"Googie" architecture: in Rome

If you've spent time in Los Angeles, or Las Vegas, or even Seattle, you'll have some knowledge of "googie" architecture, even if you don't know the name.  Associated with the 1950s, the style features a futuristic feel, produced by sharp and odd angles, sweeping arches, boomerang and pallette

Gas station, Los Angeles

shapes, zig-zag lines, and atom motifs.  In Los Angeles, where it took its name from "Googies," a coffee shop designed by modernist architect John Lautner, it is usually found in gas stations, fast food restaurants, and coffee shops, though there's a superb example at LAX, the city's main airport, where the Theme Building, completed by Pereira and Luckman architects in 1961, greets visitors with its space-age glow.

Italy had its boom years, too, but it didn't participate with quite the same intensity in the catalysts of the googie moment--the space age and the era's car culture--and so outstanding examples of the style, especially in Rome, are few.  In fact, the word "few" may overestimate.  Still, googie enthusiasts might have some success in the San Giovanni area, easily accessed by the Metro, where a construction boom in the 1950s and 1960s yielded several buildings with some relationship to Googie.

Garage, Metronio Market

Back of Metronio Market

Two are on via Magna Grecia, a major thoroughfare running south from the San Giovanni Metro stop.  As you walk south, the first you'll come across is Ricardo Morrandi's Metronio Market.  Its outstanding feature is the playful circular garage, but the two long sides of the triangular facade are also of interest, with their accordion-like window treatments.  The market opened in 1957.

Piccadilly Hotel, once a movie theater

Another, a bit further along, is the lower facade of what is now the Piccadilly Hotel, and was once a movie theater: the googie is in the dark forms which bore the name of the cinema and in the multi-angled canopy below. (The closed cinemas are the protagonists in an Italian film, "Fantasmi Urbani: Inchiesta sui cinema chiusi da Roma" - "Urban ghosts - An investigation into Rome's closed cinemas". You can see a trailer on YouTube - look for hints of googie.)

Across the street, still on via Magna Grecia--perhaps across from the market--you'll see a 1960-vintage apartment building, sandwiched between two structures in the more-familiar neo-classical style.  The angled balconies participate in the "googie" mode.

Not the best photo for this purpose. The "pallette" ceiling
is upper left.  

Continuing south on via Magna Grecia, turn right on via Gallia.  In the second block, on the left side of the street, just past the church, is Bar Clementi.  It's a great place for a coffee--it was our regular coffee bar for two months--and one doesn't have to pay extra to sit down.  And while you're there, note the pallette-shaped ceiling, right out of a googie textbook.  Ceilings such as this one, which invoke the space age, are quite common in Rome bars.

Angled balconies, via Gallia

Exiting Bar Clementi and continuing west on via Gallia, you'll find another set of cleverly angled
balconies.  Another tribute to googie.

Bill

A hint of "googie" in the shape of the shields for the lettering
of a dancehall, "Stellarium," in Appio Latino, 2008

Rear of the Appio Latino dancehall, with its mushroom roof

Cinecittà - Don't Miss Rome's Hollywood

We have longed for years to get onto the world-famous Italian movie studio, Cinecittà.  But it’s always been completely closed to visitors (unless you are rich AND famous), as we note in Rome the Second Time. All of a 

Finally going through the gates

sudden, it’s open, thanks to a long-running exhibition of artifacts from the fabled studio’s history.  What’s more, unadvertised tours of several of the back lots leave every hour (a.m.) and every hour and a half (p.m.).   Supposedly all this ends November 30 when the exhibition closes, but, as in many things Italian, it may just keep going.  So if you’re in Rome, and love films as much as we do, check out the Cinecittà website to make sure the studios are open, and hie yourself there!  If you take Metro A to the Cinecittà exit, you’ll pop up right in front of the studio gates.  The show is 10 Euros with lots of discounted tickets (youth, students, olders, etc.).  Open 10:30-7:30; closed Tuesdays; special children's area open Saturday and Sunday only.

Dirk Bogarde's costume
 from The Night Porter

Back lot for Scorcese's
 Gangs of New York and other films

Back lot for US TV series, Rome,
with our guide, Francesca

As the tour will tell you (there is some info in English), the studio was founded under Mussolini, at the direction of a politico who studied studios in Europe and went on to propose the largest on what was then the outskirts of Rome.  It was quickly built and opened in 1937, then briefly used by the Germans during the 1943/44 occupation.  It still hosts the largest studio in Europe and was the favorite place for Fellini, Sergio Leone, and many others.  No, it’s not like those Universal Studio tours in LA or Disneyland, but it’s authentic.

Cinecitta' Due

If you want to do a two-fer, the fairly glitzy shopping mall, Cinecittà Due is just down the street.  It has a very nice gallery on the top floor with a current exhibition – closing 6 November-- on the theme of aqueducts (they know the way to our hearts).  Dianne

Photo in the Aqueduct exhibit

Watercolor in Aqueduct exhibit - by Calatrava

Another cinema bites the dust in Rome and a survey and a rant on Angels and Demons for good measure

We're sorry to report another theater in Rome showing original language films, usually English, has closed.  The Metropolitan, a multiplex 2 steps from Piazza del Popolo, fell victim apparently to rising real estate prices in the heart of the Centro. 

The line in the picture is for Angels and Demons opening day in Rome.  Yup, we were in the line.  In an earlier post we described this very un-Roman line outside the Metropolitan.

For those, like us, who enjoy original language films in Rome, a group is trying to get another locale started.  They're currently taking a survey of interest.  We urge you to take the survey (you get to name your favorite actors and directors too).  Here's the link: 
https://spreadsheets.google.com/viewform?formkey=dEVFYm41SmNOdVVsWUZ3eHE1RWtiOUE6MQ

And, while I'm ranting myself about Rome and movies, I can't resist directing you to an all-time rant by my favorite movie critic, the BBC's Mark Kermode.  His famous rant on Angels and Demons is on youtube,  where he calls it "the stupidest movie" ever made.

Dianne