Casa Balla: A Visit to the Home of the Futurist Artist - Home in Rome Series #5

Above, a cramped hallway with every surface painted, and light fixtures designed by Balla.

Among its many contemporary wonders, Rome has the home of Futurist artist Giacomo Balla, an apartment Balla made into one of his great works of art, thanks to the contemporary national art gallery MAXXI which restored and manages it. Every surface of the multi-room apartment in the della Vittoria neighborhood (just north of Prati and the Vatican) is covered with the great 20th-century Futurist's art.

The Turin-born Balla moved into the home in June1929, when he was 58, with his wife and two daughters, both painters. They transformed the "clerical" apartment into a work of art in which they all lived until their deaths, the last in 1994.

Every inch is designed and decorated, from chairs and rugs (left) to lights (below).

Clothes, dishware, cabinets, door handles - nothing escaped Balla's desire to shape it, design it, paint it. Below, a small desk and dresser under a loft bed, with Rome the Second time authors taking a selfie in the mirror.

Right, the "Studiolo Rosso" (Little Red Study) where Balla wrote. It's not for the claustrophobic among us.

Left, even clothes were fashioned to the Futurist's design, clothes and the closet doors - inside and out.

When we visited in April of last year, the salone was set up as the artist's studio (above). It also hosted an exhibition of Balla works on paper. The design of furniture - chairs, tables, desks - is, of course, all Futurist.

We've put a few more photos at the end of the post - but you will want to see this for yourself. It's extraordinary. Don't miss it.

Casa Balla's schedule is somewhat unpredictable. It was open this past December and January, and is open now (from March 1) through April 27. After that, who knows? One can visit the home only with a small group tour (in Italian but likely some people will speak some English and it's worth it even if you can't understand the tour leader's talk - a small and informative dual-language pamphlet is available), and advance tickets from MAXXI, get them here: https://casaballa.maxxi.art/en/ - that's the English site. If you scroll down a bit, a bubble will open up at the upper right for conversion to Italian ("IT", if in Italian, do the same and you'll see "EN" for English). Thursday through Sunday, 10-12 and 4-6 on the hour. Interestingly, the building has an elevator (the apartment is on a fairly high floor), but it's generally not available to MAXXI visitors (I suppose they aren't paying for their share of the elevator).

Balla joins our "Home in Rome Series," the other 4 of which were posted in 2011 and 2013: Goethe, de Chirico, Pirandello, and Moravia.

Dianne

A lovely pink and aqua bathroom.

Bottles that would make Morandi proud.

The elevator you can't ride.

The Fascist-era entrance to the building, with no hint of what's inside.

Truck Shopping in Rome

The 'shop'  name is "Melandra...Moving Shop." The "ape" or "bee" is a
3-wheel commercial vehicle, based on the Vespa scooter and produced,
as is the Vespa ("wasp"), by Piaggio.  I once said we mainly saw them in
the countryside, but maybe not!

The joys of shopping in Rome, for us, are mainly the visuals.  We love looking at the multitude of ways in which petty capitalism operates in this city of 3 million people. A method new to us this year was the mobile clothes store.  Yes, we have pop-ups in the U.S., but the Italians as usual, take it one step further.



We had seen vendors selling batteries (see photo towards the end of this post), glasses, flowers, fruits and vegetables out of trucks.  But a mini clothing store? That was new.


The "ape" trucks  above and below were parked in and close by the large Piazza Mazzini near our apartment this Spring, and came around periodically to sell their wares - and the Italians were buying.

Quite a combination of Italian and English words here, plus a take off : "Fruit of the Loom" (right), then "Fruit on the Road" (left). We didn't check  to see if the goods were authentic or knock-offs, but we can guess.

Below, not a shopping truck per se, but likely a delivery truck for a Sicilian (mostly) take-out restaurant in Prati (near where we lived).  Unfortunately, we never got there, but the arancini look amazing! (To say "arancini" are stuffed rice balls doesn't do them justice.)

The paintings are of Orlando and Rinaldo dueling for Angelica's heart in the classic "Orlando Furioso"
tale.  The story resonates with Sicily and the Sicilian puppet tradition, emphasizing these arancini
are going to be Sicilian to their rice core. The restaurant name is MondoArancina - with an "a" at the end,
 apparently the Sicilian spelling. The truck enlivens an otherwise rather soulless piazza in della Vittoria.

And then there's the use of a Fiat 500 to sell vinegars--again, just down from our apartment.

"Wine without sulfites...Wine and apple vinegar..." etc.
And, apparently, he doubles as a clown at night.

This van houses an Orologeria, a store that sells watch-bands and watch batteries.
A piazza in San Paolo.  Eager customers, including me. 

And, left, not exactly shopping from or out of a truck, but shoe sellers who use their truck to carry all the shoes and the stands and tents they put up to sell - they do this every day of the week - up in the morning, down in the evening.

I thought the arrangement of shoe boxes could have stumped a Rubik's cube expert.

Dianne

Bill has also written about some of Rome's trucks and vans:
https://romethesecondtime.blogspot.com/2012/02/tiny-trucks-of-rome.html
https://romethesecondtime.blogspot.com/2011/08/white-vans-of-rome.html

Rome's Falling Trees: Here Come the Stumps

Rome has a tree problem.  They're falling down.  It's happening at the rate of about 1 tree per day since the beginning of the year.  Many of the trees are old and weak.  Streets such as via Cristoforo Colombo, where the problem is especially severe, were planted in the 1930s and 1940s, when areas then on the city's periphery were developed. A wet, windy winter and spring has contributed.

This may sound like typical Rome media hysteria, which is common enough.  But falling trees present real dangers.  Falling trees--some of them massive--have hit automobiles and buses, sending drivers and occupants to the hospital.  Just recently, trees have fallen in viale dell Milizie (Prati), on the Aventino, in the town of Acilia, in via Volturno and via Pacinotti, and on the Rome-Lido railroad line.

The city government is doing its best (which, knowing the government, probably isn't very good) to deal with the problem.  It's monitoring some 82,000 at-risk trees and has already removed about 700 trees thought to be potentially hazardous.  Still, the trees keep falling.

Among the serious issues raised by the falling trees is what will the city look like if and when thousands of trees are taken down.  There will be promises of replanting, some of which will be kept. But one consequence is predictable: there will be stumps.  There already are thousands of stumps along Rome's streets, left there by the city department that cuts down trees.

Stump as trash receptacle

Blossoming stump

Flower shop adaptive re-use, viale Regina Margherita, Salario 

Handsome old stump in scooter park, della Vittoria

Seriously large stumps, Prati

Whatever their good intentions, these folks would appear to be unconcerned about the stumps they leave behind.  It would seem to be easy enough to leave a 6-inch stump, but most stumps are larger than that, at two and even three feet, and some are 20 feet or more.  While stump-grinding machines (essential to replanting) are common in other parts of the world, in Rome they seem not to exist.

Stump display, Villa Torlonia, where Mussolini once lived

Middle-of-sidewalk stump, Trieste

Stump trifecta, via Salaria

Despite stumps, a rare successful replanting.

Bill 

And so the stumps remain, mocking most replanting efforts, multiplying as the trees go down.

A villa you can't see, and a great view you can

A couple of weeks ago, while living in the district "della Vittoria" (just to the north of its more famous neighbor, Prati), we decided to have a look at Villa Miani, which sits on the south shoulder of Monte Mario.  We had read about it in the newspaper: the first building on the site appeared sometime before 1835, and over time the buildings, adapted and restructured, functioned as a sanitorium and as a university for the Episcopal Church.  It belonged to a Venetian nobleman for the 50 years before 1981. Claudia Cardinale once lived there.  Today it hosts weddings and large social events--dinner for 600.  We were eager to see it.

No, you can't go up there.  

The road up to Villa Miani, via Trionfale, ascends the hill from near the southern end of Piazzale Clodio.  We took both the road and a stairway that shortens the route but is ill-maintained, bushes and tall grass erupting from both sides.  It was probably last cleared and swept 5 years ago.  Having reached the side road to Villa Miani, a guard made it clear that not only was the road closed to the public except for special events, but that views of the Villa from higher ground in back also were not possible.



We moved on, seeking a view of the Villa from higher ground in back (no matter what the guard said), via the road above, via Alberto Cadlolo.  The guard was right.  The Villa was visually inaccessible.  We wondered why the newspaper had made so much out of a complex that can't be seen, let alone visited, unless you're attending a big wedding (as apparently most of our Italian friends have).

Along that same road, however, we were able to catch a view of the back of the massive Cavalieri Hilton Hotel, which, unlike Villa Miani, can also be viewed from the front, albeit from a long way away.

The Rome Hilton.  Maybe the same architect as Corviale.  

Balconies of the wealthy.  

As the street ambles southward, via Cadlolo becomes via Fedro, lined by properties and apartments of the wealthy.  We noticed that the residents do little to tidy up outside their complexes and gates.






The road then turns east and into Piazzale Socrate.  We had never been there, and it's certainly not much to look at, we thought, having been victimized by Rome's fabled tree-trimmers.  Indeed, it could be Rome's ugliest piazzale.

Rome's ugliest piazza.  

But we were in for a treat.

Just beyond the piazza to the east, the hill turns steeply downward.  A fence--designed to keep

The site seems to attract guys.

onlookers from falling off the hill--had thankfully been breached in several spots, allowing us to proceed onto a small promontory.

With an extraordinary view, of St. Peter's and more.

Dianne, at Piazzale Socrate

Incredibly, this view was featured just a few days later (May 1) in Il Messaggero, our newspaper of choice this year (cheaper than La Repubblica, but still a hefty E1.40). According to the paper, which had surveyed social media posts by Romans and tourists, Piazzale Socrate was the most-favored place for "scatti" (snapshots), selfies, and "likes," ahead of such notable sites as the Pincio and the Gianicolo.  We don't quite believe that Piazzale Socrate is more popular than the Spanish Steps or the Trevi fountain for selfies and other pics--it's too out of the way for that--but the view is undeniably spectacular, and, some might think, the best in Rome.  Just don't fall off.

Bill

A modernist gem in Vittoria: the Chiesa di Cristo Re

The area of Rome we're living in is called "della Vittoria," and it begins about a mile north of the Vatican.  It was all developed after 1900.  On the whole, it lacks exceptional buildings, although there are plenty of attractive ones built in the 1920s--large apartment buildings with enticing interior courtyards.

On viale Mazzini

The bronze above the door is by one of the
more famous 20th century Italian sculptors,
Arturo Martini

We've walked the area before, and never paid much attention to the Chiesa di Cristo Re (Church of Christ the King), with its modernist facade of brick.  The other day, having read in our architectural guide that the church was designed by Marcello Piacentini, surely the most famous architect of the Fascist era (and sometimes called "Mussolini's architect"), we made our way to nearby viale Mazzini, where the church stands.  The exterior is in rows of Roman hand-made brick.

And there, on the side of one of the front doors, proof of Piancentini's role, though why the spelling is Marcelli remains a mystery (perhaps an attempt to Latin-ize his name- to go with "Opus" = "work" in Latin).












Inside, the chiesa is rigorously symmetrical, with powerful streamlined features--the narrow, curved balcony in the photo below, and other curved features-- that strike us as unusual, even for the early 1930s, when the building was constructed.

Unfortunately, the modernist features of the structure were not replicated in the mosaic windows that line the sides of the church.  They're colorful, yes, but too busy and complex.

An exception is a fine piece on the left side, near the front door.














The dome is at once powerful and elegant.  Other concrete elements (some of which, on close inspection, need work) anticipate the brutalist era that began in the 1950s.

Christ on his throne, and the angels to either side, are by Achille Funi (another artist favored by the Fascists, and influenced by Giorgio de Chirico's metaphysical style).

Bill