At the University of Rome: Protesting the War in Gaza, May/June 2024

This spring, while living in two locations near the main campus of Rome's largest university--La Sapienza--we naturally were interested in exploring the role of the university, and especially its students, in engaging the conflict in Gaza. We made three purposeful excursions onto the campus. We had heard that a group of students were protesting Israel’s incursion into Gaza and "occupying" a portion of the campus. But (we're embarrassed to say), on our first trip to the campus we failed to find any evidence of a student occupation. There was evidence of a protest movement in the writing on some of the university's walls, and some posters, but no tents, or so we thought. 

At left, a pro-Palestinian phrase suggesting that 
Palestine should encompass all of what is now Israel. 
At right, "In Gaza there are no universities." 

All Eyes on Rafah (a city in southern Gaza, under siege)

The war has its origins here. Boycott!

One poster notified students of an upcoming student demonstration in Piazza Vittorio against the government of Giorgia Meloni, and including solidarity with Palestine:

A "Free Palestine" poster advocated shutting down Sapienza ("Blocchiamo Sapienza"), which these students understood to be complicit in the conflict:

In most respects, the campus seemed normal, undisturbed by the war in Gaza.

In this area of the campus, more centrally located and prominent than the site
occupied by the protesters, everything seemed normal. 

The second trip a couple of weeks later proved more fruitful. Rather than search the campus once again, we asked a maintenance worker if he knew of an occupation and, if so, where it might be. He pointed to a road leading to the back of the campus, behind the main piazza. And there it was, tucked in an area that was a few feet below ground--below the rest of the campus. About 30 pop-up tents. An information table. And, gathered around a picnic-type table nearby, a half dozen students--maybe planning something (or maybe not). 

The encampment was accompanied by kite-like stanchions, featuring slogans in script. The general theme seemed to be, "while you're eating a nice lunch, the folks in Gaza are starving."  

On the standard at left, the Palestinian flag and the word "Nakba," which means "catastrophe" in Arabic and refers to the dispossession of Palestinians during the 1948 Arab-Israeli war. The protesters apparently had WiFi. 

We also took more careful note of the anti-Israel, pro-Palestinian wall writing, this time looking for evidence of the students dislike of the way the Rector--Antonella Polimeni, a physician--was handling the issue. Although neither the wall writings nor the posters explicitly mention it, a key issue for the students was the university's participation in "il bando Maeci"--an agreement that institutionalized cooperation in science and research between Israel and Italy. 

Some sort of student march to protest the situation in Gaza took place off campus in the week that followed this second visit. We did not attend. But we did return to the campus to chronicle any changes. What we found was surprising: all that remained of the campus occupation were spots and indentations in the grass where the tents had been. 

We later read that the University may have driven the students out by scheduling "repair" work for that area; we had seen some of that nearby when the tents were there and wondered if the construction project wasn't a kind of harassment. We also read that the students had apparently decided to end the 6-week occupation voluntarily. A spokesperson for the students told Il Messaggero (a Rome daily newspaper) that the occupation had not, indeed, changed university policy, but that the students had learned that a change in tactics was necessary, one that featured increased contact and involvement with faculty and university departments, perhaps leading to a boycott. The students also looked forward to a protest on the 24th of June, on the occasion of a meeting of the university's academic senate.  

Bill 

A Night at the University: Mario Sironi's monumental Aula Magna Mural

We were attracted.

We're always eager to get official access to Rome buildings we haven't been in, and so in mid-May we headed off eagerly to the university--La Sapienza, as this one is known--to explore an evening open house.  Not much was open, actually, but the dinosaurs in front of one of the science buildings caught our attention, and we headed over.  That building is standard Fascist-era issue (most of the buildings here are of mid-1930s vintage), nothing about it of significant interest, really, even for RST, a fan of most of the era's architecture (including Gio Ponti's mathematics building on this campus).

Lots of people enjoy looking at rocks.

Still, we enjoyed puttering around in an old-fashioned museum of mineralogy, about which we know nothing.

Nude miners, mining

We were surprised to learn that Sicily was a center of sulfur mining, and that the mining was done by nude men.  Why nudity was required is not clear, though the poster's fine print might have offered an explanation.

Aula exterior

Having had enough of even very beautiful rocks, we took a chance and headed to the Aula Magna--the big hall on the campus that hosts concerts and other events (the official name is Aula Magna del Rettorato della Sapienza).  We had seen the exterior before, but had never been inside the building or its main hall, which features an important mural by Mario Sironi, a significant artist of the era (and the subject of a large retrospective a year or so ago). The outside of the Aula was suggestively lit for the evening, and--lo and behold--the doors to the auditorium were open.

Students with photos of themselves portraying very different
types of people (bride, hipster, etc.)

Inside, art students presented their work, a quartet offered music, and free wine was being served. We had talked to the students at the table (see left), and they were watching us.










And inside the hall, an orchestra was playing. And there was the Sironi mural.  We sat down, listened, and looked.

The mural is enormous--90 square meters--but even so, it can be difficult, as I'm sure readers will understand, to absorb the contents of such a work when there are distractions--an illuminated

The hall from our seats

audience, the music, the contours of an 80-year old modernist space, the thrill of being there. Here's what we later learned:

The mural is titled "L'Italia fra le Arti e le Scienze"--Italy between [probably better translated and] the Arts and Sciences.  As the story goes, the lead architect for the new university, Marcello Piacentini, approached the Duce with Sironi's name.  In 1933, Mussolini received the artist and acknowledged the great difficulty of presenting Fascism on the grand wall of the grand hall of the grand new university.

Sironi took the commission (we wonder if he had any choice) and, in two months, produced his mural.  It includes representations of astronomy, mineralogy, botany, geography, architecture, literature, painting, and history--the latter symbolized by the woman, at front/right, back turned, a book in her hands.  When it was unveiled, along with the rest of the university, in 1935 or 1936, it included a triumphal arch--the symbol of Roman conquests--a Fascist eagle, the Fascist date XIV (14th year of Fascism, or 1936), and a figure, presumably Mussolini, on horseback.  He liked to ride.
The mural was severely damaged a few years later, during World War II, and the early 1950s restoration by Carlo Siviero was freighted with guilt and embarrassment over Mussolini's regime and Fascism.  As a result, the restoration eliminated the man and the horse, re-sized the arch and the eagle (although we can't see the eagle), eliminated the Fascist-era date, and changed the "looks" of some of the figures.  Much was painted over.

Another, quite limited restoration took place in 1982.  The current restoration, which promises to restore the mural to something like its original state, began on July 1, 2015, just 6 weeks after our visit.  A reason to return.

Bill

Exiting the university through a Fascist-era arcade, its lines softened by the contemporary banners.

Aurelian Wall Walk VI: From the University to Piazza Fiume, or Glad No One Was With Us

If you look hard, you'll see a piece of the wall in back.  It's a lovely courtyard, but gives no hint of how one can start
walking the wall.

Some of you dear readers may recall we last left you on a wall walk with Annie, which ended at the Aeronautical Ministry Building on viale Castro Pretorio.  [Links to posts describing the wall walks to date are at the end of this post.]  The wall did take a break for that 1930s building, and so did we - for a stop in the University and for lunch.  You may recall Bill and Dianne of RST attempted to walk - in stretches, sometimes with unsuspecting visitors along -  the entire 12 mile circumference of the 3rd century Aurelian Wall, of which about half remains intact.  

For this particular tract, the 2 of us decided it would be easy enough to pick up the wall where we left off, where viale dell'Università meets viale Castro Pretorio, but we were sadly mistaken.  Part of the problem is that the land that once held the enormous ancient Roman military base, Castro Pretorio, now is both military property and the national library with its immense grounds, not all open to the public.  The military base would have been incorporated into, and used to make part of the wall in the 3rd century; this is another example of the Romans incorporating existing buildings into the wall - one reason the Aurelian Wall went up so quickly.  But not so easy to figure out in the 21st century. In any event, here's our route in photos, and we're sparing you the many times we walked back and forth half a mile or so at a time, adding several miles to what should have been the route, all to try to find the  "f***ing wall" (as our co-walker on one stretch, Brian, dubbed it).  

And one of our loyal readers suggested we provide a map of our wall walks.  We are taking that under consideration and hope to provide some map guidance at the end of our trek, but no one would have wanted to follow the route we took this day.  UPDATE:  Map at this Google link.

After walking from the Aeronautical Building, past the garden above, then the military 
compound, we thought we were really getting to the wall when we approached the national library.

We scouted around behind the library, where
it seemed like the wall should be, and this is
what we found.  Yup, that's the wall behind
the fence and bushes.  Not so easy to follow,
unless you are a bird, or a drone.

After walking and back and forth the equivalent of a mile or so,
on viale Castro Pretorio, we gave up and walked to its busy
 intersection with viale del Policinico.  If you can't start where
you want, start at the other end, we figured.  And we knew the
wall would be at the end of this stretch, as this photo shows.

This broken start to the wall was a sight for sore eyes. And the beginning
of our trek backwards along this stretch.

A well-maintained shrine to commemorate World War II
civilians who died was built into the wall here.

The outside of the wall along viale del Policinico
has some particularly nice, tall stretches.

Some even under repair.

But here we lose the wall as it heads into private property.

That's it, back there, not too far away from the military base and the
library, but this was as close as we could get.  Now we have to walk BACK
to the intersection of viale del Policlinico and viale Castro Pretorio.

Once at the intersection, it was easy walking along the busy Corso d'Italia
 (above,  not in the tunnels). Though these "temporary" supports don't 
encourage one to walk too near the wall.

The one-legged World War I Bersagliere hero, Enrico Toti
(we'll see him again in Wall Walk VII) - a monument inside
Porta Pia.

A view of Porta Pia.  Typical of the wall, the Porta forms part of it,
or it forms part of the porta.  This famous (now rebuilt) porta was
where the secular forces breached the wall to force the end of
 the Papal State in the Risorgimento, September 20, 1870

Looking back towards Porta Pia  - nice stretches of the wall, intact.

Not to be deterred, we tried walking INSIDE
 the wall here. No go.  Private property again.

The usual markers for a Pope who restored the wall at
 some point.  In this case, Pius IV, Pope from 1559-1565
 (you can see his coat of arms on Piazza del Popolo as well).

We discovered, before Piazza Fiume, this monument to
September 20, 1870.  The hundreds of times we had driven
down Corso d'Italia (admittedly, mostly in the tunnels),
 we had  always seen Porta Pia, but never this monument.
Shows you what walking will do.

Creative use of a hole in the wall.  That's Piazza Fiume ahead,
with the large La Rinascente department store.

The wall is particularly heavily used as one approaches Piazza Fiume,
with lots of building within  the wall itself, as well as onto it.

Our just desserts, a glass of wine at Caffè Piave, not far from
 Piazza Fiume, and near a bus stop.

Okay, so we hadn't covered a lot of wall ground by now, but we'd been out for hours and so called it quits, or we convinced ourselves it was cocktail hour somewhere.

Dianne

Wall Walk I: Porta Metronia to Porta Maggiore.
Wall Walk II: Porta Metronia to Porta San Paolo.
Wall Walk III: The Tame and the Wild Sides (Porta San Paolo to the Tevere).
Wall Walk IV: Porta Portese to the Gianicolo, or Brian's Lament.
Wall Walk V: Porta Maggiore to Castro Pretorio, or Annie's Reward.

Lotta Studentesca, Blocco Studentesco: the young right wing tackles education

As you walk the streets of Rome--and if you "read" its walls--you'll find evidence of two similarly-sounding organizations: the Lotta Studentesca (literally Student Struggle) and Blocco Studentesco (Student Block).  Both are student organizations, and both are actively--perhaps sometimes too actively--involved in changing Italian schools, including secondary schools and universities. 

Posted outside a school on via Taranto

Although its name dates to the 1970s, the current Lotta Studentesca began as the youth arm of Forza Nuova, a militant, anti-immigrant, homophobic far-right political party founded in 1997.  The LS wants more investment in the public schools, opposes costly textbooks (costly, they say, because of corruption), is anti-drugs, and advocates more emphasis on school sports. 

Reprediamoci Tutto: We'll Take it all Back

The Blocco Studentesco emerged in 2006 from CasaPound, a neo-fascist organization named after the American poet Ezra Pound, who in the 1940s, while living in Italy, was an ardent supporter of the Mussolini regime.  It currently has affiliates in some 40 Italian cities, including Rome, Verona, Parma, and Palermo. 







The Rome affiliate has carried out occupations of several schools in Rome and, on October 29, 2008, occupied the tourist mecca Piazza Navona, where its supporters participated in a bloody clash with opponents on the left.  The clash was precipitated by the Gelmini Decree, named after Mariastella Gelmini, the

A Rome school occupied by Blocco Studentesco

Minister of Education, and passed by the Italian parliament.  The Gelmini Decree was composed of a series of proposed actions, most of which were opposed by the Blocco Studentesco.  The group was especially angry about cuts to the education budget (response: "we won't pay for your crisis") and a new course offering in "civic education" that was likely understood as an exercise in thought control. 

Despite the militant protests, the BS program seems less than revolutionary:  improved services, reduced bureaucracy, more student representation in decision-making, opposition to public money being spent on private schools.  A Roman friend offers a different perspective.  He describes both movements as "violent and dangerous," "anti-Semitic and homophobic."  "The difference [between them]," he adds, "is minimal and linked to personal opposition and dislike between their leaders." 

Bill

For more on "reading" Rome's walls, see our December 2011 post.

Opposition to government spending on private schools. 

Elegant but Not Ostentatious: A Favorite Fountain

Rome has hundreds of fountains, and every visitor has a favorite, or a few favorites.   One of mine is this gem of a drinking fountain (the water running continuously, ala romana).  It's part of the University of Rome--the main campus, La Sapienza, the one built by the Mussolini regime in the late 1930s.  The entrance to the campus, a combination of rationalist and monumental modernism, is located on via d. Scienze, just a few blocks from the Termini train station.  You can see the entrance (from inside the campus) in the photograph, behind the fountain. 

The bowl of the fountain is set into a three-footed base, subtly and elegantly decorated on each side with those graceful, gently waving parallel lines that at once reinforce the vertical and blend it with a different sort of energy, one, perhaps, with its roots in nature rather than man, as if the water were flowing not from a pipe, but from a spring.  Whatever it is, it works.   Bill

The University at Tor Vergata: A Brief Tour

The latest addition to the club of Rome universities is Tor Vergata, named after the alternating red and grey bricks of a striped 14th-century tower.  It is a long way from the Centro, out there to the east with all those other "Tors": Tor Sapienza, Tor Bella Monaca, Torre Maura, Tor Borgata.  I would add Tor Pignattara, except that this community, long considered to be inhumanely removed (in more ways than one) from central Rome, seems in comparison to Tor Vergata very close in, indeed. 

Our first thought on considering how to out there was to take the Via Casilina trolley/train.  This was a mistake--the university is located three stops beyond the GRA--though in retrospect, in the absence of a scooter or car we would consider the Metro and a bus transfer--that, in reverse, is how we got home.  The trolley stopped frequently, and the ride, through an uglier part of outlying Rome, took well over an hour.  Even then, we weren't "there."  From the local natives we determined that the school was to the west, which it was; about a mile, in the mid-day sun.

At last we found the entrance to the campus--somewhat understated, we thought--down a dirt hill and through a parking lot. 





Things improved after that.  We found the academic core: a set of reasonably attractive  buildings in the style of contemporary modernism.  A trifle sterile, perhaps.  Alfredo Lambertucci and Tommaso Valle, architects. 




In one of the buildings, students studied at tables in a hallway.  Tor Vergata offers 113 courses of study through six "faculties": economics, law, engineering, letters, medicine, and science.  In the 2010/11 school year, the school claimed 43,000 students and 1,538 faculty. 

We came across a new, and on this day, almost empty, classroom.  Students were scarce elsewhere.  Perhaps the school year was not yet in full swing; it was early October. 




Outside, a small group was celebrating a graduation or some other achievement; the object of that celebration (center) was wearing a laurel wreath (appropriately, the Italian word for graduated is laureata). 




The Economics Department was preparing to host a leadership event, using English and a Warhol-style soup can, with Campus standing in for Campbell's. 

Away from the core, where, in the U.S., one might have expected green fields with athletes perfecting their skills, was a vast plain of dust and scrub, bisected here and there by streets too broad for the few vehicles using them.  A sign for "Scavi"--excavations--suggested that efforts to build on this ground had been halted when ruins or artifacts were discovered.  We wondered if Sergio Leone had thought about filming his spaghetti westerns out here. 

To the far west--at least a mile from the core, and hidden from it, the husk of Calatrava's unfinished--and unlike to remain unfinished--swimming pool.  It was to be a key venue for the World Swimming Championships (held in 2009). 

And to the south, framing the Alban Hills in the distance, a curious double arch, reminiscent of what Mussolini's planners had in mind for E42--the 1942 exposition intended to commemorate the founding event of Fascism, the 1922 March on Rome.  Italian Fascism never dies; it just reappears in weird places.  And, to the arch's left, visible two photos above, a huge cross. 

Nearby, in the midst of the desolation, we found a lovely church, recently constructed (2002, Vittorio De Feo) but with a judicious and appealing postmodern look.  According to one architectural guide, the building combines the geometric qualities of Russian constructivism, Bernini's facility with light, and the atemporalism of 1930s modernism.


It was open, and we had a look around. 





To be honest, we doubt we've done justice to the campus at Tor Vergata.  Yes, parts of it reminded us of Zabriski Point.  But Tor Vergata is reputed to have thousands of students, and we observed only dozens.  It would look different packed with young bodies. 

But maybe not different enough. 
Bill
On the celebrity modern architect working in Rome see an earlier post on 5 of Rome's "Starchitects".