration of the Immaculate Conception on December 8.

The Vatican

As you can imagine, the Vatican makes a big deal out of Christmas, making it one of the most magical destinations to visit and celebrate in December. The decorations in St. Peter’s Square include an 80-foot silver fir tree from Cuneo in Northern Italy, decorated with edelweiss native to the Alps, and a life size nativity scene. Every year different artists from around the world are chosen for a creative nativity display. This year the nativity set will feature terracotta statues made by the Italian diocese in Rieti. The life-sized figures are designed to commemorate the 800-year anniversary of the first living nativity started by St. Francis in 1223 in the town of Greccio. The anniversary of the live nativity also corresponds with the celebration of Pope Francis’ 87th birthday in December. In the colonnade of St. Peter's Square there will be a display of 100 artistic nativity sets, an annual art exhibition known as 100 Presepe. [See Larry Litman's RST post about the presepe display in 2020.} 

Nativity scene at St. Peter's 2020. Photo by Larry Litman. 

Greccio 

It is also worth a day trip to the historic village of Greccio, just an hour outside Rome, for a creative collection of artistic nativity scenes, and to walk through history as it relates to the life of St. Francis.
https://www.wantedinrome.com/news/greccio-home-of-the-worlds-first-nativity-scene.html

Pray

To celebrate the feast of the Immaculate Conception and the official start of the holiday season in Rome, Pope Francis made a pilgrimage to the statue of the Virgin Mary at the Spanish Steps on December 8. On Christmas Eve, “midnight” mass will be held at 7:30pm inside St. Peter's Basilica, and the Pope will also greet the crowds on Christmas Day at noon for the “Urbi et Orbi” benediction. It is also possible to attend the Pope’s Te Deum prayers on New Year's Eve inside St. Peter's Basilica at 5pm.

The official Vatican website provides a calendar of holy celebrations by Pope Francis. https://www.vatican.va/content/francesco/it/events/year.dir.html/2023.html [Website in Italian].

For English language mass, you can reference the web pages for St. Patrick's Catholic American Parish, which will offer a family mass on Christmas Eve at 4:30pm, and the “midnight” mass at 7:30pm. https://stpatricksamericanrome.org/.

All Saints Anglican Church will have a Crib service at 5pm on Christmas Eve, and the “midnight” mass at 11:30pm. https://www.allsaintsrome.org/schedule.

St. Paul's Within the Walls church will host a grand Christmas concert on December 23rd with solo artists, choir and orchestra, featuring popular holiday music. https://www.operainroma.com/rome/?re-product-id=271221 [Website in both Italian and English].

St. Paul's Within the Walls 

Left, author Theresa Potenza and her family. Photo by Rome photographer   will.i.am.mbiena.

Part II next week!

Happy Holidays from Santa, in Distress

Here's Santa, struggling to delivery toys and goodies in the old Testaccio market, soon after it closed in 2012.  Happy Holidays!

 

"No Bolkestein" Say what?

The sign outside the new Testaccio market said, "No Bolkestein."  What?  What could that mean? 

If you spend much time around Rome's public markets, you'll see more of those "No Bolkestein" signs.  Here's some background:  The phrase refers to Fritz Bolkestein, a former commissioner of the European Union.  In 2006, Bolkestein issued an EU directive designed to create a "free market" for certain services, including food trucks, public markets stalls, and beach concessions.  As Bolkestein saw it, services were monopolized or controlled by only a few organizations or families, which held long-term licenses (some for 10 years) that were automatically renewable.  Competition, he claimed, was stifled. 

The sign on the truck, parked at an open-air market in the Val Malaina/Serpentara neighborhood, might be translated "Get Bolkestein out of the markets" 

As we understand it, Fritz Bolkestein had the authority to issue the directive, but it had to be implemented by national, regional, and local governments.  In 2010, The Italian government implemented at least parts of the directive, applying it to beach concessions and "ambulanti"--that is, licensed street sellers. Under the new regulations, street seller licenses would not automatically be renewed. 


New regulations for beach concessions proved especially unpopular among those already licensed to operate such concessions.  They argued that the Bolkestein directive would change a locally grown, "Made-in-Italy" brand of "beach tourism" into "beach supermarkets" controlled by multinational corporations and foreign investors. 


In Rome,  anti-Bolkestein protests began in 2005, anticipating the proclamation of the directive; some 50,000 workers participated in a demonstration that year.  Street traders again took to the streets--to Piazza della Repubblica, actually--in September 2016.

The No Bolkestein protest march, Piazza della
Repubblica, 2016.  The sign in the middle photo reads
"Salviamo Mercati" (let's save the markets).

Newly elected Rome mayor Virginia Raggi--the local leader of the anti-government party M5S (Movimento Cinque Stelle, 5 Star) was behind the No Bolkestein movement.  Under Raggi's leadership, the Rome council approved (31-7) her motion to postpone the implementation of the Bolkestein directive--indeed, all directives designed to increase competition in the services sector.  The council vote included extending trading licenses for stands to 2020.  Although it looks like Raggi's initiative was intended to help individual small businesses, in fact a majority of Rome's food trucks were (and are) owned by one family group: the Tredicine. 
Bill

Calatrava's Guardrail: The Architectural Trail

It’s only a guardrail.  It runs up a seldom-used stairway from the first to the second floor of the new market in Testaccio.  Curving and white, it drew our attention, and not only because it seemed so different from the brown, box-like building.  We were looking at Santiago Calatrava, the great Spanish architect.  No, he hadn’t designed this railing, or had a hand in the marketplace, for that matter. 

Calatrava's unfinished natatorium. 

But his imprint was there, nonetheless—and elsewhere in Rome, more obviously--even though his only Rome building, a natatorium for the University of Rome at Tor Vergata, sits unfinished in the weeds to the east of the city center.    

Calatrava's Bilbao bridge, 1997

Born in 1951, Calatrava was trained as both an architect and engineer, and it was as an engineering student that he was attracted to the work of the Swiss bridge engineer, Robert Maillart (1872-1940) and came to study under a disciple of Maillart’s, the famed bridge builder Christian Menn.  Through Menn and Maillart, Calatrava came to appreciate and explore the structural properties of materials, including steel, aluminum, concrete, glass and—later—carbon fiber.  In 1981, he completed a Ph.D. thesis whose title, “Concerning the Foldability of Spaceframes,” announced his growing interest in the possibilities of creating unique forms in space.

Calatrava's Bac de Roda bridge, Barcelona, 1987

Calatrava is self-consciously intellectual, and over the years, in speeches and interviews, he has articulated a broad range of cultural interests and influences: emotion (as opposed to reason—the paintings of Rothko are an example); rhythm and music; the human body and its movements and gestures (“the idea of breathing,” he said in a 2000 interview, “is astonishing….the idea that our fingers can move, the branches of trees or the waves of the water can move when the wind comes, are all astonishing ideas”); sculpture (he considers himself an architectural sculptor, and he admires the work of Rodan and Brancusi; painting (Cezanne, and especially Picasso); writers (the Russian Joseph Brodsky), and other architects (Frank Lloyd Wright [intuition producing the sublime, the poetic], Gaudi, Eero Saarinen). 

Calatrava's Valencia bridge, 1995

Calatrava is best known as designer of bridges, mostly skeletal and white structures with a curving plasticity.  Among his major works are the Bac de Roda bridge in Barcelona (1987), the Alamillo bridge in Seville (1992), the Valencia bridge for his home town (1995), and the Campo Volantin bridge in Bilbao (1997). 

These are ground-breaking structures, and it would seem absurd—even impossible—to connect them with the Testaccio market balustrade.  Impossible, that is, if there weren’t some way to demonstrate that Calatrava’s design aesthetics were penetrating and shaping the Rome architectural scene. 

Ponte della Musica (not Calatrava)

But there is.  In just a few years, two major bridges have been completed in Rome, and both demonstrate forcefully the influence of the Catalan architect.  One is Ponte Della Musica, which spans the Tevere north of Piazza del Popolo, in the quartiere of Flaminio.  

Ponte Ostiense (not Calatrava)

The other is Ponte Ostiense, which carries traffic over a rail and metro corridor just south of the Pyramid, on the city’s south side. 

Neither was designed by Santiago Calatrava, but both bear his mark. 

And so, too, does that guardrail. 

Bill

 We recommend the haiart interview with Calatrava at http://haiart.wordpress.com/2009/03/08/an-interview-with-santiago-calatrava/

Testaccio's New Market: RST Weighs In

Tables outside a bar - the only classic Rome bar - in the market

Testaccio's new market opened Monday, July 2, to rave reviews from public officials.  "This is one of the most beautiful markets in Rome," said right-wing Mayor Gianno Alemanno.  And David Bordone, with a title that translates into something like "Assessor of Productive Activity," gave his assessment of the activity, claiming that "we are endowing the city with one of the most beautiful structures in the capitol's system of markets." 

We don't share their enthusiasm for the "beauty" of the market.  We were shocked when, two years ago, we saw the "artist's conception" drawings, posted around the exterior, and we're still schocked: from the outside, Testaccio's new market, designed by architect Marco Rietti, is pretty much a big, flat, brown and white box.  (You can see the artist's conception in RST's earlier post on the new market movement.)

The space between the two boxes is, for now,
almost empty

Or boxes.  There are two of them, a smaller one devoted to a variety of purposes, including administration and computer-based classes, and two restaurants, the "Roadhouse Grill" and a sushi place, and a larger box that houses the 103 commercial spaces.  The boxes are separated by an open, exterior corridor that for now is empty, save for some tables serviced by a bar.  To some extent, the big box effect is softened by small brown tiles that dot upper walls.  The market interior--resembling a chessboard with aisles--is sensible and functional, if not flashy.  More on that later.  But now, some background.

Interior, Magna Grecia market

Rome has over 150 large "public" markets--i.e., not grocery stores and not delicatessens.  Many are housed in large, older buildings, done in a variety of styles, and often dating to the 1930s and 1940s; the markets at Piazza Bologna, Trieste (via Chiana), and San Giovanni (via Magna Grecia) fit this description.  Others, like the markets in Monteverde Nuovo (Piazza San Giovanni di Dio) and in Monteverde Vecchio, are simply collections of green iron shacks.

                                 Many of the older markets have raised concerns about sanitation,

Interior of the Trieste market, during an evening
community meeting on the future of the market

and many are are at least partially empty, under pressure from supermarkets and a younger generation that is less enthusiastic about shopping on a daily basis from individual vendors in a marketplace setting.  For these and perhaps other reasons, the city administration has a long-term plan to replace the old markets with new, modern ones.  This has already happened in the Ponte Milvio area, in Trionfale, in lower San Giovanni, and now in Testaccio, and there are plans afoot to replace the Trieste (the quarter in Rome, not the city) market with a complex that includes a new market, dedicated parking, and apartments. 

Although the new markets are, in a sense, "public" markets, they have not been built with public funds.  The markets at Triofale, Ponte Milvio, and Testaccio have all been
built with private money, in exchange for ownership of the complexes.  That, at least, is what the newspapers say, and it more than implies that the markets are privately owned and operated--with consequences, we might add, as yet unforseen.  The same could be said of the largest market of them all--the enormous Eataly complex in Ostiense. 

Abandoned biscotti in the old Testaccio market

The old Testaccio market was a combination of the two kinds noted above: a collection of metal shacks, old enough that large trees had in some cases grown around and through the metal, but contained within a building, probably dating to the 1940s.  When we visited the old market (the day after the new one opened), it was, of course, abandoned. 

A tree inside the old market

We looked for, but did not find, any sign that the merchants would have preferred to remain in their old quarters--for us, an indication that most vendors welcomed the move.  On our way out, we were stopped by a woman who had come to the old market only to find it closed, and did not know where the new one was. 

Residents of via Mannuzio register their concerns
about stands on their street

One group has been vocal in its concerns.  The residents of via Aldo Manuzio, which borders the new market on the northeast, fear that "bancarelle" (stands) will appear on their street, creating noise, dirt and refuse beneath their windows.  In the Roman tradition, they've hung banners from their windows and across the gate that accesses a courtyard within.  Some residents who enjoyed easy access to the old market will doubtless be irritated at having to walk about 4 blocks to the new one.  Indeed, we wonder if the new market, bordered on one side by Monte Testaccio and its bars and clubs, and on another by the art gallery, Macro Testaccio, is properly situated to draw and serve the customers it will need to flourish.

Swordfish for sale

These issues aside, including the big-box look of the exterior, the market would seem to be positioned for success.  On its second day of operation, when we visited, about two-thirds of the spaces were occupied, and there was considerable foot traffic.




The market's administrators have grouped the merchants, with fruit and vegetable vendors occupying one area, fish and meat vendors another, and sellers of general goods--household supplies, shoes, women's apparel--at one end. 

Marcello Mastroianni once shopped at this store--when
it was in Testaccio's old market

Vendors had begun to humanize their stands with photos of famous customers and the like.  The checkerboard layout of the place thankfully avoids the confusing configuration of the Ponte Milvio market and the subterranean feel of the Trionfale space.

A small group tour--in English

Side walls allow light and air to enter, and skylights brighten the aisles. 

Ancient ruins found under the market

In the center, a piece of Roman wall found during the excavation process is visible below, and more of the archaeological discoveries--the market was built on land that 2,000 years ago was commercially active--will (so they say) be unveiled for the edification of shoppers in about two years.

In short, we wish the market's exterior wasn't quite so stark, so unyieldingly separate from the surrounding buildings.  But we applaud a straightforward interior design that in some basic way suggests the old market. 

Bill

RST is not fond of the exterior of the structure, but it doesn't look so bad from this angle