A short post today (it’s a holiday in Rome!) to pay homage to one of the many clever ways that Moschino makes fashion fun. Is it a saucy striped shirt or a shapely shopping tote? Ready-to-wear or shop-til-you-drop?
Either way, it’s featured in one of our very favorite books about Italy: Volare. The Icon of Italy in Global Pop Culture by Giannino Malossa.
Browsing through magazines yesterday at the Feltrinelli Bookstore in Largo Argentina, we found ourselves intrigued by a new arrival on the newsstand. Called FEFE, the quarterly publication debuted in January of 2007 (where have we been?), and it’s chock full of eye-conic images.
Founded by a group of 25 Italian design professionals, FEFE invites readers to submit artwork illustrative of a theme chosen by the publishers, such as “I See the Light,” “I’m Not Bad, I’m Just Drawn That Way,” or “Rome + Fellini.” From the submissions, 25 are chosen and published in a full-color edition (along with one submission from a child).
Imagine a sort of diary made only of images, intuitions, flashes… a true diary doesn’t record events, but moods… imagine a diary made of glimpses into a world created by all those who look from the south of any north.
FEFE also releases music, as well as products, like belts and bags, that are made from MIMOs (the acronym stands for “messa in macchina occasionale”) - pages that become stuck in the press during printing and have two images that are randomly superimposed over one another.
In past months, FEFE has staged a variety of events, including musical performances (Moby seems to have been involved in one), street art, discussions about contemporary art, and public photo sets in Rome, Milan, Ostia, and Barcelona.
The New York Times recently ran an article about a new romantic ritual in Rome inspired by Federico Moccia’s recent book, Ho Voglio di Te, and its extremely popular movie adaptation. In the book, a young man wins the heart of a woman by taking her to Rome’s Ponte Milvio (or Milvian Bridge), wrapping a lock and chain symbolic of their love around a lightpost, and throwing the key into the Tiber River.
The invented ritual quickly caught on and young people from across Italy flocked to one of Rome’s oldest bridges to memorialize their own love with a padlock and a thrown-away key. In fact, so many locks appeared on the Ponte Milvio, that their weight caused a light post to collapse, inducing city officials to install steel posts with chains on which locks can be attached without causing damage to the ancient bridge. Though the Ponte Milvio was by far the most popular spot at which to leave a lock, any bridge could do the job in a pinch, and locks started to appear elsewhere, too, such as on the Ponte Cestio leading to Rome’s Tiber Island and on Florence’s Ponte Vecchio. (Though locks still spring up on the Ponte Cestio, they are removed regularly so as not to harm the bridge’s lightposts).
As the New York Times pointed out, such expressions of love are not new to the Ponte Milvio, which is one of Rome’s oldest standing bridges for it was first constructed in 206 BC. Tacitus, the first-century Roman historian and statesman, reported that even in his time it was “famous for its nocturnal attractions.” The Emperor Nero, Tacitus said, visited the bridge “for his debaucheries.” (It is also the place where in 312, Constantine defeated his rival Maxentius. He became the first emperor to convert to Christianity.)
The bridge today is a hangout for Rome’s youth. Covered in graffiti (most of it having to do with love), it provides a place for those who still live with their parents to socialize, to drink, and to smoke pot. But the popularity of the lock ritual means that the bridge is now also filled with those who come to leave a tangible sign of their emotional commitment to one another (as well as tourists who come to see the thousands of locks that line the edges of the bridge). Many lovers bring carefully decorated locks with them; they often glue photos to them or write their names upon them. And those unfortunate lovers who arrive lockless are assisted in their efforts to declare their amorous attachments by a fleet of lock-sellers who, taking advantage of the new fad, have set up makeshift stalls on the bridge.
If you’re not planning a trip to Rome but still want to declare your love, you can attach a virtual lock to the virtual Ponte Milvio by visiting this site.
Update August 21, 2007: Today a cartoon about the Ponte Milvio locks by Carol Lay on Salon.com.
We’ve just rediscovered these stellar ads for MTV’s Total Request Live in Rome and we’re totally enamored with them.
Caravaggio’s Narcissus stares obsessively at his own image, while the text above reads “Mad About You,” and the spiritual swoon of Bernini’s Blessed Ludovica Albertoni is embellished with the superimposition of the words, “I’m a Slave For You.”
Best-selling author Dave King spent the past year in Rome working on a new novel - and we can’t wait to read it. His fiction debut, The Ha-Ha, hit the shelves in 2005, receiving acclaim for its sensitive portrayal of the main character, Howard Kapostash, a Vietnam veteran who sustained a head injury during his brief tour of duty and was left unable to speak, to read or to write.
The Ha-Ha was named one of the best books of 2005 by The Christian Science Monitor and The Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, and it was among eighteen books included on The Washington Post list of the season’s best novels. The Ha-Ha was a finalist for Book-of-the-Month Club’s “Best Literary Fiction” award and for the Quills Foundation “Best Debut Author” award. As well, the novel won King a 2006-07 Rome Prize Fellowship from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. The Italian translation, entitled simply Ha-ha, was released July 20 by Fazi Editore.
E-cool caught up with Dave in Rome, near the Colosseum, just days before he was scheduled to leave the Eternal City and return to his home in New York City. We asked him about his new novel and about his experiences living in Rome and he kindly granted us an exclusive preview of his work-in-progress.
When did you first visit Rome?
I traveled to Rome with a friend in 1973 after graduating from high school. Then I came back to Italy in 1978 on an undergraduate study abroad program based in Greve in Chianti. A semester in Chianti might sound like paradise to many, but I was bored living in the country and jumped a train to Rome as often as I could. I spent a tremendous part of that semester exploring the city and just hanging out.
Did those visits whet your appetite for the city’s culture and its history?
I think so. I’ve visited lots of times since the 1970s. But Roman Fever didn’t really enter my work until my partner Frank Tartaglione and I spent some weeks as visiting artists at the American Academy in the fall of 2005. The Ha-Ha had been recently published and I was starting a new novel – the one I’m still working on. While Frank spent his time drawing, I explored the Villa Farnesina; I became completely entranced with the villa and visited every day. Of course, at that time I had no idea I’d be returning to the Academy only a year later as a Literature Fellow.
Did the Villa Farnesina provide inspiration for your current novel?
Eventually, yes, though that wasn’t the original idea. I came to Rome in the fall of 2005 with the idea of writing a book about Americans abroad. I was inspired by a favorite Henry James novel, The American, which is a portrait of an American in Paris. But I was more interested in setting a book in Rome, so I’d been thinking about another of James’s novels, Daisy Miller, as a model for examining Americans and the way we present ourselves to the world when we’re out of our own country.
In the end, the idea of rewriting Daisy Miller didn’t pan out. But my interest in a Roman setting led back to the Villa Farnesina and to the myth of Cupid and Psyche. Ultimately that story, as well as the Raphael frescoes that depict it in the Villa, supplanted the Henry James model as the inspiration for the new book.
What about the myth of Cupid & Psyche do you find so interesting?
The story falls into the “beauty and the beast” genre, but it doesn’t fit the mold perfectly. Cupid is a beautiful god, and he abducts the stunning mortal girl, Psyche, and takes her to his castle in the sky. He makes conjugal visits to Psyche every night, but he also makes her promise she’ll never try to see him or to discover his real identity. As a result (and with some help from her jealous sisters), she begins to imagine that her handsome lover is in fact a vicious, violent monster.
Beauty and the Beast is a bit of a reversal, of course. In that story the beast really is physically repulsive, but we’re asked to believe he’s a prince inside. Yet both stories make us question just which lover is good and which is bad – who exactly is the beauty and who the beast.
I’m also intrigued by the element of transformation in the Cupid & Psyche story. Psyche is one of the few mortals who has an encounter with a god and comes out the better – she eventually marries Cupid and becomes a goddess herself. That’s an extraordinary outcome for a myth because in general mortals who come in contact with deities wind up incinerated or turned into plants or bugs or constellations–or they suffer fates much much worse!
So the new novel shares a big theme with The Ha-Ha? In your first book, Howard Kapostash is a bit of a beast. He can’t speak. He’s been maimed in war. And the beautiful woman with whom he shares a house ultimately tames him.
I hadn’t thought of that. Though now that you say it I recall that in his review of The Ha-Ha in Time Magazine, Richard Layaco talked about the book as a reworking of the beauty-and-the-beast narrative. That’s interesting. I guess we just keep on pondering the same problems, don’t we?
Can you tell us a bit more about the new book? What’s the working title? Can you give us a plot summary?
The working title is The Beast & Beauty. And though you’ve pointed out conceptual similarities with The Ha-Ha, it’s going to be somewhat different in tone. The Ha-Ha was serious – it was about illness - whereas The Beast & Beauty is more of a social comedy. The narrator is a Ph.D. candidate whose unfinished dissertation involves those Psyche paintings in the Villa Farnesina. She’s married to her college sweetheart, who commits a crime at the outset of the novel, and after that the two take to the road. The plot rather loosely evokes the story of Cupid and Psyche as well as providing opportunities for commentary and inquiry. (Again: can any couple really be sure which party’s the beauty and which the beast?).
Is it set in Rome?
The characters will travel to Rome, since obviously the heroine must eventually see the paintings But I’ve found it hard to do more than rough out that part of the book while I’ve been here. A lot of writers find it difficult to write about the place they’re actually living, and I guess I need a little distance. I’m looking forward to watching the dust settle once I’m home in Brooklyn
We can’t wait to read it. You’re headed home now after a year in Rome. Can you tell us what you’ve loved about the city?
I think the big discovery over the past year was a fuller awareness of the city’s long continuum. Up to this year, I’d imagined essentially two Romes: the ancient city and the Baroque city. But that perception’s changed as I’ve filled in some gaps in the time line and certain things have emerged. For example, I now see all the medieval towers that were invisible to me before. I love spotting a new tower!
Also, I’ve really come to love Renaissance Rome. When I was younger I preferred the exuberance of the Baroque, especially Caravaggio and Bernini. But now, with a bit of maturity and depth—and of course, with the ongoing research for this new novel—I’m growing much more intrigued by Renaissance Rome. I’m amazed by Raphael’s paintings in the Stanze of Julius II at the Vatican. And, of course, I love the Villa Farnesina. It’s the place I tell everyone to go when they visit Rome.
Has the Eternal City changed you?
Probably. A year after arriving here, I do feel different, though it’s hard to say precisely how. Certainly my ideas about being an American abroad have deepened. Before living in Rome I had a simpler notion of what it means to live in another culture. Being a language wonk, I think I imagined that language would be the primary issue; that everything would flow from my understanding Italian. I see now that that view was naive, and that politics, cultural custom, history, and a whole host of other factors all work together with language to make life outside American culture a kind of endless—though endlessly satisfying—series of challenges and riddles.
For more information about Dave King and The Ha-Ha, visit his website, www.davekingwriter.com or watch the video-interview that’s on the website of his Italian publisher, Fazi Editore. And, be sure to look for The Ha-Ha on the big screen late in 2008! The book was optioned by Warner Brothers Pictures in 2005. Tod Williams will direct the film from a script by Charles Leavitt, and Tom Cruise is currently slated to star as Howard Kapostash.
Rome’s streets are filled with souvenir stores, streetside souvenir stands, and roving souvenir salesmen. It seems that every visitor to the Eterna is out there searching for the perfect thing to take home - something that will remind them of the glories of their Roman holiday once they’re back in the daily routine. Papal bottle openers are a cheap but ever-popular choice, while hot priest calendars are flying off the shelves and visitors are clamoring for the witty Rome t-shirts sold on line at the iDC City Shop.
But what about those people who are looking for something new and different? That’s the question that was posed to 23 international artists in 2005 when Casa da Arbitare and Alessi sponsored the ‘Souvenir d’Italie’ exhibit during the Milan Furniture Fair.
French designer Inga Sempe came up with these booty-licious kitchen implements, which, unfortunately are prototypes and have never hit the markets.
Sempe, a designer living in Paris, spent 2000-2001 in Rome as a fellow at the Villa Medici, Academie de France a Rome. In 2000 she opened her studio in Paris and has since won several design awards, including the Grand Prix de la Creation en design de la Ville de Paris in 2003. She often collaborates with Cappellini, Edra, Ligne Roset, Baccarat, and Pallucco.
Dutch product designer Chris Kabel’s created a Colosseum-shaped tube pan. The souvenir tube pan comes with a porcelain plate on which to present the freshly baked Coliseum cake to dinner guests, who, as they eat the cake, reveal the plan of the building on the plate.
For a perfect white Colosseum (unlike the dirty one currently standing in Rome) a low yeast bread recipe works wonders. For a more transparent appearance, Jello is the way to go. But for the most authentic and contemporary look, the product designer himself suggests a recipe for mocha sponge cake.
Both Sempe and Kabel’s souvenir designs are part of Museo Alessi’s collection.
(Does anyone know if the Souvenir d’Italie exhibit was published and/or documented on a website? We’d love to see all the products produced, but can’t find them online or in bookstores. If you know where we can see more, please drop us a comment. Thanks!)
Inga Sempe kitchenwares via tastespotting and style-files.com.
It’s August in Rome and that means that the city is quiet, as many of its inhabitants have packed up and headed to the sea. Among the most popular of vacation spots is the island of Sardinia, for its pristine beaches, crystal clear waters, and dramatic landscapes are the stuff of which vacations dreams are made.
We’re not headed off to Sardinia this year (darn!), but in celebration of the vacation season and that beautiful island, we decided to see what kind of delicious summer treat we could make using mirto, the traditional Sardinian liquor. Made from myrtle berries - which give the liquor a distinctive aromatic flavor - mirto is usually served ice-cold as a delicious after-dinner drink.
Because mirto is usually served in a frosty glass, we thought it best to make something icy and refreshing - and eventually we settled on a Mirto-Blueberry Granita. In case you want to follow suit, we include the recipe here:
Mirto-Blueberry Granita
3/4 of a cup of mirto
2 cups of blueberry juice
1/2 cup of water
juice of 1/2 of a lemon
Mix all liquid ingredients together, then pour into a plastic container approximately 13 x 9 inches, which was then placed in the freezer. As the mixture begins to freeze around the edges, stir, breaking up the ice. Then stir every 15 minutes until the mirto-blueberry mix turns into a deliciously addictive icy treat.
Scoop into glasses or bowls and eat with a spoon.
Liquor-infused granitas like this one make great aperitifs and even better desserts. We’ve been getting rave reviews as the combination of the aromatic mirto with the sweetness of the blueberry juice is an almost perfect combination. As well, the Mirto-Blueberry granita has a deep purple color that’s drop-dead beautiful.
So, if you’re not joining the jet-set in Sardinia this summer, find yourself some mirto (available at better liquor stores) and treat yourself to a taste of the island.
Italian chef Filippo La Mantia began his professional life as a news photographer covering Mafia crimes in Palermo, the city in which he grew up. But his life took an unexpected twist in 1986 when he was wrongfully arrested and imprisoned for involvement in the murder of a policemen. He was 26 years old at the time.
Eventually cleared of charges with the assistance of anti-Mafia prosecutor Giovanni Falcone (who was later assassinated), La Mantia says that the time he spent in Ucciardone, Palermo’s notorious jail, changed him forever, because it was there that he learned to cook.
His story has inspired a book, Maqueda, by Salvo Sottile, and a movie, Tutte le donne della mia vita.
La Mantia is now the owner of the ultra-hip Trattoria Restaurant in Rome (Via del Pozzo della Cornacchie 25, phone 06 683 01427) and he’s recently been getting a lot of press for joining the ranks of Italian chefs who choose not to use garlic in their food, choosing other natural ingredients such as citrus and herbs instead.
Like others who have joined the anti-garlic bandwagon, La Mantia says that garlic smells horrible and that it overwhelms delicate flavors. He claims that garlic is a leftover from the era when Italians were poor and needed something powerful to add flavor to their modest meals. Now, he claims, most Italians can and should afford to do without it. He gives his point of view explicitly on this CNN video.
His antigarlic movement has a powerful ally in former Premier Silvio Berlusconi whose has a well-known aversion to the stinking rose. Carlo Rossella, a news director for Berlusconi’s Mediaset has even started a list of garlic-free restaurants and is pushing for places that serve garlic to have separate, garlic-free menus.
But not all Italians are in agreement. Last year Italians ate 108 million pounds of garlic in 2006, a 4 percent increase over the previous year. And for some the snubbing of garlic is seen as culinary snobbery. Talking with NPR reporter Sylvia Poggioli, a vendor at the Campo dei Fiori outdoor market (whose stall features long braids of garlic nestled among colorful fruits and vegetables) asked, “What are we supposed to eat, shallots? Will that make us more elegant? More French?”
In the middle of the fourth century AD, a Roman patrician named John, together with his wife, made a vow to donate all their possessions to the Blessed Virgin. As they tried to decide how their worldly goods might best be disposed, they prayed for guidance, and on an August night their answer arrived by way of a dream and a meteorological miracle.
Appearing in their dreams, the Virgin Mary told the wealthy couple that she wanted them to build a church in her honor on Rome’s Esquiline Hill. She assured them that she would show them the right spot by means of a snowfall, despite Rome’s steamy summer weather. And, in keeping with her promise, on the night between 4 and 5 August, snow fell on the summit of the Esquiline Hill, while the Virgin Mary made another nocturnal visit, this time to Pope Liberius, alerting him to the mission with which she had charged the couple.
The next morning John and his wife appeared on the site of the miraculous snowfall and Pope Liberius arrived shortly thereafter. The pope ordered that the snow-covered ground be marked off and that construction begin immediately on the new church, which came to be known as Santa Maria Maggiore, and earned the status of being one of Rome’s four most important religious sites.
Though the story is probably just a legend (its origins seem to date several centuries after Santa Maria Maggiore was constructed), the miracle is celebrated each year on the 5th of August. A high mass is held and during the “Gloria,” white flower petals are showered from the ceiling of the basilica, re-enacting the miraculous snowfall.
Because the basilica is so large and the flower petals that waft out of the ceiling are so small, the event is notoriously difficult to photograph. But a careful examination of the photo posted above will reveal blurry white streaks, which are, in fact, flower petals falling to the ground.
For more great photos of Rome, visit the Rome With A View Blog.
Massimiliano Fuksas, an architect born in Rome and recently returned to the Eternal City, is a legend in Europe, but has yet to become well-known across the Atlantic. The designer has worked for such clients as Ferrari, Alessi, and Armani and he is currently involved in a number of prestigious projects, including the Peace Center in Jaffa, Israel and the African Institute of Science & Technology [AIST] of the Nelson Mandela Institute in Nigeria.
Fuksas is also hard at work on a project in Rome. He bested such international stars as Richard Rogers to win an international competition for a new Congress Center to be constructed in the EUR suburb of the Rome, an area developed by Fascist dictator Benito Mussolini in the early 20th century.
The huge rectangular glass building will cover some 15,000 square meters and will house an auditorium, as well as cafes and meeting rooms. Though the Congress Center’s glass and steel exterior will respond to the style of surrounding Fascist buildings, its centerpiece - a 3500 square meter steel and Teflon cloud suspended from the 100-foot ceiling by cables - will contradict the strict geometry of the exterior form. It’s the kind of move that Fuksas loves. He says:
I never want to be pragmatic over expressionist. I don’t want to be organic over rationalist. I want to be both.
His emphasis on expressionism won him rave reviews when his Milan Trade Fair opened to the public in 2005. In a New Yorker review, critic Paul Goldberger greatly admired the Milan building, noting Fuksas’s ability to make glass and steel undulating like fabric. And his praise of Fuksas seemed aimed to carve a place for the architect in Italy’s long architectural annals:
Fuksas is one of the most deft makers of form. He’s better than anyone else right now at expressing the essence of Italian architecture, which is a combination of new and old presented in an exciting way.
But how did the architect conceive of putting a cloud in a building? He recounts the very moment at which the idea occurred to him:
The idea came to me in a very special moment. I was at the seaside; a group of clouds were being blown quickly across the sky by a strong wind. As I looked to the clouds I remembered a dream I had had, which involved constructing a building that had no crystallized form at all.
Like all architectural projects, Rome’s Congress Center has suffered delays - some of which resulted when ancient ruins were found on the building site. But having opened an office in Rome in order to undertake the Congress Center project (he has others in Frankfurt and Paris), Fuksas is determined to finish the project which is currently scheduled to be completed in 2009.
Click here to check out the new Rome With A View 2009 calendars!
