The Roman Newsstand: A Sad Story, with (some) Happy Endings

It’s a world-wide story, played out in Rome: the decline of the newsstand. Visually, the decline takes different forms, depending on the place. In Los Angeles, where the one-stop newsstand has not been an important phenomenon for decades, it’s most obvious on streetcorners, where once-active newspaper boxes stand empty and abused, sometimes full of trash rather than the penny saver, a Latino publication, or the Los Angeles Times. There are still many newsstands (edicole) in Rome, but fewer of them every day. In the first 10 months of 2025, 25 edicole closed in the Centro—the city center—and no doubt many more in surrounding areas, even areas that are densely populated. According to Il Messaggero (a Rome daily newspaper), there are 100 newsstands remaining in the city center, and 54 of them are at risk of closing.

Last year, while living near the University of Rome (La Sapienza) we noticed this closed newsstand:

And another that had been decorated on its sides by PONE and HUBE (those words or names appear throughout Rome and usually are a death knell of the enterprise).

This newsstand, also in the University district, is probably open (it still sports advertising) but has been the target of graffiti writers.

We passed by the one below, located on the Lungotevere and (conveniently) associated with a bus stop, on a busy Sunday evening. It was closed, perhaps permanently. 

In 2017 we lived in Ostiense, near a former newsstand was located at the intersection of via Ostiense and via del Gazometro. When we last looked, the structure was still there, side-by-side with outdoor seating for Doppio Zero, the pizzeria (we used to like) on that corner. Here it is in June 2017, for sale (the green sign: vendesi).

The Rome newsstands that still exist couldn’t possibly survive through the sale of newspapers alone. At our local edicola this year at Piazza dei Re di Roma (intersection of Via Pinerolo and Via Vercelli), our giornalaio (news agent) told us that on the average day they sold only about 40 copies (at E1.40) of the most popular newspaper, Il Messaggero, and only about half that of the next most popular, La Repubblica. The Friday edition of La Repubblica sells better, but only because it contains a supplemental magazine (at extra cost). We read the print edition of Il Messaggero every day.

From observation, it appears that many of today’s newsstands make money by selling sunglasses, hats, and souvenirs to tourists, as well as Metro tickets to tourists and some Romans. One of those below is strategically located in Piazzale Flamino. The other, in Tuscolano at the intersection of Via Tuscolana and Via Gela and not far from the train station, appears to specialize in children’s toys—and its awning says it’s open 24 hours.

The local press (yes, it still exists) has taken notice of the problem. Il Messaggero led us to one of the stories of a recently closed edicola, off Metro A in an old stomping grounds of ours (we lived in the area a few years ago), not far from the Cipro Metro stop. We found the edicola at Piazza Francesco Morosini.

It was opened in 1940 (!), surely before some of the surrounding structures were built, and had a role in the 1962 Dino Risi film “Il Sorpasso,” starring Vittorio Gassman. Cesare Monti, the owner since 2000, did well with the edicola for the first years, and was able to buy a house with the earnings. According to Monti, things went downhill with Covid, when clients began abandoning the printed newspaper for the online version. The license to operate, which once was valued at 300,000 Euro, declined in value to about 12,000 Euro—and even then nobody wanted it to purchase it. Monti’s mother, who helped out in the store, added that even the gadgets and toys for children stopped selling—victims of Amazon and other online sellers. The current offer to sell includes the “chiosco” (the physical edicola or kiosk) and the license.

A few weeks ago we spent several hours investigating two edicole that had been featured in the newspaper for having found new uses after ceasing operations as newsstands. On Prati’s Via Cola di Rienzo, two men with restaurant chops have converted a long-standing edicola into the centerpiece of Le Sicilianedde, an indoor/outdoor gourmet restaurant serving breakfast and dinner and featuring Sicilian cuisine (from cannoli to caponnatina) and promoting “Aperi-Edicola.” At streetside, the chiosco, rather than housing diners or drinkers, presents the ceramics of the Sicilian city of Caltagirone.

What looks like another success is in the Centro near the Spanish Steps, where a smallish edicola has been converted into a bar where you can get an on-the-street spritz—and pay for it with cash from the built-in ATM. 

A third converted edicola is in our own neighborhood this year, in Piazza Imola, off Via Taranto a few blocks from our place. Dianne had read that the edicola had closed but been transformed into an art space—a gallery of sorts. Here’s what we found:

When we returned on the evening of October 18 for the opening, the same view confirmed the success of the transformation. 

And here's the view from in front:

And from the side:

Wine was served, and inside a dj presenting a lively dj set. The group involved in this conversion, and apparently others, is known as "Santedicola." This show features photos of the community of Lanterna Beach. 

Among the strangest edicole in Rome is the one standing in the corner of Piazza Colonna in the city center. This newsstand was once the flagship edicola of the Rome newspaper "Il Tempo," founded in 1944 and still published, albeit with a minimal circulation (about 8,000 copies in 2021). Just steps away is Palazzo Wedekind, which housed the offices of "Il Tempo" for many years. Today one can still purchase newspapers and magazines at the kiosk, but only through machines; there is no giornolaio, no one selling newspapers or anything else. The last photo is of the edicola's interior. Kind of eerie. 

Bill 

For a story of a couple owning a newsstand in Ostiense (the one we bought from when we lived there), and their pessimism about their future (the kids don't want to work that hard), see Dianne's post from 2017 here: https://www.romethesecondtime.com/2017/06/open-at-530-am-close-at-9-pm-no.html

Reviews of Italian Films - Now Easily Accessible

We liked this one mainly for its
views of Rome.  Review
here.  

On "our" (2 Film Critics) movie review site, we now have a category for Italian films. [To "follow" 2 Film Critics, click the bouncing "Follow Us" turquoise button below our photo, here: www.2filmcritics.com.]

The new "Italian" category, which supplements a "Foreign- All" category, includes films produced in Italy, films about Italy (and specifically Rome in many cases), and films in the Italian language, or all 3!

Generally, we review only new releases, and therefore most of these were newly released when we reviewed them.  There are a few "oldies but goodies" that focus on the city of Rome (e.g. Stazione Termini - ostensibly by De Sica, but mercilessly cut to an American version titled "Indiscretion of an American Housewife" - review here.    

Currently, there are a dozen films in this new category. For 2020, one of these was in our Top 10 (see our Top Ten here) - "Martin Eden" - review here; and one was an honorable mention for 2020, "Il Traditore (the Traitor)" - review here.

You can browse the category by clicking "other" and then "Italian" under the categories right above the review thumbnails on the home page. 

It's here: https://www.2filmcritics.com/2filmcritics/categories/italian

This "Italianization" of a semi-autobiographical
Jack London story earned a spot in 2 Film
Critics' Top 10 for 2020.

We don't want to close without mentioning some "sleepers" - fascinating films that didn't get a lot of press, such as A Ciambra (review here) and Piazza Vittorio (review here) - both of which deal with immigrants in 21st century Italy. 

And we also feature films by 2 of Italy's most prominent working directors, Nanni Moretti ("Mia Madre" - review here) and Ferzan Ozpetek ("Facing Windows" - review here), most of whose films are situated in Rome.

Buona visione!

Dianne and Bill

RST Top 40. # 7: Pigneto

Nightlife on Pigneto's pedestrian concourse,
via del Pigneto

When the Metro comes to Pigneto in 2013 (or whenever), this near-in but somewhat difficult-to-reach neighborhood will be the fashionable place for a glass of wine, dinner, a touch of Rome's ethnic side, a walk along its dark, shaded, and somewhat mysterious side streets, or a stroll on Pigneto's almost trendy, almost treeless, all-pedestrian main drag, via del Pigneto.  But for now the Metro isn't in Pigneto, and so the neighborhood is likely to have that funky, hardscrabble, on-the-cusp of gentrification, slightly threatening allure for a couple more years.  That's why it's at #7 on Rome-the-Second Time's Top 40. 

A small, ethnic-run grocery store,
trashed by locals, May 2008

We thought enough of this gritty, compact, working-class quartiere to give it its own itinerary in Rome the Second Time: "An Evening in Pigneto."  We won't reprise that here, except to say that despite the tensions between its older, Italian population and newer immigrants from Morocco, Senegal, East Asia, and other places, it's a good place to eat, drink, and stroll.

The horrific final scene of the film Roma Citta' Aperta

 Filmmaker and poet Pier Paolo Pasolini did just that in Pigneto many years ago, holding forth at Necci dal 1924 (on the itinerary) and using the neighborhood as the setting for many scenes in his 1961 film, Accatone.  Although technically not in Pigneto, via Montecuccoli, across via Prenestina to the north, was the setting for Roma Citta' Aperta (Open City), Roberto Rosselini's 1945 neo-realist classic.

A somewhat intimidating entrance to
Pigneto, off via Prenestina

Pigneto is located southeast of Termini, and on a line with it, through Porta Maggiore.  It's a 10-minute walk from Porta Maggiore: to avoid via Prenestina and its intimidating overhead highways, take via Casilina to via Gallarate and turn left, over the train tracks, and bear right onto the side streets.  You're in Pigneto.

Bill

Elizabeth Taylor in Rome



Liz and the unsuspecting Eddie Fisher--with Burton?

"The only word Elizabeth knows in Italian is Bulgari," her 5th husband, Richard Burton, once remarked, referring to the storied merchant of jewels.  Richard had kindled the Bulgari passion in Elizabeth in 1962, when the two were in Rome for 215 days filming Cleopatra (1964) on mammoth sets on the lot of Cinecitta'.  Though already married (Liz to Eddie Fisher), the lovebirds had secretly rented a pink stucco bungalow in Porto Santo Stefano, on the promontory of Argentario, perhaps an hour from Rome.  (Scandalized at hearing of her conduct, a member of Congress sought to have English-born Taylor banned from re-entering the United States.)

A forlorn Richard and Elizabeth following a car
accident in or near Rome, 1962



Wearing Bulgari Serpenti, 1962

 While trying to manage their affair, deal with the Vatican's condemnation of Elizabeth as "a woman of loose morals," figure out a future for themselves, and process the likelihood of an imminent visit by Richard's wife, Elizabeth became ill.  She had her stomach pumped at Salvator Mundi Hospital and, later, Richard sought to soothe the beast with a $150,000 emerald brooch from Bulgari.  It was the beginning of a love affair--with Bulgari this time--and in June, 2009 this affair was consummated with a spectacular showing of some 500 of Elizabeth's Bulgari items at the Palazzo delle Esposizione on via Nazionale.  That occasion was the 125th anniversary of Bulgari's store in Rome.  As Margo Jefferson wrote in the New York Times in 1999, Taylor was "full of no-nonsense shamelessness."  "Whether it's about how she ages or what she wears, she has, bless her heart, made the principles of good and bad taste equally meaningless."  On the set, she wore diamonds while playing dominoes.  She was vulgar but not vain.   

As Cleopatra

Cleopatra enjoyed some success at the box office, but not enough to justify the extraordinary cost of production.  The set for Alexandria, the Egyptian capital where the real Cleopatra met Julius Caesar in like 56 BC, was the largest, most elaborate, and most expensive ever made.  But if the film was an economic bust, it was a highly symbolic one.  With Roman Holiday, it was the best known of a group of the "Hollywood sul Tevere" (Hollywood on the Tiber) films, many of them filmed on sets at Cinecitta' and collectively responsible for drawing a generation of film stars to the Eternal City--among them Deborah Kerr, Gregory Peck, Rod Steiger, and Dick and Liz--and in the process helping to create the glamorous and decadent era of via Veneto and the paparazzi.  (See our post on Hollywood films made in Rome in the postwar era.)

Made in the early 1960s, at the height of American power and hubris,  Cleopatra was a visual representation of the nation's world dominance in the postwar era and of its dreams--not to be realized--of a future characterized by American hegemony in the world.  And the scene that best captured that historical American moment featured Elizabeth Taylor as Cleopatra, entering Rome on a massive 30-foot pedestal pulled by hundreds of slaves, to the acclaim of thousands.   

1961, with Eddie Fisher and
Kirk Douglas and his wife

Taylor did not appear in Spartacus (1960), another of the Hollywood-sul Tevere films, but she had been drawn to Rome in 1961, accompanied by her husband Eddie Fisher, to celebrate the film's 1st anniversary with its star, Kirk Douglas (today, after her death, Taylor is being called the last movie star--but Kirk's still alive).  

With Eddie Fisher

Elizabeth was in Rome at least two other times.  She and 3rd husband Mike Todd were there in 1958; later that year he died in the crash of a plane named "Lucky Liz."  With Eddie she attended the opening of the Rome Olympics in 1960.  

Rome 1966.  An informal moment.  Liz in a cast
with a '60s look, Richard as Hemingway

And she was back again in 1966, for no obvious reason.  On the 28th of March, she showed up with Richard at Rome's Opera House, her hair in an exaggerated, fantastical bun decorated with bands of jewels and a jeweled hairpin that spilled over onto her forehead.  Looking a lot like Cleopatra.  Elizabeth Taylor lived most of her life in Beverly Hills, and New York was a second home.  But Rome--especially the delicious, over-heated Rome of the early 1960s--was a grand stage for a woman of great appetite and enormous talent. 

Bill  

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

Rome loves a march or were the communists attacking the church?

Cotton fluff in a 15th century hospital ward, Chinese shops open midday, threatened attacks on a church, Bulgarian cinema--Rome never fails to entertain us.

Yesterday we started out at an art installation set in the old (as in 15th century) 100+ yard-long hospital ward of Santo Spirito in Sassia, near the Vatican. I'd always wanted to see this complex, and Stefano Arienti's art installation, Enciclopedia, came close to evoking the old ward--spectacular and eerie at the same time... who needs Dan Brown?

We proceeded to a building, rarely open to the public, with tours led by a group we respect, the Fondo per l'ambiente italiano, or FAI, kind of a public preservation trust (what they did to restore Tivoli's Villa Gregoriana is amazing - p. 173 of our book). I thought hey, get into another palazzo, with an odd name - Zecca - maybe it means "pumpkin", I told Bill... whoops - zecca is the mint... the first comprehensive mint after Italian unification in 1870 (built in the early 1900s), now a museum & school for medallion makers. One thing Dino, our well-informed FAI guide, could not do is show any coin or medallion from the Fascist era - they weren't there (but there are plenty in flea markets around the city). Bill adds: despite the mint's recent conversion to a school, the event brought out an oversupply of (male and female)beefy, sullen, suspicious, security guards from multiple state agencies.

We walked a block to the heart of Rome's immigrant area, Piazza Vittorio, ringed by tiny basement shops selling thousands of sunglasses, costume jewelry & clothes ... all run by Asians. After a beer at an outdoor bar/cafe, joining at least 7 other nationalities, we ambled thru the piazza where basketball ("basket") was the order of the day... looks like the US, said Bill, but a ways away from a Gus Macker tournament.

We came to the nearby Santa Maria Maggiore and, as I crossed the usually terrifying street in front of this immense basilica, Bill says where are all the cars? Then we see 50 or so Guardia della Finanza (basically tax enforcers) in riot gear. Bill asks one what's up. He responds, in clear Italian, "The communists want to attack the church." Seems unlikely, but, as we walk around the back of the church - roads all still blocked off - we see thousands of people and sound trucks covering via Cavour... soon it's apparent we're seeing the front of a march to legalize marijuana - the Million Marijuana March (and we now know that event, ironically invoking the 1995 Million Man March designed to instill pride in African-American men, has been going on since 1999 in cities around the world). Rome's version is enormous (video below). We head out before we see the end of it and guess the numbers are over 100,000. maybe over 250,000. Bill enjoys the "floats" (soundtrucks blasting heavy metal selling beer and wine off the back), and the stylish chicks curbside rolling spleefs.

Although we would have liked to stay for the attack on the church, we don't want to be late for our evening movie in the Bulgarian film series - which demonstrates all too clearly the Bulgarians are still working out their repressive post-WWII Communist period.

Back to our apartment (where we started the day buying potted bougainvillea to compensate a bit for our chopped-off trees). I'm happy; Bill thinks we overdid it. The kind of day in Rome that enticed us to share with others the Rome we know.

Dianne (with sharp commentary by Bill)