On the night between Saturday 15 September and Sunday 16 September, some three thousands runners took to Rome’s streets at 12:30am to participate in an annual nightime run called CorriRoma and organized by the Rome Marathon club. The 11 kilometer course took participants around some of Rome’s most celebrated ancient monuments, including the Colosseum, as seen above.
A Moraccan runner named Laalami Cerqauoi was the first of the men to complete the course, crossing the finish line in 33 minutes and 22 seconds, while Barbara La Barbara from Palermo finished as the first woman in 39 minutes and 30 seconds.
Guido Crepax (1933-2003) - the inventor of ‘Valentina,’ an erotic comic character whose popularity soared in 1960s Italy and France - is being celebrated with a line of furniture developed by Opus Interiors. Crepax was hugely influential in the development of European comic art in the second half of the 20th century, publishing comic strips and books with his most famous character, Valentina Rosselli, from 1965 to 1995. (It’s Valentina who appears on the Opus Furniture.)
With her appearance inspired by the silent film actress Louise Brooks, Valentina’s stories are psychedelic, provocative, and languidly hallucinatory in nature (perfect for the bedroom, no?)
In the city of Milan, Valentina, an accomplished young photographer, lives the high life. She stays out all night and sleeps until studio shoots begin at noon. Walking home alone one night (in order to avoid the unwanted advances of a director), Valentina is nearly run over by a cold blonde in a fancy car and it is there that her extravagant sexual adventures begin. From bisexuality to super-sensual abandon, as well as fevered dreams of nazis, underwear, and big holes in the ground. Crepax leaves it to his discerning adult audience to discover just what Valentina’s exotic adventures mean.
