Extension of Rome's "C" line: Change, Disruption, and Ugliness

We lived just off Via Gallia about 5 years ago, and while there we became familiar with ongoing construction of the new "C" line of Rome's Metro system. The work currently being done will extend the C line from the existing San Giovanni Metro stop, near the basilica San Giovanni in Laterano, to the Coliseum. The new line will be beneath an area bounded on one side by the Servian wall, and on the other by via Sannio (and its street-side market) and, further down, by apartment buildings. 

It's no doubt worth doing, but as the work goes on, the impact on the immediate neighborhood is enormous. 

Progress has been made at the eastern end of the project--enough so that a nice, popular park has been carved out above the new line.  That's the Servian wall, with San Giovanni in Laterano in the distance. 

At the end of the park is one of the entrances to the soon-to-be modernized market. 

Shabby in its way, the un-modernized market is also mysterious, captivating, and souk-like.  Plans to redo the space, to make it more orderly and geometric, and less vulnerable to the elements, are posted in the market. 

The market as it is 

A rendering of the new market 

Further to the west, more or less paralleling via Amba Aradam as it works its way downhill toward Porta Metronia, the neighborhood is captive to massive red and yellow construction barriers, which were, of course, immediately covered with graffiti. Some of these barriers are within 10 or 12 feet of apartment buildings--and have been for years. 

Construction barrier at right, graffiti everywhere

Dianne, in still another place where Bill has dragged her.

The Servian wall, of ancient vintage, runs nearby, and parts of it have been braced with metal stanchions to prevent collapse, as construction shakes and rattles existing structures. 

Porta Metronia, left. At upper right, note braces to keep the Servian wall from falling down

A tennis club still exists in the path of the subway, but one imagines that will succumb as more "progress" is made. 

Tennis club. Survival in doubt.

A lovely view. Wine on the balcony?

Bill 

Metro C: A Great Idea with Human Costs

Rome desperately needs more underground transportation, and the city is making an effort to provide it.  The current project is Metro C, designed to connect Rome's eastern suburbs with the central city, and to connect stations along its 18 km route to existing lines A and B.  Stations on the eastern part of the C line have been completed and are operational; we've walked that route and shown our readers some of the new stations and neighborhoods they serve.

The inner-city section, where the all-important connections with other lines will be made, is under construction.  When completed, there will be a new Amba Aradam station at Porta Metronia, serving a large and heavily populated neighborhood (one of our favorite places to live) to the south and east of the Coliseum, with completion to the Colosseo station and Metro B.  The C line will also connect with Metro A at San Giovanni.  The completion date for these connections is 2022.  And there may be a station under Piazza Venezia, if it proves possible to do the work without destruction of too much Roman heritage.

The plan sketched above seems reasonable, and we're looking forward to riding the fully-automated line, assuming we live that long.  In the meantime, those who live near or adjacent to the construction route face years of irritation and disruption: noise, of course, and traffic problems caused by re-routing, but more important, hundreds of yards of tall metal Metro fencing, sometimes within a few feet of apartment buildings that not so long ago were adjacent to small parks, a tennis club, a soccer field, and a portion of a Roman wall.  In short, Metro C has its human costs.  That said, when the work is completed, residents of adjacent areas will have some of the best Metro connections in the city.

A few months ago we toured the construction zone near Porta Metronia. The tour begins at the porta and runs southeast down via Ipponio, turns left at a nameless, curving street just beyond via dei Laterani, and left again on via della Ferratella in Laterano.  Here we go.
Bill

From Porta Metronia

Down via Ipponio.  A tennis club at left escaped the construction--for now.

Inside the yellow walls

Yellow walls outside your door.  Trees inside and outside the construction zone.

Turn left here for the hospital and the church. Sure. 

Looking back.  Pedestrian crossing.

This one's particularly depressing.  

This used to be a nice street to walk on, to a supermarket.  

Eugene Debs, the American socialist labor leader?

Headed back toward Porta Metronia.  The sign says the parking spaces are reserved for motorcyles (and scooters, no doubt). Romans are adept at marking things off with tape. 

There's a Roman wall on the other side of the yellow wall.  

One of the pleasures of a walk like this is reading the posters.  This one says Dino, hands in the air, was shot and killed by
a police officer.  

A small park, largely intact despite the construction, close to Porta Metronia, where we began.

Sewing Repairs: Franchised

Franchises are common in lots of business, but we didn't expect to find it in sewing.  It's pretty clear that ZYP, located on the busy commercial thoroughfare via Gallia, is a franchise operation--it says so, in English, under the company name on the billboard and on the pink storefront, too.  Bill

"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