Romanity is inherited and exercised. Rome is more adjective than noun. More than a being is a way of doing. You can go and return from Rome contemplating history and monuments, But Rome is not known without understanding the people of their neighborhoods. In them –Garbatella, Pigneto, Centocelle, Rebibbia, Mandriione, Wash, Flaminio, Ostiense, Tor Bella Monaca, Balduin…–, Rest the soul and secret of the city. A chaotic city, dirty, insolent ... and overflowing with life. “The power of Rome is the surprise of finding it alive with us”, Alberto Rodríguez says in his book "Rome distillery”. Alberto, a Galician friend who introduced me Javier Reverte, I loved Rome, his house, and taught tourists. I knew her more than anyone. So, that when he narrated the mouth. Alberto, I, understood that Rome is a trade.
I come to tell you about that city. "Rome unknown to tourists, ignored by the well-thought, non-existent on maps, it is an immense city ", that the filmmaker Pier Paolo Pasolini wrote in 1958.
The eternal city was my house between January 2019 and August 2022. Sometimes I was going to beat my friend Cristian to a club to tennis, Mirage, nestled in a tiber river bend, Next to the cycling track that begins properly in Ponte Milvio, that dates from 206 a.C. That neighborhood is one of the movement zones of capital youth. More 2200 years in fifty meters. Rome.
I went to the club with the car. Either had more option. We were stolen from the bicycles of the basement of our house, A common room where all the neighbors kept the bikes. The door was not forced, So someone should be carried. We write to the administrator. He never answered. Roman laziness is imperturbable.
To play, I diverted in the road di tor fifth, and crossed a holeed track like a mines field. Finally, He arrived at the Sports Club. From the parking lot it looked like a beautiful site, with the flow. So far optimism came. Within, The facilities were careless. The changing rooms were old and little clean. The ground tennis courts had broken networks and holes because they lacked maintenance. The normal thing is that we were the ones who played there those who swept and smoothed the clues so that the ball bounces straight.
I was used to living with Roman garbage, But fuck, Were you need to throw a washing machine in the Tiber?
I liked playing on the track 4, that was by the river. One day I decided to approach him while I waited for Cristian. I made its way between the weed, that grew uncontrolled, and so I discovered, right on the other shore, An immense illegal landfill. People went there to throw appliances, Gilling and Furniture to Flow. I was used to living with Roman garbage, But fuck, Were you need to throw a washing machine in the Tiber?
That club could be a magnificent place. And it was not. But it was. It was a disaster to which, however, I loved going to play. Then I will explain it, have patience, Let me present them before other Romans.
“He came home crying to see how people mistreat this beautiful city. I needed to do something to continue living here ”, I said Rebecca Spitzmiller, American university professor, married to a Roman doctor and creator of the association Retake Roma. Initially, ella, Together with other gringas friends, They created an NGO that was dedicated to cleaning the streets. For Roman passotism, that lady who lived in the capital for 34 years was a crazy unable to understand that Rome is not changed, It is accepted. “I arrive like Mary Poppins, With my cubes, And many think I'm crazy. When they find out that I am a university professor they are out of charge ”.
The streets of the city had a clarifying stamp. Multitude of African immigrants were dedicated to cleaning the sidewalks and asking for money for it. In the rest of the world, irregular immigrants are accused of getting dirty, Here they found that with a broom they could ask for money by sweeping streets. "There is a lot of dirt on the ground and people give you money to withdraw it", Mike told me, A Nigerian.
"There is a lot of dirt on the ground and people give you money to withdraw it", Mike told me, A Nigerian.
There was. To the city, In the neighborhoods, He ate the shit. The containers could accumulate the garbage bags weeks without anyone collecting them. In summer, The heat caused on the streets rot the foods thrown between plastic bags. The stench made some unressespirable areas. There were several containers in our environment. They were filled quickly. When they were overflowing, Without being able to close, The people threw the bags outside. On one occasion, A lady told a guy who in fifty meters were other containers even with space inside and that he was going to throw the garbage there. The guy responded with a sound "Fuck ", And he threw his garbage with bad ways to the mound. Rome. Romans.
That garbage was a pole of seagull attraction -the most fat and large ones that I ever saw for its easy food intake-, Rats and wild boars. Mammals went down to the city center to Zampar in the trash. The city was a zoo without rules. My hairdresser, Andrea, A young and dynamic boy, summarized it like this: “Rome is ungovernable. I pay me a fortune in rates for a non -existent garbage collection. To clean no one appears, But to fine if I don't pay quickly ”.
Listening to complaints is part of the Romanity. I was sometimes going to buy frozen monkfish from a store next to the Trionfale market. The fishmonger, Anthony, He was a very nice Neapolitan migrant. We always chatted. Our conversations ended in criticism. “The municipality does nothing for citizens. They are thieves that fill the pockets ". I nodded. The neighbors in Rome did that as therapy: We complained and listened to. Then, finished the regrets, invariably explained that the dataphone was broken, I was three years old, And I had to pay in cash. As I receive I gave me a paper without any value.
What to say about a city where you know if someone is if you see him pay on the bus? On one occasion, I was up to the bus 23 en posale clodio. It was almost full when a reviewer appeared. I almost stayed alone. More than 70% of users rushed to get off the back door in stampede.
It is fun but because a few weeks before I was in another stop with a very older man who desperately told me that I had been waiting for the bus for an hour. "Does 50 years I came to live in this city. It was always a difficult city, But now it is impossible to live here ". I was exhausted to wait. Those who do not pay the bus and that old manager is closely related.
He was right -wing, Very right, And then he left for a gap with a group of homosexual friends or intellectual progress because what was really extremist was to have a good time.
But that doesn't care about a Roman. Dino, A good friend, It is a summary of Rome, all, with their best virtues and their worst defects. Presumed to have more than 60.000 euros in fines. I left the car parked even on the bus lanes. He entered the restaurants and greeted the waiters, to those I saw for the first time, As if they were his schoolmates. Then, He began to ask them to fill the glass of wine or put a snack more. They did. He was a generous and cheerful guy. He liked to talk about politics and Lazio, His great passion. We argued. He was right -wing, Very right, Although he voted for movement 5 Stars, And then he left for a group of homosexual friends or intellectual progress because What was really extremist was to have a good time.
I always saw him happy, I always gave you a hand. Smoked as if he had plenty of lungs. It was a type of the street, List, who learned that the most important heritage was friendship. He had a successful company of organic products for which they looked colleagues. That is the Street Standard, Businesses are made between favors. He throws a hand and they throw it away. I sometimes felt All Rome was a chain of favors in which no one paid the account Because another always invited.
In his gang there were some criminals, Medium Success merchants, honest workers, unemployment actresses, entrepreneurs, Lawyers, Postín hairdressers, by convicted, Theater directors, soccer ultras ... he never changed, He behaved exactly the same with all of them, because that offspring of diverse people had the same code: They were survivors of Rome. That means having your own language. Not a dialect, a language.
One night that I left for ougee with them listened. Dino laughed and worried all the time that I had a good time. His friends were equally cozy. Not once from all our many meetings stopped asking me when leaving: Have you had a good time? That is also Rome.
Naples loved and despised everything that was above Bologna. “Do you know what is the most beautiful in Milan?… The train that comes out for Rome "
The eternal city, Where Dino was born, It was the perfect land for their imperfections. He didn't see them. It hurt when I remembered them. He maintained that in Rome summer arrived in February. What city in the world does that happen, Xavier? It is always summer in Rome ", He presumed. Naples loved and despised everything that was above Bologna. “Do you know what is the most beautiful in Milan?… The train that comes out for Rome ", He told me laugh one night admiring the city from the hill of the Observatory. It turns out there was a small coffee that closed too late. Dino got out of night to the street, When an express wanted, And he took it contemplating the historic center. It didn't change, I was in pajamas and with a jacket on top if it was fresh. "The most beautiful city in the world", He told me with his bedroom sleeping pants contemplating domes and illuminated bells. He was right. What he looked was. What is.
Dino was from neighborhood, But in Rome that does not vary much what the city offers you. The historic center is taken something more because it is business, All the rest is urban fallow. Social abuse is quite democratic. Rich and poor suffer it equally. Rome has a peculiar upper class, that it is not well known where it lives because no neighborhood meets the standards of the rich ghettos of other cities. Intuyes that inhabit after some palace with their vines falling down a ricked facade of the clay color. Inhabit an uncomfortable museum. Uncomfortable and beautiful, very beautiful. Rome.
Those wealthy bourgeois, With its expired noble titles, They are a caricature portrayed perfectly in that masterpiece of director Paolo Sorrentino that is ‘La Grande Bellezza’. "What do they have against nostalgia? If it is the only possible distraction for those who do not believe in the future ", says the protagonist of the film. They cataloged it as a fiction film, In my opinion it is a documentary.
“The nobility (romana) They were paws: they never read anything, they never wrote anything, they never contributed anything to the culture, they weren't even patrons, which is a way of understanding culture. They dedicated themselves to living from their income, In the most absolute isolation ", Pier Paolo Pasolini affirms in his compilation book "The City of God".
No one has understood, in my opinion, Better Rome than the painter Caravaggio and filmmaker Pasolini. They got into their taverns, markets, Barracas and detritus. That is Rome. The other, The painter Rafael, It is a utopia of wanting to be Florence that this city has never been. “(In Rome) Rafael was everyone's beloved because he was kind, delicate and naive ”, Javier Reverte writes in his book "A Roman Autumn". Rafael painted virgins and saints, Caravaggio prostitutes and drunks. Caravaggio es Rome, Rafael is the Vatican. They are two different things.
Rafael painted virgins and saints, Caravaggio prostitutes and drunks. Caravaggio es Rome, Rafael is the Vatican. They are two different things.
The second is a city in the shadow of a wide dome, The first a succession of neighborhoods, pequeños pueblos, With their own codes. They do not communicate. Rome, The eternal city, "Head of the world's, It is a provincial city. “We are a city of a thousand islands. The Romans, I am fourth generation, we are lazy and walking to another neighborhood seems like a trip ", IRENA RANALDI explained to me, Urban Sociologist and President of the Association Eighth hill, In an interview.
Rome, that of the frescoes in the churches, It's so beautiful, so brutal, so overwhelming, so overwhelming, that its inhabitants for centuries had stopped looking at anything out because they believed that everything was already inside. "LOST YOUR TERRY POWER, it seems that, In your pride, You wanted to isolate yourself: It has separated from other cities from Earth and, as a queen knocked from the throne, He has strongly hidden his misfortunes in solitude”, Write already in 1804 About Rome the French Chateaubriand.
Rome is not the capital of the world, Rome was the capital of the world. His past is so forceful that preserving it is the whole possible future. Surrounding that story grew a Chabacana and Juerguista city, Square and rude, Beautiful and vivacious, No envy, that you do not understand, that you do not need to understand. You suffer to enjoy it. It is the same. Its people survive turning their day to day trench and party. The Roman militant despises the quality of life of the Milanese and Turin, NOREUROPEOS unable to understand that identity is not traded. This is comforted, Faithful to his impenitent Roman trade.
One morning, Another friend invited me to play tennis to another club. We went to the diplomatic circle, Also next to the river. There was a clothing code, It should go white. The clues were perfect. Everything was careful. We have lunch in the buffet next to the pool. We were attended by a waiter with a white jacket. The costume was unpolluted ... I got frightened. I didn't play there again. I thought I did not play in Rome.
We were attended by a waiter with a white jacket. The costume was unpolluted ... I got frightened. I didn't play there again. I thought I did not play in Rome.
I understood that I preferred to go to Mirage With their old tracks, Your half -pick -up changing rooms, Your half bar, Your highway full of potholes… I felt free there. Played and then chatted with Michele, The owner of the bar, While you zampa a porchetta with a glass of wine. Sometimes, We ended up talking to other players in a gathering where they were adding messy voices. Complaining about the government, the pandemic, or getting entangled with football, Rafa Nadal and Berretini, Canary Islands or Sardinia ... We talked under a radiant sun between a blue and clean sky. The overweight swollen between high pine trees were heard. The track cost around 25 EUR, The food no more than 15, And Michele then invited some round.
I miss that place. I miss Rome. I think it was in Bangkok, where I live happy now, that I have discovered the virtues of the imperfections of Rome. You are free. Roman resile has an admirable part. They are not betrayed. The price to pay is very high, Stop being Roman to be something better but different. Become another vulgar city of the planet. The barbarians did not conquer anything, The barbarians survived Rome.
