MagazineRoma

Berlusconi refuses to resign in the palazzo Grazioli's metaphisical quiet

Federico Pace — Wed, 16 Feb 2011 19:28:41 +0100

It 's been only one day that Silvio Berlusconi has been indicted to stand trial on charges of paying for sex an under-age prostitute. And someone in the street, already wonders how many more days it'll have to wait before Silvio Berlusconi will resign. How many more days before Berlusconi, hidden behind the brown glasses of his car, will abandon forever palazzo Grazioli. One hundred days yet? Or just someone? Hard to say. Certainly, these are the last days of Pharaoh. For him, despite everything, there will be no way to avoid his politic's decline. But today, however, nothing seems to happen. At least compared to yesterday, with all that hustle and bustle of meetings. In the evening, then, yet another visit by Umberto Bossi. The staunch ally assured to support it. Yet, for how long?

The night has passed. This morning the rain fell from the sky slowly and stubbornly. The wet roads and the cars hunched in their metal armor. At three in the afternoon the rain stopped. A lonely father, at a pedestrian traffic light, push a stroller with a tarpaulin. A little farther on, in one of the streets leading to via del Corso, a young waitress in a lull seems to speak of matters of Silvio Berlusconi with an her colleague: "What do not you know that men only think of one thing ... Then, there is the rest ...". The garbage trucks to pass their turn to collect the plastic crates and cardboard boxes. Vegetables, fruit, waste and all foods consumed

Via del Plebiscito is a sort of canal or open-air gallery where everything flows and you can not almost stop. Hence, in a second, pass the 62 bus which goes towards Borgo S. Angelo, the white taxis, the 64 bus going to St. Peter, the 628 and the scooters in flocks. As the banks of a gorge, there are the National Museum of palazzo Venezia and the building that Silvio Berlusconi has rented from the Grazioli family, after leaving via dell'Umiltà. More than one thousand and three hundreds square feet at his disposal. Right now, in front of the building there is almost none. There seems to be no meetings at all. There are only two men sitting on one of the vessels. Before them, a tv camera. They are waiting, as only the fishermen wait. Above the balcony above the entrance, there's a waving gaunt italian flag.

There is a strange stillness. Almost metaphysical. Elusive. A peace that hides something. You can see some light on behind the windows. A couple of rooms with high ceilings. In those secret rooms, the reverberation of an old flare, someone is working on the next steps. On the sidewalk, tourists back and forth. Pass even the bodyguards. Dressed in black with short hair. The transparent grey headset in the left ear. Some jokes among thme. Even for them, a cigarette and a coffee. What really think when they got home in the confinement of their homes?

A little farther on, towards Piazza Venezia, the Cafe Napoleone. Inside, in a large space, two women talking about via Francigena and a guy complains about the problem of making every day back and forth with Arezzo. Anyone talk about the Pharaoh. If you ask when you'll resing, someone replied that "he's hard to die. " On the walls, to be interpreted as a clue, along with reproductions of antiques, there is a picture of Romano Mussolini, the fourth son of Italian dictator. A colored mask.

Indicted Berlusconi, at Palazzo Grazioli begins the wait long and exhausting

Antonio Carbone — Tue, 15 Feb 2011 21:40:00 +0100

From some time the buses no longer stop on via del Plebiscito. Matter of public policy. But, in this February afternoon that drawing to a close, the order appears to be under control such that the two policemen, in front of Palazzo Grazioli, appear relaxed, as in a normal day, and they can afford even to speak with the people who pass heedless of the hurdles behind which the cameramen begin to amass, with the resignation of those who imagine that the wait is already long and exhausting: When will Silvio Berlusconi come out?

For the moment, the foreigners look like the most curious. Steady, from some good ten minutes, an american tourist stares the main door, trying to understand. When yet another Mercedes goes out from the building, asks information to the man who is near to him, one of the few that is certainly not here to work and from his aspect , you don't understand even if he is a daredevil supporter of Silvio Berlusconi, or his opponent. Perfect metaphor of this moment in history, so special, that we are living. "Ghedini, Mr Berlusconi's lawyer, " he explains to him. Then from the pocket of his jacket pulls out a photo of Palazzo Grazioli on which there is written an insulting sentence and then you know which side he is.

There isn't the crowd that the event would deserves, or at least you would expect coming here. Many pass in the most total indifference, almost with a little annoyance for having to get off the sidewalk on which the cameramen continue to raise and lower the cameras at the first sign of movement that comes from the courtyard already enlightened. Now comes another car. It sees Gianni Letta, frowning like the glass behind which is hidden. Nobody do not even attempt to stretch a microphone, who would dream of leave of the statements? A few hours before it has passed from here, I look at the case, former Attorney General in Milan, Francesco Saverio Borrelli, enlivening for a little 'waiting. A simple walk, he only said.

Meanwhile the sun is finally fading, and in this narrow road as a deep gully, you do not understand which evening will be . You can not even imagine that a few meters from here the sky, however, is clear. All of cobalt, without a cloud. As you would expect from a day that you want absolutely don't forget. When you finally give up and you decide to abandon the garrison, launching one last look, among the spectators, a little 'more to one side, you is hit by a black girl, yellow scarf, woolly hat on his head and the expression of a fan you would expect in front of the hotel waiting to come out his divo. Yet when you try to ask her why is there, She ensures us that she isn't in the wrong place. She knows very well who's inside there. It also she knows that the nostro Divo, for now, has no intention of leaving the scene.

Winster solstice in Rome

Federico Pace — Mon, 27 Dec 2010 10:04:14 +0100

Must have been the bodies of Christ and the marble bishops, hoisted to the top of the Basilica of San Giovanni, to see the first patch of light emerging from the east. Yesterday, all those statues were in that their sailors posture. Trying to understand, with desperate stillness, the elusive horizon. The meteo bulletin says that the first ray of sun has to be appeared at thirty-five minutes past seven. Their eyes must have seen it coming out of marble from the Aurelian Wall and the long necks of cranes, such as sleeping giraffes, stood motionless on the Appian Way. There, in the space where, despite the monotonous passage of the cars, metro's costruction works are stuck like adrift ships.

Then the sky is dyed blue. On the way there's a man carrying a dog on a leash without thinking about anything. In the only open bar, the cups collided with each other in the fatigous attempt to find space on the shelf of marble. There were spoons, whirling hands and the same mechanichal euphoria of every weekday. Outside, there were those who smoked, and stayed right on the edge of the step, with the same relief to those who have nothing to lose. A little farther on, a woman, anchored at the elbow of her husband, spoke with bureaucratic precision about waht they'll do from there until the evening. A man, stopped at an intersection, looked up. Then, as the wind began to push, everyone ran to shut the door behind his solitude.

The still Christ, from his dizzying position, let the wind go on to sculpt his face and body. Then, as a new handful of minutes was thrown away, he must have felt the earth beneath him turn a little longer. The light that's turned around more than pass it over his head, began to arrive from his shoulders. Still a few rays, not much. The bright planet seems to rest there, towards via Amba Aradam, on the terraces of the San Giovanni Hospital. Then, further down, towards via Cristoforo Colombo, the Terme of Caracalla and the sea. Someone down there was still looking up questioningly. Should not have even five, when all of the backs of those sailors have become dark as dark as the night.

The Casa della Memoria e della Storia in Trastevere

Antonio Carbone — Sun, 12 Dec 2010 17:31:00 +0100

There are evenings in which you feel the need to make a report of the day, almost in anticipation of having to provide an alibi to whom, in the future, will ask you: "tell me exactly what you did the afternoon of...." It was just past the 4.30 p.m., when I went out from work, on the friday we do an hour less, and I started on the Tiber. The water, I remember, had foil reflections and you could feel only the verses of the gulls, harrowing for as looked like childrens's cries. In a bar on via della Lungara, close to Regina Coeli's prison, I took a coffe. At five o'clock, I was at the Casa della Memoria. For that time they were going on two Mario Carbone's short movies about Linosa. Really I knew not much about this director, the fact that we have the same last name it is only a coincidence. I came across him only sometimes, considering him a kind of Vittorio De Seta in a minor tone. It was more than else the curiosity for this island where I spent an amazing holiday in the summer of 1994, to make me take that street.

In the room we were in five. A girl came, she went close an computer, for starting the DVD and saw the first images. It was a discovery. Especially the second short movie, Dove la terra è nera, of the 1965, without comment neither music but only ambient sound, I liked very much, for the black and white and the way telling easy: the reluctant ground,the sea anywhere, the tools old like the faces of the few inhabitans, the childrens that take gulls's eggs on the rocks, a cow forced to feed with prickly pear's branches togheter with the thorns. After the projection, it lasted only twenty minutes, I took a look at photo exhibition, always of Carbone, on the upstairs. Pictures of the fifties and sixties about Rome, but not only. One photo, in particular, struck me, Spazzini of the 1957. The thought immediatly went to NU of Antonioni.

Anyway, in short, before still of the 6 p.m. o'clock, I was just outside . At Sant'Egidio square I passed in front of the museum where stands the photos exhibition, Un secolo di clic in cronaca di Roma, but I have felt me enough sated of that I had just seen, And then I went on. Just Beyond I took a look to the stalls of books, hoping to find a Mario Carbone's biography, of whose, I must admit, I felt a need to know more. Paying attention to the birds, I crossed again the Tibur, more swollen than usual, And I don't know the reason, I remebered of a picture in black and white of my father, to the dusk. Him, in foot, on the bank of a river, I can't say which river, with a branch in a hand, and a worried look. It came to my mind as well the comment that my mother everytime does when, leafing through the family album, you get to that picture: "Eh, this is the famous photo of the night when that child drowned ...".

Mario Monicelli, the lost and found interview

Federico Pace — Wed, 01 Dec 2010 21:01:02 +0100

In the spring of 2003, it happened to me to go to interview Mario Monicelli. The appointment with the director was in his house in Rione Monti. My small crew was composed just by three persons. And all three of us were left for a while before buzzing at the door bell. As if we have to celebrate a sort of a ritual. Such was our respect for that man became bony. We climbed the stairs and the apartment looked like one of a guy who only in recent years had left the family home. Even his attire made one think of a guy. A shirt, a pair of jeans. Yet the restlessness that he had throughout the interview, his hands always in motion, made you thinking about the needs and wants of a boy. As the trouble to sit still, sitting on a chair to answer questions that had already received many times, it seemed as one of a child compelled, during the Christmas Holidays, to stay at the table for a family dinner.

Some days ago, after what has happened, after Monicelli passed, I sought material that interview in my messy files. But I could not find it. I remembered the way he answered. Even more than the words. I remembered the air of witty, the eye of lynx, the quickness of thought. Far superior than of its interviewers. Only this evening I managed to find that interview. I have reviewed and many of his words, surely, seemed to have a different sense. He has, almost always, been serious, though. Only in a moment it seemed to have some fun. When out of the interview, he stood watching a clock. He is surprised. Too late? Or too soon? It come to me to ask it him. "But this is stopped. It 'still. ... Yet even this broken clock works only twice a day. "

Monicelli talked about the war. The United States, at the time of the interview, had just invaded Iraq. He talked of the war he had done: the Second World War. In Yugoslavia. To see the Titinas and Ustashas fighting each others and did not even have time to be chasing the Italians. How he had emerged from that war with a change of clothes when he was in Naples. Monicelli talked about the First World War. That one he had shooted in his film. Monicelli said he had heard a lot of stories about that war. From his father, first of all. Stories about those young people who were sent there, without any preparation, in a showdown greater than themselves. The same showdown of the last lonely war, absurdly larger than each of us, he has preferred to deal with one last, final leap.

Visiting the Colosseum in Rome

Federico Pace — Wed, 10 Nov 2010 12:00:22 +0100

Tourists are entering the body of the Colosseum. Almost in multitudes. They are entering in the cavity while they've taking pictures of themselves using their small luminescent gadgets. A few days ago it, after forty years, the access to the third ring has been reopened. There are couples of spaniards discussing why they should pay a surcharge of eight euro to visit the underground. There are the patients japaneses, ready for any thing. And then, the guys from the Veneto who're reading the Gazzetta dello Sport, a daily sport newspaper, in spite of the floods of recent days in their lands. You can stand almost an hour inside the dark corridor of the Colosseum. Waiting in a tipical atmosphere of a sunday morning. As a tourist, as a free man. With an emotion so abysmally different from the expectations of those who, at almost the same space in the lost years, prepared himself to face the elbow's fate.

Soon we will not see it again. Whether you arrive from Via dei Fori Imperiali, whether it runs through via Labicana at the Celio. Whether you walk on the urban plateau of via del Fugatale or ascend by Caracalla. Not because the Colosseum will be destroyed by a collapse, although thinking of recent news regarding Pompeii, and of the beahave of our Minister of Culture, and the few funds allocated by the Minister Tremonti, has not ruled out the possibility. Rather because an imminent restoration will hide it. A project that has already urged appetites of smart companies and local authorities without authority. While waiting for this month is assigned with a big contract, maybe you can already imagine the cruel smiles exchanged by "alligators" in the depths of the labyrinthine corridors of Power. Yes, because the institution will not spend any more money to restore. Just sponsorhip and private funds. Thus, the curved lines of the Flavian Amphitheatre, those forms that seduce us with the mystery of what survives the passing of time, is likely soon to be packed and hidden behind some sophisticated image of a business.

With ticket in hand, two young american girls, with their long legs, put themselves in the sun near a ruin let a friend of them taking pictures. Conscious and at the same time, indifferent to how their hymn to life, into that decadent space, is attracting for the glance of many. A lot are combined into groups to small balustrades to share the same point of view of the millions who, over the years, have passed here. Some others, again, are taking pictures. Then, behind a small group, go up the last ramp to the third ring. Higher up, where your eyes can go away and look at how the city has never seen. But this is not even up here, the panoramic views of the urban area, what your eyes are really searching. Even here, the apex of the bastions that were, the eye look different and feel dizzy. Attracted by the cliffs and the innards encased in the embrace of rock, as if there the show, the battle between gladiators and animals, is still going on, somehow, in some dimensions. And you try again to see, in the placese a gesture survived the time, a cry for help, a desperate flight. The glance insists on those empty, on those cliffs. There, where the heads of tourists, like little human balls, now are spinning dizzily. With the same desperation of those who went to meet a desperate battle.

Opening of the Colosseum, from 8:30 until 16:30 with last entry at 15:30 (from October 26 to February 1), from 8:30 until 17 with last entry at 16 (from 16 February to 15 March), from 8:30 until 17:30 with last entry at 16:30 (from March 16 to 29), from 8:30 until 19:15 with last entry at 18:15 (from March 30 to August 31 ), from 8:30 to 19 with last entry at 18 (September 1 to 30), from 8:30 until 18:30 with last entry at 17:30 (October 1 to 25).
Ticket price to visit the Colosseum: 12 euro
Visits to the third ring and underground only if accompanied with a surcharge of 8 euro (reservations www.pierreci.it)
From Spqr MagazineRoma: Colosseum

The journey towards il San Camillo, la Magliana, and the first signs of awakening of Ennio Casale

Antonio Carbone — Wed, 27 Oct 2010 08:42:00 +0200

For reaching the San Camillo, I make a long detour. Metro B until the Eur and then the 780. At once after the bridge, I get off and I start walking for via della Magliana. The few people that I meet, are confused to the natural vegetation: grass of wall, humble wildflowers, nettles, reeds, ailanthus. I pass in front of the Church of the Santo Volto di Gesu, closed by a railing that looks like a steel construction. Just beyond, intrigued by the music, I do a small deviation. It comes from the gym of the sports club Due Torri where is being a party for the eighteen years of a Filipina girl. In front of the gate I cross myself with other girls that walk on heels like waders

Timely, at 5.30 p.m. I arrive to the Hospital. Lancisi Pavilion, second floor. With the others in waiting I share the sadness of sunday afternoon and I think to the luck of who was able to find as an excuse for avoid it. it was all pointless. When I decided to ring the intercom of the intensive care unit, the doctor on duty kindly explained to me that he couldn't give me no information non being neither a relative, nor the list of journalists allowed by the investigators. "Can't you say me even his conditions?" I insisted. "Neither that, I'm sorry."

The assault occurred the night of 7 September. Ennio Casale, the bartender who worked to the Vecchio Caffé Santa Maria, in front of the Basilica Santa Maria Maggiore, was returning home when in via the Magliana he was taken behind by four men, later arrested, and brutally beaten for stealing him 60 euro and a clock. Into a coma, after he was removed a large hematoma by the left hemisphere of the brain, a week ago he gave the first signs of awakening. Casale has always been a alone man, so much so that he was identified by the Police only by the brand on the chest of the bar where he worked and, apparently, no one ever visited him in hospital.

The Van Gogh Exhibition at Vittoriano Museum in Rome

Matteo Sarlo — Wed, 20 Oct 2010 15:45:00 +0200

Facing Van Gogh’s paintings, on exhibit at Vittoriano Museum in Rome since October 8, you understand how weaving the threads of a story or a painting, shaping an idea that can exist and persist, is not an aesthetic form but rather a form of resistance. A connection. An active deed by which the artist affects the world and that cannot be erased. A way to keep staying and saying: “Here I am, I’m still here”.

It’s October 15 and I am going out of the same door that was also the entrance on Via dei Fori Imperiali. The line at the bottom of the steps has got longer and thicker since, about an hour ago, I joined it, all of us walking- as a single body- slowly and politely to the entrance. Right foot, then slowly left foot forward, pause, stand still. In a dedicated line on the right kids from primary school are waiting at the bottom of the steps. One of the kids is taking photos with his digital camera, as if he were shooting at the crowd. His arm is stretched to hold the camera and his forefinger – as if on a trigger- is pressing the button. I imagine the painter himself in the same posture but with his arm bent and aiming- not at the crowd, but at his own heart- not the camera but the barrel of a gun.

I look at the entrance of the Vittoriano that is now behind me. Up on top I read “Museo del Risorgimento”. To build the Palace, between 1885 and 1888, they had to pull down part of the nearby Capitol area. Van Gogh was thirty-two years old, then. Five years later painting was no longer a reason to live. My bus is coming after a fifteen minutes’ waiting. I get on through the front door, next to the driver. In my pocket the ticket to the exhibition reads: "Vincent Van Gogh, Complesso del Vittoriano-Roma. Eight Euros Fifty". And I fancy it also reads: “Here I am, I’m still here”.

The grand Mosque of Rome

Federico Pace — Mon, 20 Sep 2010 09:30:41 +0200

Nobody's stopped. All the cars went by and were caught in the green and higher up, where the streets have the names of movie stars. There were the houses, nestled in the slopes, legacy of an economy and a society that does no longer exist. There were the gardens, the green sheets to the doors and, higher still, the luxurious rest homes. Old simulacra of a desire, came back even more alive, to isolate themselves and seclude. The illusion of leaving the others, less fortunate, as far as possible. To push them down there, there, where the city storms itself every day in his rumpled bed. The building of the mosque was warming in the sun on a saturday in late summer. For the current climate, you'd be almost surprised that it was an Italian to set it up more than thirty years ago. The parking in front of it, it seems an empyt beach.

An Italian that set up a mosque? If you think about it, nothing is more natural. A city grows only if it is able to accept others. But dou you imagine the troubles for an italian who wants to set up the mosque in Milan? If, soon or later, it will be realized this mosque in Milan. The deputy mayor of Milan said that a referendum is necessary before allowing the construction of the place of worship. A popular survey as a tool for building community. Sandro Pertini, in 1984, when he was president, had come here in this street of Rome to deposit the first stone. Who knows what now he would say about the deputy mayor of Milan.

Then, I started to walk to come in. I stopped at the gate to ask to the keeper inside the sentry box. It's closed to the visits. I came back more tired than before. For the heat and the disappointment. It was too late, "only the morning of Wednesday and Saturday", said the keeper while talking on the phone. Did I expect some more? Perhaps an invitation to enter? On a book that describes the mood of those years, it is recalled as the opening, celebrated in 1995, was postponed from month to month. "This clearly shows that there were problems of political, diplomatic, and perhaps even cultural." I turned around for a while. Then went back and stopped to look through the green spears of the fence. Irene Pivetti, the Lega's young president of the Chamber of Deputies, who then began a television career as a housewife-trash, was among those who opposed the mosque. In 1994 he even attended, against the opening, a Mass at Lepanto' Circle. It was one of the many events that would come later. I walked few more steps in the desolate parking lot. Then it was time to leave. The evening progressed among the mosque and the Parioli's buildings. I shuddered a little as the wind got up. Lower down, the city, restlessly, has already begun to torture itself.

The Rome’s marathon, the arrived to via dei fori imperiali, and the new urban ascetics's endurance

Antonio Carbone — Sun, 21 Mar 2010 18:46:00 +0100

Now they are all tired, wrapped in the cloak of silver. They chase one another, they hug, sharing a joy that hardly who hasn’t participated at least a half marathon can understand. It is the people of the marathoners. A strange and unusual people. The trait that distinguishes them, through which you is often able to recognize them even when wearing street clothes, is the thinness. As urban ascetics. It takes many sacrifices to achieve it.

There are days that just to buy a pair of socks, I enter one of these stores for runners that are around. I do it for then with an any excuse to be able to speak to the owners. Almost always they are former athletes who, proud, yet remain in shape. Ripetute, 4’ a chilometro. Sforzo aerobico. Solo carni bianche. Pasta in bianco e parmigiano, con olio a crudo. I throw there, casually, some expression of the kind to win their esteem. I loosen the grip only when, perhaps because they moved with compassion, giving me a pat on the shoulder, say me: "So six of us."

Only then, with those new socks in my pocket, I go away. With a smug expression. The same that I think I have now I wander among all these faces that do not even know. From some time I have started to trust only in them. On one hand, I put their and on the other the swollen faces, plastic, who always betray an excessive greed finalized even more than the accumulation, to devour everything quickly. In the bleak landscape in which we have to live, represent a new phenomenon of endurance: in group, but sometimes alone, they run in any weather. Gritting my teeth. Are capable of self-discipline that they do to fade even more virtuous priests. Not to mention the politicians. By their example reactivate the principle of respect for the rules. For the regulations. Try, before a race, even a stracittadina of seven kilometres, to approach someone, offering their a concoction to run faster. Ninety-nine center of the time, you can be sure you hear them say: " I would prefer not to."