Ballad of the Aegean Sea: Patrizio Nissirio's new Historical Mystery

A little-known World War II war crime on a Greek Island is a major focus of a fascinating first novel by Patrizio Nissirio, an accomplished journalist and author.

The book's title, Una Ballata del Mare Egeo/A Ballad of the Aegean Sea, does not reveal its ties to Rome. However, the novel's protagonist, himself a young journalist, was born and raised in Rome's Piazza Bologna area (the setting for two of Rome the Second Time's 15 itineraries).  And it is from this mid-century, middle-class quartiere of Rome that the story unfolds. The journalist-protagonist, like the author, is of Greek descent, and he traces his family's history back to those Greek Islands that were the last part of Greece to be reclaimed - in 1945 -  after Italy invaded Greece and the Axis powers then occupied it.

Nissirio expertly weaves the story of Italians on the Greek Islands in World War II with present-day desires to explore one's family roots and the origins of right-wing nostalgia.  The mystery is fascinatingly complex and fun to follow.  Even more fascinating for me is the history on which the novel is based.  The book definitely will appeal to those who like "true crime" stories.

Nissirio's visceral love for Greece jumps from the pages of the book, as does his knowledge of the Greek islands.  These islands even today bear witness to significant signs of Italian colonization (if I can call it that), with their Fascist-era town plans and buildings that remain.

Kudos to Nissirio for a story well-told, history well-revived, and a good read.

Ah, yes, the question of language.  The book to date is available only in Italian, from amazon.it.  For those of us whose knowledge of the language is less than perfect, it is a surprisingly easy read.  And hopefully a translation and movie rights are in the book's future!

Una Ballata del Mare Egeo is available on amazon.it.

Patrizio Nissirio

Nissirio has spent most of his career with ANSA, the Italian news service, with long assignments (as in 4-6 years) in Washington, DC., Athens, and London. He is director of ANSAMed,  ANSA's multilingual information service for the Mediterranean.   He has written several nonfiction books, including one on the Greek economy.  Full disclosure: Patrizio Nissirio is a long-time friend of ours.  He helped us secure Walter Veltroni's (then a recent mayor of Rome) introduction to Rome the Second Time.  And, he introduced us to much of the Piazza Bologna area.

Dianne

Finocchio and the Collina della Pace: Anti-Mafia Street Art

Finocchio, a suburb of Rome 18km out the historic via Casilina on the city's east side, has an illustrious ancient history and now, a present worth visiting.  Settlement here dates to pre-Roman times--though we're not aware that anything can be seen above ground from that era--and Finocchio is not far from what remains of the pre-Roman community of Gabii.  Otherwise, it's much like dozens of other similar towns: apartments, a few shops, a bar where one can buy a drink or a lottery ticket.

Today, what makes the community just a bit unusual is a small park along the main road.  Inaugurated in 2007 by then Rome Mayor Walter Veltroni, it's called Collina della Pace (Hill of Peace), a name that refers, with much irony, to its previous owner, mafia boss Enrico Nicoletti, treasurer of the notorious Banda della Magliana gang that brought chaos to Rome in the late 1970s.






As a large wall dedication explains, the park commemorates Giuseppe "Peppino" Impostato, who comes to our story with his own curious history.  Peppino himself was born into a mafia family in 1948, yet he took a different course.

Peppino Impostato (right) with Danilo
Dolci, 1967

Rather than a life of crime and corruption, Peppino distinguised himself as a poet, a giornalist, and a
peace activist--he participated in a 1967 peace protest organized by social reformer Danilo Dolci (whom we met in Sicily in 1962). In May 1978--during the violent political conflicts of the time known as the anni di piombo (years of lead), while a candidate in municipal elections, Peppino was assassinated.

Diavù at work

Although sometimes described as the only green space in Finocchio, the park is in most ways unexceptional; indeed, one's impression of the park is that it's not even all that green. However, it gains a certain presence from its origins: the land was confiscated from its mafia owner in 2001. Then, in 2014, its main wall was graced by a significant piece of anti-mafia street art, a mural by the well-known artist David Vecchiato (known in the art world as Diavù).  



The project was coordinated by M.U.Ro. (Museo di Urban Art di Roma), represented at the end of the mural by the boxed letters M,U,R, and O. We're not sure to what "da Sud" refers.

Finocchio residents, likely gathered for the mural dedication in 2014

While the main themes of the mural--opposition to the mafia, the celebration of peace, and the grasp of capitalism--seem clear enough, elements of it are less so.

Why the reference to "slot-machine"?  And what is the meaning of the words "L'antimafia non ha bisogna di eroi" (The anti-mafia has no need of heroes)?  Do they refer to the martyrdom of Peppino Impostato?  Or to something else?   Who is "il biondo di Kosovo" (the blond from Kosovo)?

"Ecomostro: Pollution as monster, tightening its grip around (a factory chimney?).  What's with the white hand--in a skirt, with Minnie Mouse high heels?  

Walking hands (male figures, apparently), carrying a love Rome sign?  Hashtag MAMMAMAFIA?  

Men and women, holding up signs extolling the good things in life: welfare (in English!), home, rights, income, about to be hooked and consumed by the slot machine.

The park is located on the north side of via Casilina, at via Bolognetta.  And the mural can be located on, and is explained at, the Street Art Roma app, which we recommend (the app is better than the Web site).
Bill

Rome: Italy's Capital...of Evictions

Pigneto mural.  The flag says "STOP Sfratti"

"Rome is Italy's capital of evictions," announces professor of Urban Studies Pierpaolo Mudu in a recent essay on housing.  According to Mudu, about 6700 eviction orders were issued in 2011, and since 1983 actual evictions have average 2850 every year.  About 60% of evictions occur because tenants can't or wouldn't pay the rent, most of the rest because a rental contract had expired.

The Italian word for evictions is "sfratti."

Ar bottom: "Together we block evictions."  

The odd thing about evictions is one seldom sees them happening.  No heap of furniture outside, no
tearful tenants being dragged from their doorways. That's because today, most evictions take place on Rome's periphery, where the city's working class and poor reside, rather than in the tourist-heavy Centro.













That wasn't always the case.  In the 1920s and 1930s, thousands of ordinary Romans were evicted from their center-city homes and apartments to make way for the broad avenues and vehicles favored by the Fascist regime.  They were moved to borgate (villages, hamlets), including Acilia, built from scratch in 1923, about 15 km outside the city.  Later, those evicted--both from legal and illegal housing (borgetti) were moved to Magliana (built at the end of the 1960s), and to public housing built at Laurentino 38, Tor Bella Monaca, and Corviale.

Typical post-war public housing.  Centocelle area.  

For much of the early twentieth century, Rome governments, whether Fascist or democratic, built  a lot of public housing.  Some of it, as in close-in Garbatella, was well-designed and produced workable communities. And some of it--Corviale is a famous example--was poorly designed, alienating from the start.

Beginning in about 1980 (coinciding with Reagan's election in the United States), city governments showed little interest in public housing, even as housing absorbed a larger and larger percentage of household income, and evictions continued apace.

Squatters in EUR, c. 1940

Thousands of  people found accommodations as squatters, living in unoccupied quarters in housing projects, or in shanty towns without public services.  In the 1970s there were forced relocations from Valle Aurelia, Mandrione, Prenestino and Casilino to "dormitories" in Corviale, Laurentino 38, and Spinaceto.

Idroscalo, once again threatened with demolition.

Today there is apparently only one borgetto (an illegally constructed neighborhood) left in Rome: Idroscalo, on the coast. About 100 of the homes in Idroscalo were bulldozed in 2011, and it seems clear that the authorities would like to level the remaining buildings to make way for a large marina, a resort hotel, and other amenities they think will attract tourists with money.

Vicolo Savini, after evictions of Rom (Roma) in 2011

It's tempting to blame the evictions on insensitive right-wing mayors, like Gianni Alemanno, and indeed he was responsible for the 2011 evictions from 4 unauthorized encampments, in Tiburtina and vicolo Savini (across the river from the Marconi neighborhood), most of whose residents were Roma (sometimes called "Rom," sometimes "gypsies").  But the center-left hasn't been much better.  In 2005, Walter Veltroni (who wrote an introduction to our first book, Rome the Second Time) authorized the eviction of hundreds of Senegalese and Italians from Residence Roma, a building near Forte Bravetta on Rome's north end.

Communist Party poster opposing
evictions.  Posted by a Quadraro committee,
but this one was in Torpignattara.  

Resistance to evictions, and more generally to inadequate housing, was in the post-war years led by the Communist Party, which sought to help residents of the borgate by working to legalize illegal housing.  Although not the force it was years ago, the party remains active in opposing evictions.

Graffiti in San Basilio, commemorating the 30th anniversary
 of the 1974 deadly clash with police over evictions
 (reading "San Basilio: Same Dignity, Same Anger, 1974-2014")

After 1970, the main form of resistance was squatting--that is, the illegal occupation of empty apartments and buildings, including public housing projects--along with demands for lower rents.  At one protest in San Basilio in September 1974, a young left-wing activist was killed in a clash with police.

Today, some of San Basilio's "projects" are decorated with handsome multi-story murals, including a group of 6 by Hitnes.  Even so, if the posters and graffiti in San Basilio and similar neighborhoods are any indication, evictions continue, and with them, new efforts at resistance.

Bill

"Rent is Robbery. Occupy"     Pigneto.  

Ponte Ostiense: Under Construction

Through a hole in the fence.

In October, we pulled the scooter off Via Ostiense for a quick look at another of Rome's new bridges.  We couldn't get all that close, but we did manage to get a good pic looking through a hole in the fence (right); another with the camera held over the fence (below); and a third of a big on-site posting listing everyone who was working on the project and a rendering of what it was supposed to look like when completed. 

Lots of lanes.

The new bridge, over the Metro tracks and the Roma-Lido railway, will connect the heavily-trafficked Circonvallazione Ostiense (with Garbatella to the south and Ostiense to the north) with Via Ostiense, a major north-south thoroughfare that runs right into the Pyramid.  That's fine, but the real purpose of the bridge is apparently to connect Via Cristoforo Colombo (an enormous highway heading to the ocean) on the east with Viale Marconi, on the west.  And to do that adequately will mean another bridge, this one to span the Tevere below the old, out-dated, over-used, but loved Ponte di Ferro ("Iron bridge", officially Ponte dell'Industria).

The Spine

On its west side, the bridge will touch down right next to the now-abandoned Magazzini Generali (General Storage Area--a now-abandoned massive market/wholesale distribution center), to be redesigned by the Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas.  There is also a larger, visionary project involved, the brainchild of former mayor Walter Veltroni, something called the Citta' di Giovani (City of Youth), which imagines revitalizing Ostiense, an older industrial but already trendy area with bars, clubs, and restaurants catering to young people.  (Of course, the young folks already have started up their bars and clubs here, as we've reported - more than once.)  Apparently Koolhaas is in charge of the larger project. 

Elegant Curves

We would like to credit Koolhaas as the architect of the bridge, but no one is saying that, and the designer of the structure remains a mystery,  Nor does the bridge have a name, although it is sometimes referred to as the Ponte Ostiense.  Rome's commissioner of public works proudly announced that a bridge of this type--arches supported by steel wires was his description--would be a first for the city, and he may be right.  The structure is 240 meters from end to end, with 125 meters fully suspended.  Three vehicle lanes each direction (two of the six for public vehicles), and ample sidewalks for pedestrians. 

Ponte della Musica

We claim no expertise in bridge design, but we like the look of this one.  We would have liked it more had we not seen the new pedestrian (so far) Ponte della Musica (right), over the Tevere to the north, with its wavy curves fashioned from white tubing, not unlike the emerging Ponte Ostiense.  (See our earlier post on that bridge.) After all, we're in the era of the designer bridge--like the 1950s was the era of the glass skyscraper--and some of the designs, despite their obvious differences, have a similar look and style.  Not bad, just not "wow we haven't seen that before." 

Bill

Rome's Starchitects: Meier, Piano, Hadid, Fuksas, Portoghesi

Our thoughtful daughter-in-law sent along an article from amNewYork on New York City's "Starchitects," the flashiest of the architects who have built in the city, those who design projects that "capture the imagination," as a fellow architect put it. 

The article divides the New York stars into three categories: Elder Statesmen (Frank Gehry and Henry Cobb, both in their early 80's); Europeans (Sir Norman Foster, 75; Santiago Calatrava, 59, who is building what promises to be a spectacular transit hub at ground zero; Renzo Piano, 73, whose New York Times Building and addition to the Morgan Library, both of which we took in last month; and Jean Nouvel, 65; and Gotham Stars (including Bruce Fowle, Bob Fox, and Richard Meier (for his Perry Street Towers).  The age info is in the article, though why it's important--or relevant--we're not sure. 

Rome has a magnificent architectural heritage dating to the Republic and the Empire, and includes major contributions in the Renaissance and, less well known, in the 19th and 20th centuries.  But the past decade or so, and especially under the liberal, arts-oriented former mayor, Walter Veltroni, Rome has been active again, hiring Starchitects to design major museums, performance spaces, and--most recently--a convention center.  As far as we know, there are currently five Starchitects who have built or are building in Rome: Richard Meier, Renzo Piano, Zaha Hadid, Massimiliano Fuksas, and Paolo Portoghesi.  Three are Italians.  (And, several - including Piano, Hadid and Fuksas - are featured in our new book: Modern Rome: 4 Great Walks for the Curious Traveler.  More information on the book is at the end of this post.)



Cleaning the paint of Dadaist vandals  from Meier's
box for the Ara Pacis, June 2009

Richard Meier, 76, was born in 1934 in Newark, New Jersey.  Like Piano and Hadid, he's a winner of one of architecture's most prestigious prizes, the Pritzker (1984).  His best-known project is the Getty Center in the hills of Los Angeles, a monumental if somewhat sterile complex that recalls the grandeur and splendor of ancient Rome as well as the Italian villas and gardens of the 16th century.  Other admired buildings include the tourist center in New Harmony, Indiana, the Hartford Seminary of Theology (late 1970s) and the High Museum of Art in Atlanta (early 1980s).   He's known for not caring much for architectural fashion and for sticking with the tried and true ideas of mid-century European and American modernism.  A purist, most of his buildings are rectilinear, box-like forms--not a bad description of his Rome container for the Ars Pacis, a building whose modernist ordinariness has infuriated the city's right wing politicians and even some of its residents, who can't believe it cost 25 million Euro.  He's a Rome starchitect NOT for his Ara Pacis box, but for his sublime Jubilee church (2000), a gem built out in the suburb of Tor Tre Teste--a building so unusual for Meier that it must have come from a dream state, from the architect's subconscious (see Dianne's post on the church, which is #17 in our Rome the Second Time Top 40).  Even so, his Ara Pacis effort produced a strong backlash--against modernism, the particular building and its relationship to the site, and the arts.  In a statement that may have relevance for Meier's experience with an irate Roman public over his Ars Pacis building (photo above right), fellow Starchitect Massimiliano Fuksas (see below) notes: "When people are prepared to damage your building, you have failed." 





Renzo Piano's Parco della Musica

Renzo Piano, 73, was born in 1937 in Genoa.  Piano acknowledges several architects that have influenced him, including Louis Kahn and Pier Luigi Nervi, a Rome Starchitect of an earlier era, and one of whose masterworks, the Palazetto dello Sport, is across the street from Piano's own contribution.  Piano made his name as a co-designer of  the Pompidou Centre in  Paris--intended, Piano says, "to be a joyful urban machine, a creature that might have come from a Jules Verne book."  Other well known buildings of his include the 1982 museum for the De Menil Collection in Houston, and a much-ballyhooed addition, recently opened, to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA - where we've spent a lot of time).  The addition is highly functional but, like Meier's Ara Pacis container, essentially a nice box (and the same applies to Piano's Morgan addition in NYC).  Fortunately, Rome got the best out of Piano; his Parco della Musica complex in the quartiere of Flaminio is both functional (except for some maze-like approaches to upper-level seating) and, in the Pompidou Centre mode, playful, combining traditional modernism with shapely organic motifs.
__________________________________________________________________________________



Aerial View, MAXXI gallery (lower left)

Hadid's MAXXI, from the rear

Zaha Hadid, 60, was born in 1950 in Baghdad.  She practiced with Rem Koolhaas before opening her own shop.  As a child, she was influenced by a tour of ancient Sumerian cities in southern Iraq.  "The beauty of the landscape," she explains, "where sand, water, birds, buildings, and people all somehow flowed together--has never left me.  I'm trying to discover--invent, I suppose--an architecture, and forms of urban planning, that do something of the same kind in a contemporary way."  Hadid's first major success was the Center for Contemporary Art in Cincinnati (c. 2000).  Another was a museum adjoining Frank Lloyd Wright's Price Tower in Bartlesville, Oklahoma, a commission she was awarded because she is sometimes understood as Wright-like in her enthusiasm for futuristic designs and, according to one writer, her "visionary rethinking of the relationship between humans and buildings."  Her recently opened MAXXI gallery--a 10-minute walk from Piano's Parco della Musica--has made her a Rome Starchitect.  It's typical of Hadid's work in that it looks wonderfully inventive from the air (photo above left, lower left), a perspective available mostly to pigeons.  However, as our readers have heard more than once, we aren't fond of the way the building relates to its surroundings or to human beings seeking access to it.  From certain angles it looks sensational; from others it's a forbidding hunk of windowless cement.  Some nice spaces inside.  (BTW, one can do a nice architectural tour of Nervi, Piano and Hadid within a couple blocks of each other.)

  

Architectect's rendering of Fuksas' "Cloud" building,
 under construction in EUR

Proposed Italian Space Agency

 Massimiliano Fuksas, 66, was born in Rome in 1944, while the city was occupied by the German army, and he earned his degree in architecture from La Sapienza (Rome's historied university) in 1969.  Fuksas is the loner/rebel type.  "All my life," he has said, "I have fought against form, shape and style," and he denies any "evolution" to his work: "I use a different language each time."  He admits to being an admirer of Francesco Borromini.  Fuksas is well known for the Zenith Music Hall in Strasbourg, France (2008), a bold structure in orange, and  for the Milan Trade Fair complex (2005); we also like his modernistic renovcation of the former stables in Frascati, neaer Rome.  Fuksas is scheduled for Rome Starchitectdom when his EUR "Cloud" building--apparently a meeting and convention center--opens; it's currently under construction and, somewhat surprisingly, his first major building in Rome.  (See Bill's post on our exploration of the "Cloud".) Fuksas is also designing a new unhomelike home (above right)  for the Italian Space Agency (we didn't know the Italians had a Space Agency), to be built near the 1960 Olympic Village and Hadid's MAXXI.   

Paolo Portoghesi, 79, was born in 1931 in Rome, where he earned a degree in architecture at La Sapienza in 1957.  For much of his career he has been in private practice while teaching architectural theory at the University.  His inclusion among Rome's Starchitects is appropriately suspect; his deep interest in the history of architecture--in Borromini, the baroque, and Michelangelo, especially--has given his work strong links to tradition and history, as in his Casa Baldi (1957-62), a house built an hour from Rome in the village of Olevano Romano.  Nonetheless, he's earned the designation of Starchitect for his striking mosque, built 1974/75  in the north end of the city, near Acqua Acetosa, at the behest of King Fahd of Saudi Arabia (and it comes in at #24 on Rome the Second Time's Top 40).  It is said that the building strikes a balance between modernism, Roman forms, and the traditions of mosque architecture, which surely functioned here as a restraint on the architect's creativity and innovation.  Dianne believes the building rises to the Starchitect threshold and "captures the imagination,"  and the interior photo at left would seem to confirm her view.
  

Bill

Hadid's MAXXI and Piano's Parco della Musica are on the Flaminio itinerary; and Fuksas's Cloud is on the EUR itinerary in 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.

Graffiti: A Rome Primer

Although New York and Los Angeles are the most famous graffiti sites in the world, Rome is an active center of this controversial art form. Like Los Angeles, Rome is a city of stucco walls, perfect surfaces for graffiti artists, and they've taken advantage of these canvasses--and other surfaces, too, covering the city with drawings and paintings. Although much of it still strikes us as the work of talentless adolescents with too much time on their hands, we vowed to learn more. We were blown away by Steve Grody's book, Graffiti L.A. (Abrams), which taught us the basic terminology (tags, signatures, crews, fill, simples, throw-ups, shout-outs); convinced us that many graffiti practitioners are serious artists; gave us a sense of the culture and politics of graffiti; and even raised the disturbing possibility that all the junk that Rome's tourists complain about may be a "necessary" preliminary to the production of the good stuff, the "real" art. The blogsite www.reallyrome.com/blog has some nice 2007 examples of Trastevere graffiti. The one at lower right features two tags, one by Lucas, the other, in the center and less obvious, by Croels. Tagging is a controversial aspect of graffiti writing, because it seems so much like scribbling. The upside is that by writing his name 5 times on this wall, Lucas is developing his talent.

Jessica's Rome Photo Blog also has some good graffiti pix - put "graffiti" into the search engine on her blog.

In Rome, we met with the city's queen of graffiti, Maria Teresa Natale. While not herself an artist, Maria Teresa knows more about Rome's graffiti scene than any one else, with the possible exception of Gabriella Tarquini, with whom she manages the website lascia il segno (leave the sign), essentially an online, annotated graffiti library, focusing on Rome, Milan, and Berlin, and housing more than 11,000 images. There's another link to the website on the right of this site. (And, don't bother with "English"; all the good stuff is pictured in the Italian parts of the site.)

Over coffee in Monteverde Vecchio, Maria Teresa told us about the Rome graffiti scene. Rome, she explained, is the only city in the world where both regular trains--she mentioned the ones that run from the Ostiense station to Lido d'Ostia (to the beach) and the metro cars--are "decorated," as she put it. In Milan, she said, graffiti writers were more likely to be designers who functioned like regular artists, presenting their work in gallery exhibitions. Rome hasn't reached that stage, although its better educated artists, some of them engineers or architects, are often working with posters or stickers, while the poorer and less educated are more likely to be doing the spray can thing, making letters or figures ("puppets," in the English translation from the Italian).

Among Rome's notable graffiti artists are sprayers Thoms, Bol, Soeww, and Genuine Crew; the letterer Kemh; and street artists Lex, Hogre, JB Rock, Diamont, and Sten (not to be confused with Stan), whose puppets are legendary. One of Sten's atypical yet iconic puppet figures for the Teatro Vascello, in Monteverde Vecchio, is at left. The works of these artists, and that of others, is likely to be found in train stations (Maria Teresa mentioned Nuovo Salario and Appiano) and Centri Sociali (social centers), notably Forte Prenestino (see Rome the Second Time for a description and directions).

Most graffiti writing in Rome is against the law. The liberal, reform-minded former mayor Walter Veltroni initiated a "conversation" with graffiti artists, likely in an effort both to recognize the artistic merit of the form and to bring it under some control. He offered the artists about a dozen "legal" walls, each about 100 meters long, outside the city center, and other walls--some in train stations--for which artists could sign up to paint and control that particular space for a three month period. In retrospect, those were the good old days. The 3-month wall program has been suspended, and heavy fines are levied on anyone caught painting train cars.

Maria Teresa told us that most of the best graffiti is located far outside the Centro, where artists are less likely to interrupted by the police. Still, we've found several worthy, close-in sites. For political graffiti, we recommend the left-leaning community of Garbatella, easily reachable on Metro B. See the subtle example at left, one of several on the building.

On the other end of the political spectrum is the graffiti sponsored by businesses that would rather have a nice drawing on their saracinesca (metal shutter) than messy tags.

Another good site, described in Itinerary 10 in Rome the Second Time (p. 150), is Forte Braschi, located in Parco del Pineto, where the art work lines the outside perimeter of the military installation.

The third close-in site is an underpass on via Appia Antica, less than 100 meters outside the city wall. The art that opens this post, at top left, is from there.

Bill

The (former) Mayor of Rome, #1 Kindle and Rome the Second Time

A couple of cool Rome the Second Time events yesterday: handing (former) Rome Mayor Walter Veltroni his own copy of Rome the Second Time, and discovering RST hit #1 on the Kindle speciality travel list on amazon.com.

Veltroni wrote the enchanting and very Italian (even more so in the original - if that makes any sense) foreword to our book, but he had only read it in an electronic version until now. He gave us a huge smile and said "that's the book!" We caught Veltroni on his way to the press opening where he was commenting on a new book on Mussolini's daughter and her affair with a communist (Edda Ciano e il communista), held appropriately in the Casino Nobile of Villa Torlonia, where Mussolini and his family lived when he was in Rome.

While waiting for Veltroni, Bill and I enjoyed the Villa (it's in Rome the Second Time, in itinerary 8) and marveled again at how gorgeous it is, especially compared to the derelict park, full of abandoned buildings and detritus (vegetable, animal and mineral) we saw when we first started coming to the Villa over 10 years ago. Veltroni appropriately commented at the book session that the restoration happened under his watch as mayor (his support of culture in Rome is one of the reasons we asked him to write the foreward to RST). The Casino Nobile itself was occupied after Italy exited from the war by Americans, who purposefully vandalized it because it was Mussolini's home. Photo above right is a poster of the cover of the book (photo above left) propped up against one of the large tubs (stolen from some Roman bath) adorning the front of the Casino Nobile. Dianne