The Trieste Quarter: Home to Modernism and Postmodernism

The quartiere of Trieste, to the north of Rome's center, between via Salaria and via Nomentana, is best known to tourists and architectural enthusiasts for the extraordinary collection of electicism known as Coppede', after the architect, Gino Coppede', who designed the unusual structures in the 1920s.

But there is more to Trieste than Coppede'.  As a relatively young and wealthy quartiere, Trieste also has a number of worthy modernist--and postmodernist-buildings.  Indeed, we found two at one intersection, where via Salaria crosses via Adige (on one side) and via Bruxelles (on the other).  We call it Trieste, but to be precise, one side is in Trieste, the other in Parioli. 

On the southeast corner of the intersection is a 1930s-era modernist building, architect unknown, but worthy of Luigi Moretti.  It's a narrow, asymetrical structure, sited on an oddly-shaped piece of land. 

An unusual round open loggia

It now houses the Sri Lankan embassy, which recently installed a Buddha in the white loggia, above.

The building makes substantial use of the open logia, including an unusual round open loggia.

Even more unusual, and doubtless more controversial among architects and architectural historians, is an apartment building on the intersection's northwest corner.

Built in the 1960s or 1970s (we would guess), it's modern but not modernist,  playful in a postmodern, experimental way: the vortex-like stanchion at the corner (left), the hole on an upper floor, a projecting cap at roof level, the intersecting of unusual shapes. 

Postmodernist play with shapes and forms

When you've seen Coppede'--and don't miss it (it was number 20 on RST's Top 40)--have a look at this intersection.  It's only a 5-minute walk.

Bill

Pasquino Lite - Rome's "talking statue" gets a dressing down



in happier times

Rome, a city fairly expert on the protest scale, is experiencing a tightening of the noose by right-wing mayor Gianni Alemanno.  Alemanno has cracked down on Rome’s most famous “talking statue,” little Pasquino, who sits in an homonymous piazza right off the larger and more famous Piazza Navona.



Poor Pasquino - as last seen with a lucite stand
(right) and only a few comments

Okay, when you get your first look at Pasquino, he might not seem like much; he’s missing quite a bit of his body.  But, remember, he dates to the 3rd century BC,and he’s battered, but  still standing. 

Pasquino’s fame dates to the 16th Century, when he became the locus for comments critical of the reigning Pope.  And, his body as a place to slap on one’s protests, continues to this day.  Well, almost.  Alemanno now is insisting that instead of putting the protests right on Pasquino, they be properly put on a side board.  Where’s the fun in that?  Of course, most of the posts (the last time we went by) were satirical jabs at Alemanno for this (ahem) stupid policy.  It’s not as though Pasquino’s 3rd century BC body should start being protected now.  The real purpose of Alemanno’s edict appears to be to clean up and stifle criticisms against the mayor himself.

Comments in 2011 criticize the government

But don’t let that stop you from visiting what we now refer to as “Pasquino Lite,” and the piazza is a nice respite (with plenty of cafes and a substantial wine bar) from the busier Piazza Navona.

Dianne

For more on Pasquino, “pasquinades,” and other talking statues in Rome, see the following sites:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pasquino

http://www.romeartlover.it/Talking.html

Where Francesco Totti learned his Trade

Legend has it that Francesco Totti, for almost two decades the star of A.S. Roma, one of two premier-level soccer teams in the city (and the one preferred by a more working-class fan base), learned to play on a field in the quartiere of San Giovanni, where he grew up in a large public housing project.  We learned about the field a couple of years ago, when there was concern that the hallowed pitch, sandwiched somewhere between via Sannio and via Amba Aradam, and behind the basilica of San Giovanni in Laterano, would be sacrificed to a new Metro line.  Oh, no!

Market carts, all with the same rubber-trimmed iron
wheels.  Behind, the wall Bill considered scaling.

Our search for the field began just outside the city wall, in the large and active market that runs down via Sannio (and one characterized, we think, by especially aggressive merchants - tho' the prices are right, if you bargain, adds Dianne).

We thought we had found the field around the back of the market, in the alley called via Locri, where the old market carts are stored.  Bill imagined scaling the wall in back for a peak at the historic site, but he would have been not only foolhardy but wrong.  At the next turn in, we asked a gatekeeper for permission to have look at Totti's "stadium," which we assumed was right there, within his purview to show us.  Wrong again, but he sent us on our way with directions, while noting that what we were looking for hardly qualified as a "stadium."  "Campo", or "field," he corrected us.

Clubhouse bar

A few meters further on, as via Sannio became via Farsalo, there it was, and guarded--if, indeed, he was a guard--only by one man reading a book in front of a closed clubhouse bar. 

The field.  In the distance, the statues on the facade
of San Giovanni in Laterano

The playing surface is now artificial turf--not what Totti would have learned on, 25 years ago, but evidence, we think, that the field will be spared, saved from the Metro. 

The "stadium," such as it is.

And from the other side

And yes, there is no "stadium," but the small building that shelters the field and houses seats for spectators is a special one, designed and built in the Fascist era. Signs point to a $500,000 upgrade in process. (The paint squares on the side of the stands apparently are samples from which the final color will be selected.)

Nearby, a sidewalk traffic barrier, painted in Roma's colors, marks Totti's presence in the neighborhood. 

Bill

(For more neighborhood decoration for A.S. Roma and Totti, see this earlier post.)

Original Fake: Store-window takes on Originality

It's getting harder and harder to be "original."  Andy Warhol made that clear in the early 1960s, when he capitulated to capitalism and advertising in the most obvious way, making art that looked very much like a can of Campbell's Soup.  And, to add to the confusion over originality, much of his work was produced by his assistants, not by Warhol himself.  

At about the same time, architects abandoned the quest for the uniquely original aesthetic, retreating to the postmodern preference for mixing and matching historical forms: a bit of the neoclassical here, the pyramids there, and hey, why not a mansard roof?  It was original, but only if the definition includes reassembling the past in a somewhat different way. 

Popular music has always been evolutionary, the province of covers and copies, but especially so after 1970, with the widespread acceptance of "sampling."

That's all background for a couple of photos we took of Italian store windows, each of a shirt with a phrase on it.  One advised, "Don't Copy/Be Original,"  a curious injunction, given that the shirt was obviously mass produced--that is, copied.  The other questioned the idea of originality even more directly: "Original Fake."  

Bill

The Gates of Rome: The Postwar Era

Some of these gates are best seen--and photographed--at night. 

A window barred--but elegantly, c. 1910

From the point of view of crimes against the body, Rome is a safe city, with very low numbers of assaults, rapes and murders.  Property crime--things like thefts on the bus, breaking and entering with intent to steal the television set--is more frequent.  Romans--and Italians generally--are understandably anxious about property crimes and eager to protect their homes from invasion.  Hence Romans prefer the upper floors of apartment buildings, where they feel--and are--less vulnerable, and those who must live on the ground or first floor commonly install bars on windows. 

Fenced in, completely

Some have been known to fence in an entire terrace or balcony (right).  Portieri--the guys who sit in little rooms ready to jump out and prevent you from snooping around in that lovely interior courtyard--are less common than they once were, but they're still at work here and there, and they still serve as a deterrent to crime in many buildings.   If a thief does manage to get to your front door, he must deal with multiple sets of multiple-bolt locks on an order that even a hardened New Yorker would have trouble imagining.  Opening one of these doors with the keys requires not only a good memory--for which key fits which lock,  which of the locks, if any, is a fake, which lock to unlock first, how many turns to make--but also a non-arthritic wrist and some time to waste. 



A fanciful gate, in Coppede'

This concern for home safety has one benefit (well, maybe more than one): the iron gates that guard many buildings--the first line of defense, especially in the absence of a portiere--are works of art.  Some are centuries old, veritable masterpieces of the Italian renaissance.  Others, as in the Coppede' neighborhood in the quartiere of Trieste, evoke the medieval sensibilities of Gino Coppede', the architect who built the area, or offer a touch of the "liberty"/art nouveau style that was in vogue in the decades before and after 1900. (The Coppede' neighborhood came in at #20 on RST's Top 40.)

Then there are the modern gates of the between-the-wars Fascist period, with their strong vertical and/or horizontal lines.  No nonsense. 










Here's another, from the 1920s, with touches of the medieval: that spear to the right, the grate-like general appearance.  Nestled in the center, the modernist letters CP (Case Popolari/Public Housing).  This gate is in the planned community of Garbatella (RST's #16 on its Top 40), south of the center. 







And after the war?  Nothing worth looking at, right?  Wrong.  We (and that really means Bill, that master of the perverse perspective) have been enjoying the gates and doors of the 1950s and 1960s.  Yikes!  At least that's when we think they were made; they don't come with dates. 

Angles, colored glass, lovely shadows.  Note the floor.  This
gate is "busier" than most.  You can see it in Piazza Vescovio.

They're easy to recognize: they're "modern" in the sense that they (usually) aren't busy with detail, and they don't resemble Victorian wallpaper.  But the designers of these postwar examples have moved on just a bit from the stark lines favored in the Fascist era.  Lines are bending (photo at top).  New angles.  Playfulness.  One senses a search--not always successful, we admit--for something beyond the stark order of modernism.









Playful, yet bold and powerful.  Straight out of the 1950s, and strong and masculine.  In postwar, modern Garbatella, not far from the Metro. 

Sensational.  Gorgeous.  You could be in Miami Beach.  But it's Monteverde. 

We found this gem in the quartiere of Trieste, while walking to our
apartment from Piazza Bologna.  Wasted on a parking lot, but dazzling.
We're thinking Buckminster Fuller's Geodesic Dome. 

There's Fuller with his dome. 

Bill