Rome Journal XIV: the EUR

photograph of il  Palazzo della Civilta Italiana by Hallie Cohen

The EUR is not a place where most tourists dare to tread. It’s far from all the classic tourist sites of Rome, though it's a site in and of itself, since it’s a relic not of the Roman empire of antiquity, but of the fascist era and the art and architecture that it spawned. Totalitarianism has always produced its own esthetics. Leni Riefenstahl’s Triumph of the Will, was a product of Nazism. And if there is one thing that totalitarian art and architecture share, it’s a love of the ideal. The Guggenheim had two exhibits Italian “Italian Futurism l909-1944: Reconstructing the Universe” and “Chaos and Classicism: Art in France, Italy andGermany 1918-36” which both demonstrated the nostalgia for classicism that's at the heart of the totalitarian esthetic. What was remarkable about the second show was the way in which it crossed ideological lines, showing similar proclivities on both the left and right. Visiting the EUR you can see the legacy of the fascist housing and architecture that emerged under Mussolini. EUR stands for Esposizione Universale Roma or E42, in that 1942 was the year of the World’s Fair which was to take place in Rome. The EUR was also meant to be a celebration of 20 years of Mussolini’s leadership. The war intervened and the exposition never took place. Take the B line to the Magliana stop on the EUR and you will come face to face with one of the most renowned pieces of EUR style architecture, il Palazzo della Civilta Italiana. To the untrained eye, it at first seems like a piece of post-modernist architecture gone wrong. It recalls the garish Huntington Hartford Museum, which was an eyesore on Columbus Circle, before it was torn down. Built by the architects Ernesto La Padula, Giovanni Guerrini and Mario Ramone, it was also known as the Colosseo Quadrata or the Square Colosseum. Floor after floor of perseverating arches creates an almost nightmarish effect and the monumentality is heightened by the effect of the heroic statuary that surrounds the structure. The classical past is deployed in the service of a totally futuristic world that pays homage to the ideals of order and aspiration that characterize the fascist state. You can almost see the hero of Ayn Rand’s The Fountainhead, the architect Howard Roark, walking around on a campus that that would, in fact, provide the backdrop for a number of movies about the fascist era in Italy like Bertolucci’s The Conformist and Rossellini’s Rome, Open City "Uno nuova Roma: L'EUR e il Palazzo della Civilta Italiana" is currently on exhibit in the lobby of the Civilta.

Rome Journal XIII: Passion

People often reference the lustiness or passion of Rome, to which a Northern city like Milan, which is referred to as cold, industrial, business like, is invidiously compared. But is passion an attribute of climate? Rome with its palm trees definitely exudes as certain tropicality, particularly during the summer when the oppressive temperatures are worsened from the body heat produced by the influx of tourists. But if we are, in fact, weighing our view of Rome towards its geography then we might conclude that Naples and cities in Sicily like Palermo or Siracuse would be all that more bastions of passion. If you read works of the Sicilian born playwright Luigi Pirandello like Six Characters in Search of an Author you might very well conclude that while Rome is a melting pot due to its cosmopolitan atmosphere, Southern Italy is the place where the pot runneth over. Reason and passion, north versus south were traits that the German writer Thomas Mann dealt with in exploring the personality clashes between regions of his own country and it’s probably true that there're more blond Nordic types in Milan than in the south where dark hair and swarthy skin are more common. But the only way to really describe Rome and its particular temperament is to deal with the stage set which the average Roman inhabits. The visitor's first impression of Rome is that he's entered a newly opened branch of Disney World where new rides with names like Circo Massimo,  Colosseo and Foro Romano all compete for our attention. Only this tropical paradise is not an amusement park and we are not in Orlando. So the lustiness of Rome has an almost primeval quality. When you go to an institution like Da Augusto in Trastevere in which patrons wait in line to eat their pollo a la Romana in a densely packed space you partake of a spectacle that feels like it’s thousands of years old. Yes, Rome lives up to its soubriquet. It's really the eternal city and that's also where its passion resides. Look at the face of Anna Magnani, the star of the mythic Pasolini film, Mamma Roma and you begin to understand La Dolce Vita.

Rome Journal XII: Working the Steps

photograph by Hallie Cohen

Rome is great place to work the steps, whether you’re in recovery and working the 12 steps (for which there are programs of all sorts conveniently listed on line) or just trying to keep in shape. The Steppes are a different matter entirely. You’re not going to find too many of those in this city surrounded by hills—even though it was the famed she-wolf, a creature of the Steppes, if there ever was one, who nurtured Romulus and Remus. If you live on a hill like the Gianicolo you have a choice of steps which will take you down to the nearby Trastevere neighborhood. The only problem is coming back up after a heavy meal and wine. Rome doesn’t sport many high tech gyms like the ones you find in American cities, but the city is a walking gym. Having one of those step machines you find in American gyms would be redundant in Rome and also a joke to a population who take climbing in their stride. What’s so astonishing is how ubiquitous these steps are. You can’t get away from them and it’s apparent that in ancient times, there weren’t too many worries about wheelchair access—probably due to the fact that the life span of the citizenry was so markedly shorter that there weren’t worries about accommodating to those who weren’t able to climb up and down. There are, of course, a lot of famous Italian bikers, but when it comes to physical fitness you might think that New Yorkers one up Romans due to the huge variety of venues in which to work out. But in Rome fitness fanatics are not easily distinguishable from average people, since everybody has to do lots of step work to get from here to there.

Rome Journal XI: Oh Where Do You Roam?

Everyone talks about how hard it is to drive in Rome, but drivers actually seem to know what they're doing. Some parts of the recent James Bond film Spectre take place in Rome and there are some hair raising scenes as James (Daniel Craig) tries to elude pursuit by the bad guys. That’s the thing about Rome, you have to negotiate the twist and turns and when you’re in a cab it can feel like a James Bond movie as you zoom through tiny winding streets that barely fit a car in order to say make it from the Via Nazionale in downtown, crossing the Tiber to Trastevere. But while they drive fast Roman drivers are also very conscientious and are second ro none in their ability to gracefully stop short. When an American driver stops short, all the passengers in the car feel like they're going through the windshield and driving around a city like Manhattan can lead to nausea due to all the stopping and starting. But Roman drivers are like the waiters in restaurants, they move fast but deftly seemingly able to find pleasure in the pursuit of shortcuts in a way that is as incomprehensible to the morally conflicted American driver as is the notion of sitting out a traffic jam or waiting one’s turn would be to their Roman counterparts. Rome may be called the Eternal City, but carpe diem is the motto where driving is concerned. “All roads lead to Rome” goes the old saw, but it doesn’t specify the speed limit.

Rome Journal X: A Glass of Water

photograph of Roman glass of water by Hallie Cohen

Languages are literally interpretable, but in some ways they’re not. Certainly vernacular is a mountain to climb when it comes to communicating double entendres and subtleties of meaning. That's why, for instance, when a play is translated, say a play by Chekhov, there will be a literal rendering and then one by another playwright whose talents are conscripted for their understanding of the language of theater. True translation is a little like the kind of deencryption that Alan Turing practiced during the second world war. All this is said to point out that language is really a way of being. You can say “I want a glass of water” in English and it means the same as “voglio un bicchiere di acqua” in Italian, but there's an enormous difference between the subtext and history communicated by the English and Italian and there is a world of difference between asking for a glass of water in Milan, Bologna, Rome or Palermo. Luchino Visconti’s Rocco and His Brothers (1960) and Alberto Lattuada’s Mafioso (1962) are both masterpieces of Italian cinema which describe migrations from south to north, from Sicily to Milan. But the real change relates to the unconscious neural substrates of language.  In this regard, the disintegration of the Parondi family in Rocco and His Brothers is a little like the fall of the Tower of Babel. Once held together by strong family ties, the brothers are now living in their separate worlds. Rome is not just a city, but a way of being that’s expressed by the way in which language is iterated and one of the best ways to really see Rome is to listen as you travel back and forth between antiquity and the present. And luxuriate in that “bicchiere di aqua” you ask for in Rome. It’s going to not only sound but taste different from the one that will be brought to you when you get to Milan.