Genzano: Kids Learn the Flower Fest

On one of our recent treks from Genzano to Nemi and back, in the Colli Albani outside of Rome (the somewhat overbuilt but still charming hills that glitter on the skyline in the evening), we managed to be in town when the kids of Genzano were doing their flower "paintings" on the streets. The kids did theirs a week ahead of the adult Genzano "infiorata" - or flowering. We were fascinated to watch the middle- to high-schoolers as they waited, not so patiently, for the flowers to arrive and for their turns to come to start putting the flower petals in place.

From what we could see, the designs were done through earlier school competitions. The theme was human rights, and one featured women's rights (against the veil, it seemed to us), using English. The adult version, to come a week later, was more tourist-oriented, and focused on Caravaggio.

What we didn't realize until we saw them do it, is that the flower designs are done almost solely with petals. There aren't any flowers that stay alive in this process. Colored flower seeds also are used to fill in certain places.

We hope you enjoy the kids' projects as much as we did watching them. And we encourage you to get out to one of the small towns that have these festivals (flowers and otherwise) with some frequency from spring through summer.

Dianne

Painting the Town Red (and Yellow) for Roma

The soccer team AS Roma, captained for years by local hero Francesco Totti (born and raised in the Appio Latino quartiere, near Porta Metronia), is the object of affection for many Romans. Despite being the Buffalo Bills of Italy's Serie A, finishing second 6 of the last 8 seasons, the team has deeply loyal followers everywhere in the city, and especially in neighborhoods populated by Rome's working- and middle classes and in those where political opinion tends to the left.

Garbatella, an early 20th-century planned community built on hills and curving streets, made up of Fascist-era public housing projects on an epic scale, is one of those places, a hotbed of AS Roma sentiment. Here it's not enough to hang Rome's banner out
the window.

Garbatella, and some of the sites in this post, are featured on the first walk in our new book: Modern Rome: 4 Great Walks for the Curious Traveler. More on the book is at the end of this post.

 In Garbatella the real die-hards paint their houses (or their neighbor's house, or a shuttered store, or an institution) in the team colors, or fashion a mural for the apartment complex, or draw the team's symbol, a wolf, on a wall.

AS Roma had a difficult season, its hopes for a championship once again dashed, this time on the final day of the campaign. Totti succumbed to the pressure and frustration the week before, when he kicked an opposing player in the head and brought down another in the penalty area, with intent, and was expelled. We doubt these events will have much impact on how Garbatellians view Totti or his team. They'll just keep on painting the town.

Bill

Our new print AND eBook,  Modern Rome: 4 Great Walks for the Curious Traveler 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.

Let's get Married and have a Smoke

The Aventine Hill is one of Rome's most charming and romantic spots, and this time of year its gardens embrace the photo shoots in which just-wed young couples represent their love to posterity. We found this duo, fresh from a ceremony in one of the several near-by churches, doing first things first--that is, lighting up. Bill

For the flower lovers among you

This post is for the flower lovers among us. We waded through fields of wildflowers in Rome’s Decima-Malafede Reserve, just south of Rome (and of us).

Instead of pouring through our wildflower books, we offer these photos for you to identify. We know the scotch broom (for those, like me, who are highly allergic to it), daisies and poppies.

But we don’t know much more. Like the narrator in Antsie Baird’s poem, “The Rose and the Common Flower”, we’re pretty ignorant on this turf.


We include Dianne’s hand (sorry about the thumb splint) to give a sense of flower size and some leaves for clues. We do more on our day with the Romans on their day off (June 2) in Decima-Malafede in another post.

In addition to the wildflower "group photo" at the top, there are 12 other photos with flowers to i.d.; we don't think there are duplicates.


Meanwhile, over to Liz L, Mary Lee S, Judy D, Alison F… and others, we’re sure.

Dianne

Watching the World Cup--ala Romana

Italy's first game of the Mondiale (World Cup) is a big deal, and to feel the nation's pulse at that moment, we joined thousands of Romans at Piazza di Siena in Villa Borghese (Rome's large public park)--see left, walking to the game through the park--to watch the game on a maxi-scherma (big screen) television, 20 square meters, mounted in an enormous box at one end of the piazza, which is a gallapatoio (an oval used for horse jumping competitions). Large white medieval-style tents lined the sides of the gallapatoio, and we imagined them full of "i big" (fat cats) sipping their Campari and eating precious finger foods while working on restraining their emotions--the fate of the wealthy and influential. We wished we had an invitation.

Ordinary people had several choices for "seating." The best place for viewing the game was down on the field of the gallapatoio, but for that one paid a price: standing for the whole game. Otherwise, there was tiered bench seating at the far end, about 100 meters from the scherma, or very-crowded, picnic-style seating, on the
ground, along the elevated sides (elevation helped one see over the sponsor tents). That's what we chose--just far enough back from the stage so that we could see the whole screen, though from that distance the ball was a mere dot.

The game began at 8:30, dinner time for Romans, and many arrived with snacks, cartons of Chinese food, beer (though nobody seemed drunk), and cigarettes. We had two cartons of take-out stuff from the grocery store--one a pasta with salmon, the other carrots, green beans, and potatoes, and some grocery-store pizza bread. The food was lousy. We had also brought a 1/2 liter plastic bottle of white wine--not enough, really, but we had to get home on the scooter.

Radio Italia was giving away a "clap banner," a light cardboard thing, folded up like a fan, that had a banner on each side ("Forza Ragazzi" on one side), and, folded up and struck across the hand, made a clapping noise.

For a long time there wasn't much to clap for. Paraguay scored first and the Italians were in shock. The "ragazzi" tied it up in the second half--AS Roma's own De Rossi, the key midfielder in this game, was the hero--but despite dominating the game, Italy didn't score again and had to settle for a tie. The next day's newspapers seemed to think that wasn't a terrible result, and the players said the team would improve. And the crowd leaving Piazza di Siena was surely disappointed, but mellow - for which we, on a scooter, were thankful.

Bill