Artichokes are a real favorite in Rome and it’s well known that they’ve been on the Italian menu for thousands of years. A perennial thistle, artichokes are thought to have originated here in the southern Mediterranean and people have been snacking on them at least since the ancient Romans ruled the world (though there’s some discussion as to whether or not the artichokes to which ancient Roman writers make reference are the popular globe artichokes or one of their vegetal cousins, the cardoon).
As most everyone knows, when you’re eating an artichoke, you’re actually eating a flower bud. And though it’s hard to believe that there are any artichokes in Italy that go uneaten, we discovered a few that were spared the cooking pot at the organic market on Vicolo della Moretta this Sunday. After bursting into their brilliantly beautiful purple flower, they’d been dried, and were ready to be crafted into an arrangement that looks good enough to eat.
The pharmaceutical company Takeda Italia became the first Italian company to use art as a means of promoting health maintenance when it recently began a revolutionary ad campaign called “The Art of Health and the Health of Art.”
140,000 posters hanging across Rome and Milan pair messages about leading a healthy life with paintings by abstract expressionist artist Mark Rothko. Why Rothko? The company chose to enhance their message with his color block paintings because his work provides “simple expressions of complex ideas” – an approach to health that Takeda promotes.
In addition to Rothko paintings, each poster features a quote that encourages healthy practices. One cites the Greek physician Hippocrates: “Walking is man’s best medicine.” Another quotes the 17th century writer La Rochefoucauld: “To eat is a necessity. To eat intelligently is an art.”
The poster below gives its readers some witty encouragement to stop smoking. It reads “Stop Smoking. Begin to Breathe Again” and features a quip from Oscar Wilde: “It’s easy to stop smoking: I stop ten times a day.”
Doing double duty, the poster also serves to advertise an upcoming Rothko exhibition due to open in Rome’s (almost) restored Palazzo delle Esposizione from 4 October 2007 to 6 January 2008.
As showcased on thecoolhunter.net: Marcel Breuer meets Zaha Hadid in a new library designed by King Roselli Architects for Rome’s Pontificial Lateran University. The library holds some 600,000 volumes primarily on the subjects of Philosophy, Theology, and Canon Law. The strikingly modern new library wing – commissioned by University Chancellor Msgr. Renato Fisichella – is intended to communicate the central role played by reading in a university environment.
Floors of book stacks are connected by sloping ramps that serve as reading rooms. The reading ramps are flooded with light thanks to dramatic cuts in the exterior facade of the building and a central light well.
Such a modern building may seem unusual in Rome, but over the course of the past few years King Roselli Architects have been helping update the Eterna’s image with sleek buildings like the Es Hotel (now the Radisson SAS Hotel) and the Ripa Hotel.
