North Africans Who Died for Italy: Rome's French Military Cemetery

A first look inside the gates of the French Military Cemetery.  The tombstone on the left is inscripted "Inconnu" - Unknown - and "Mort pour la France"-- one could add, of course, and Italy.

For years we wanted to visit the French World War II military cemetery in Rome, but the hours it was open were difficult to discern and the access to it even more so.  But this Spring, when we lived right across the Tevere from Monte Mario, on which it's located, it was time to try again.   We found it, and found it open, but yet it held surprises for us.

The first sight to greet us was row upon row of crescent-shaped tombstone tops.  Clearly, here, French means North African, or mainly so.  One site describes it as "a modest cemetery for 1,700 French Expeditionary Corps soldiers, mainly Moroccans and Algerians."

There are Christian graves, fewer in number, and at a more prominent location - actually lower on the mountain but surrounding the main monument.  A video clip from 1947 of the inauguration of the cemetery shows only Christian graves.

Looking at these markers of those North Africans who literally gave their lives for France, and Italy, we were reminded of Italy's current treatment of North Africans. Italians should be reminded, we thought, of the sacrifices made by these non-Christians for the modern Italian state.

A permanent map in the cemetery showing
"The Offensives in the Abruzzi, December 1943 - May 1944"

The French military cemetery is as moving in its way as the Non-Catholic (Protestant) cemetery next to the Pyramid, and the small British Commonwealth military cemetery next to it in Ostiense.  All serve to impress upon us the tragedies of war.

The Christian section

Information on visiting the cemetery is not easily obtainable in English.  The hours are now generous, 8 a.m. - 4 p.m. Monday-Friday, and 8 a.m. - 1 p.m. Saturdays.  Closed Sundays.

If you are bold, you can try this "alternate" path down.  We did
 and ended up in bushes and with a few sketchy characters around.
But we did finally get to the Olympic Stadium and home.

Getting to it is still a challenge.  It is not connected directly to the Monte Mario paths on the main part of the mountain.  To reach it from those paths, e.g. from the bar/restaurant complex Lo Zodiaco, you must walk on roads that might lead you to reside permanently in a cemetery.  There is only one entrance--at the top end of the cemetery, off  Vicolo dei Casali di Santo Spirito.  At the end of this post, I've provided a few links that have maps.  I wouldn't expect a taxi driver to know the location of the entrance.

Dianne


The 1947 monument, designed by A. Chatelin

Back of the monument, listing cities where battles occurred.

And once down, we found this statue to the
Czech fighter for liberation,  Alexander Dubcek.

maps: http://www.060608.it/it/cultura-e-svago/beni-culturali/beni-architettonici-e-storici/cimitero-militare-francese-a-monte-mario.html

http://www.info.roma.it/monumenti_dettaglio.asp?ID_schede=4314

Giulio Magni's Palazzo Marina: a Tour of Italy's Naval Ministry

Big anchor that has something to do with
World War I.  The facade also
pays homage to Italy's great naval cities:
Genova, Venice, and Rome.  Rome?

It occupies most of a large city block.  It's on the Tevere.  And it's only a ten minute walk, north, from Piazza del Popolo.  Yet except for two enormous anchors in front of its beaux-arts facade, most passers-by wouldn't give it a second thought.

It's the Ministero della Marina Militare, the Naval Ministry (or, in Americanese, the Department of the Navy.  The building is also referred to as the Palazzo Marina).  Although the ministry's website claims there are regular guided tours (see below), we doubt it.  Our access was through Open House Roma--yes, that's what the Romans call it--that wonderful program that opens dozens of sites, including some state buildings, for tours. In Italian.  We toured the Air Force building last year.  And this year, the Navy.

Door handle--nice touch

Built between 1912, when Italy was still a democracy, and 1928, when Mussolini had made sure it wasn't, the building is a luscious mix of styles: Rome Liberty (Victorian), barochetto (little baroque), what the website calls "Michelangeloesque eclecticism" and, here and there, accents of Fascist modernism.   Excess is everywhere.  

Magni's Santa Maria Regina Pacis, Ostia

The Ministero della Marina Militare was designed by Giulio Magni (1859-1930), grandson of the more famous Giuseppe Valadier, who created Piazza del Popolo for Napoleon.  Magni came to Rome as a young man, working on a variety of projects, including the ICP (public) housing plan for Testaccio and the Vittoriano.





After 10 active years in Romania (1895-1904), Magni designed the church of Santa Maria Regina Pacis in Ostia (1928), public housing in Testaccio, and several villas for the Roman elite. Among the latter was Villa Marignoli (1907), now a classy hotel--the Residenza Villa Marignoli--on via Po not far from Villa Borghese.










Just inside the Naval Ministry is a splendid long hall with high ceilings and, off the left/north side, a lovely courtyard.

A spectacular marble staircase, dressed with naval motifs, centers the building.  The rounded elements on the side resemble waves.




















The Sala dei Marmi--the Marble Room--offers as its centerpiece a massive table, made of 13 different marbles from Italy and Africa. Underneath, fasces.

The library's book retrieval box is above the fire extinguisher.  Anchor-motif
detailing for the railings.  

Parents, where are you?

The library, in neo-Renaissance style, houses a variety of treasures and details, including a valuable globe dating to the 17th century (when we were there a small child was clinging to it; I imagined it going over), a spiral staircase leading to a narrow second-floor balcony, and an inventive book retrieval mechanism fashioned of iron.

A VI, the 6th year of Fascism, 1928

Standing out among the Fascist touches was a gorgeous ceiling, complete with fasces.

A long hallway presents memorabilia of Italian naval history. (A song from my youth, "I'm in the Swiss Navy," kept going through my head).

Stairway cheesecake

One of the high- (or low-) lights of the tour was the performance of a 30ish-couple, who seemed to think the building was designed for their photo-shoot.








At left, a good example of the mixing of styles and epochs: a wall lamp in the Liberty style, very 19th century, but a fasces--very 20th--in the center. Additional photos of the building and a video tour of sorts, in Italian, on the ministry website:
http://www.marina.difesa.it.storiacultura/storia/palazzomarina/Pagine/PalazzoMarina.aspx


Bill

Assuming the ministry runs the tours it claims it does, reservations are required: 0636805251 or 0636803268.  Reservations and tours in Italian, of course.

Neo-classicism and Security

Aurelian Wall Walk V; from Porta Maggiore to Castro Pretorio, or Annie's Reward

Beautiful Porta Maggiore, where the AD 52 "gate" supporting 2 aqueducts of the same vintage, was built into Emperor Aurelius's 3rd Century AD wall.  Trams a newer addition, of course.

Many of our RST readers have asked us: What happened to the Wall Walks?  And for those few of you who don't recall, in Spring 2014 we set out to walk the 12 miles (19 km) of the 3rd century Aurelian Wall that once completely encircled Rome.  And, for those of you paying attention, we last left our readers with only about a half of the Wall Walk completed.  Perhaps it was the discouragement of Brian, whom we encouraged to accompany us on a section of the Wall Walk.  We titled that one Wall Walk IV: Brian's Lament.  Nope, we were undeterred and we took another out-of-town guest, Annie, on the subsequent walk.  We wouldn't exactly call it Annie's Lament, but she did indeed deserve a reward, and got one. [To recap, in addition to Walks I and IV, here are the links to Wall Walk II and Wall Walk III and, NEW - here's a Google map that includes the itinerary!]

We started this Wall Walk V in a wonderful, if busy, place, Porta Maggiore.  The layers of Rome history here are unbeatable, but so are the weeds and traffic.  We arrived on foot, surviving the pedestrian "walk" button dysfunction; Annie, being smarter, arrived by taxi.

The rest of Wall Walk V--Annie's Reward-- is told in the photo captions.

Buon walking, and Wall Walks VI and VII, the latter, The End, are coming soon!  Dianne

Remains of the distinctive "Tomb of the Baker," from 1st century BC; part of
Porta Maggiore

We braved the traffic and smells to go under the aqueducts and train tracks
to get a view of the wall as it spread out ahead of us.
This is the wall from the "outside" - as it looks in San Lorenzo

Evidence of Papal rebuilding - Clement XI in 1718

Annie gets a shopping  break in an "antique" shop (yes, it had the requisite Toto' and
Padre Pio pictures) in San Lorenzo, opposite the wall.

Monument to war dead (from "all the wars") on the Wall,
a common way of honoring war dead in Rome.

One of the prettier parts of the Wall in San Lorenzo, even though the foliage
is no doubt damaging the brick work; note the crenelated tower.

We admire a new - for us - gate in the Wall here.  Porta Tiburtina - via Tiburtina once passed
under it.  Not today.  Lots of history to this gate (not that it makes the gate unusual in Rome!).
We hadn't seen this gate from scooter level.  Because it's now below the street,
it's not used for traffic. No doubt a good thing.  Some nice notations on this gate at this Web site.

An auto repair shop IN the wall.

The wall disappeared onto private property;
but that didn't deter Annie.

The wall remains shrink in front of the Air Ministry, built in
the 1931.  And we decided to call it a day here.

Annie's reward - freshly filleted fish at Mamma Angela's--
at via Palestro 53, not too far away from where Wall Walk V ended
 between the Air Ministry and Castro Pretorio.

With Pasolini, it's all about the Body

The setting.  Dianne says the Institute's logo is adapted from
Italian Futurism.  That claim lacks confirmation.

Pier Paolo Pasolini is justly celebrated  in Rome and elsewhere as a poet, novelist, and filmmaker-- the cultural trifecta, if you will.  Yet as we learned in a brilliant exchange between LA-based artist Nicola Verlato and USC professor Gian Maria Annovi at the Italian Cultural Institute in Los Angeles, the collective memory of this cultural icon is of his body--indeed, his dead body--found in a field not far from the beach at Ostia and just steps from the village of Idroscalo. Murdered.

William Kentridge, Pasolini's body

This focus on Pasolini's body is unusual, even unique, Annovi argued, drawing a contrast between the frequent artistic representations of Pasolini's corpse--Milan-based artist Adrian Paci paints a near-photographic representation of his body, face down, at Ostia, and South African artist William Kentridge draws that same, face-down body--and the Italian conceptualization of Italian literary giants Gabriele D'Annunzio

Mike Kelley's casting call for a Pasolini, 1990.  

and Italo Calvino.  Though equally famous in their realms, the bodies of D'Annunzio and Calvino are not only not depicted, but are essentially irrelevant to how they are imagined. American artist Mike Kelley had his own way of suggesting Pasolini's body (left).

Verlato's Hostia.  The title encompasses the place where Pasolini died
and the sacramental bread of the Christian liturgy.  

Verlato, whose work treats iconic characters such as Michael Jackson ("all the elements of a tragic death"), was at the Institute to talk about his Hostia, a multi-story painting in the near-in Rome suburb of Tor Pignattara, home to the prominent gallery Wunderkammern and to one of the city's largest and most eclectic collections of high-quality street art.  He described his mannerist painting as an allegory, with Pasolini's dead body falling away from his enemies, including the Carabinieri and Pino Pelosi, his presumed (and convicted) killer, through a Dante-esque scene-scape.








Below, the boy Pasolini learns poetry from his mother as Petrarch--and, rather bizarrely, Ezra Pound--underline the accomplished adult poet that Pasolini (according to Verlato) so desperately wanted to be.  Later, Verlato noted the painting had been done under the auspices of Muro, an arts organization, and he felt reassured that its location, in the gated courtyard of a condominium, would help protect it from vandals.

When Annovi raised the issue of the centrality of Pasolini's body, Verlato could only agree.  Like St. Francis, Verlato said, in the collective imagination "he's a body."  Among the recent depictions of Pasolini, added Verlato, was a large paste-up of Pasolini carrying his own body.  Modeled on Michelangelo's Pietà

Ernest Pignon-Ernest: Pasolini carrying his own, Christlike, body (2015)

Verlato went on to explore Pasolini's tragic loss of faith in his true love, poetry, and to suggest that Pasolini and Pound, despite their political differences (Communist and Fascist, respectively), were in striking ways similar: both men struggled against the mainstream and both had "extreme ambition;" they wanted to be central figures in their cultures and times.

In addition, Verlato described his plan for a multi-media mausoleum, a temple of sorts, to honor Pasolini.  The neo-classical mausoleum, in the style of the Jefferson Memorial in Washington, D.C. and Bramante's Tempietto, would be located in Ostia, on the ground where Pasolini died.  Annovi called the idea "insane."  We're inclined to agree, although the existing memorial is inadequate.  But crazy or not, it's all about the body.   Bill

Verlato, left, with one of his designs for a Pasolini mausoleum.  Annovi may be saying "that's insane."  

Gennaro De Matteis's Great, Unknown Work of Architectural Rationalism (1940)

View from the terrace.  

That's the view--one of them--from our terrace in Flaminio last spring. The domed building on the right is, of course, St. Peter's, and we're more than pleased that we can see it while enjoying a glass of Falanghina.

But it's the other building, the white tower, that interested me.  I had seen the tower, and the massive edifice that housed it, from above, looking down from Monte Mario.  But I had no idea what it was.

From Monte Mario.  Obviously there's more to the building than a tower. Vertical windows throughout. 

Curious monument.

And so, on this, my second day of spousal abandonment, I set out to find out.  I crossed on the Ponte della Musica and headed south on the Lungotevere, stopping for a time at the Piazzale Maresciallo Giardino for a close look at an odd monument--that turned out to be part of the "scene."




The building that contains that white tower was just a few meters further on.  Aspects of it--the formidable front "entrance" that rejects rather than invites--seem almost medieval in conception, despite the rationalist modernism of the overall design.  The facade revealed that I was standing before the Istituto Storico e di Cultura Dell' Arma Del Genio, which translates as Historical and Cultural Institute of Armaments and the Corps of Engineers.


Medieval look to front entrance.  Lacks only a moat.  

Inside, I later learned, are the Historical Institute, the Institute of Military Architecture, a museum of military weaponry, and an archive that includes some 30,000 photos about military engineering.  And probably other entities of which even the Italian government is unaware.

According to some websites, the museum areas are closed for restoration, and have been since 2005. Others claim parts of the building are open to the public on Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday mornings, but I would bet the farm that's not true.  It was Saturday morning, and the place was shut tight.  I promise not to waste part of a Tuesday morning not touring the building.

The rounded interior courtyard, photographed off the website.

If you can't go in, you can take an unexpectedly luscious virtual tour, via the website: http://www.difesa.it/ArmaDelGenio/tour/TourWeaver_genio.html.  Complete with martial music. You can go from one section of the building to another and from exhibit to exhibit by clicking on the blue dots, upper right, or turn around, or stop the tour and enlarge something you want to read or see more clearly.  Really, it's amazing.

From the back.  Rationalist perfection, especially
against a background of clouds.  

There's surprisingly little information about the building as a building, or about its architect.  I think that's because the apparent architect, Gennaro De Matteis, was a military engineer who did only this building.  And because the structure is isolated from the two great collections of Fascist architecture in Rome: Foro Italico and EUR.

Construction began in 1937.  The building was occupied in 1939.  Construction was completed in 1940--the date on the facade.  Address: Lungotevere della Vittoria, 31.  But you know where it is.

Bill