Tourists and residents of Rome alike were surprised and delighted yesterday morning as they witnessed  a street performance staged by an unknown group.  Four “nuns” dressed in shocking pink appeared in Piazza di Spagna and took a stroll through the city accompanied by two mounted “mounted police” likewise suited out in all pink uniforms.

The rose-colored group traveled from Piazza di Spagna to Via del Corso by way of Via Condotti – no doubt the employees and clients of the haute couture stores that line Via Condotti were pink with envy – and then continued down Via del Corso to Piazza del Popolo.

Who’s responsible for this delightfully colorful parade remains a mystery, though Rome’s daily newspaper La Repubblica posits that the event  may be a mini flashmob staging, a type of viral marketing, or very petite demonstration.

Photos from La Repubblica.

We’re kicking off Monday morning with a final homage to ABOVE and his/her centurion stencil on Via di San Giovanni in Laterano (really near the Colosseum).  If you saw yesterday’s post, then you may have watched the video that ABOVE made about the stencil, in which one of the “real live” centurions who poses for photos at the Colosseum makes an appearance.

When ABOVE wrote to alert us about that video, s/he also sent us some snapshots of the “real” centurion standing side-by-side with the sprayed one.  So, we show you some of those today and feel pretty confident that they provide just the kind of juxtaposition between past and present (or is this present and present) that e-Coolers adore.

If you missed it yesterday, click here to watch ABOVE’s When in Rome Video.  You can find out more about ABOVE at www.goabove.com, where you can see more street art, watch videos, buy prints, and fill out an “application” to buy original art work (ABOVE won’t sell to just anyone, it seems – and that’s OK with us).

A few weeks ago we published a fabulous stencil by ABOVE that we spotted on Via San Giovanni in Laterano.  We expressed both our admiration and entertainment for the work and shortly thereafter we heard from its creator, ABOVE, who wrote to let us know about the publication of a When in Rome video on Vimeo.

We knew that eCoolers would love seeing a real live (modern) centurion hamming it up aside this stencil, so we’re linking now to ABOVE’s great video.  Click on over and watch!

ABOVE’s When in Rome Video.  You can find out more about ABOVE at www.goabove.com, where you can see more street art, watch videos, buy prints, and fill out an “application” to buy original art work (ABOVE won’t sell to just anyone, it seems – and that’s OK with us).

Now that it’s September, things are starting to pick up here in Rome (and, we’re sincerely hoping that a HUGE amount of extra e-cool things start happening soon as events in Rome have been pretty slowly lately).  The Romans are starting to trickle back into the city; restaurants and shops are raising their shutters; and the buses are starting to run with a bit more frequency.

In these last days of summer, Susan Sanders has been out roaming the deserted streets of the city.  Just about a week ago, she joined a crowd of tourists and Romans on Via del Corso to watch the break dancers who spin that street.  She got some great photos and we share those with you today.

For more images of the Eternal City by Susan, visit her fabulous photo blog, Rome With A View.

Faithful eCool readers may have noted that it’s been a slow month in the Eternal City.  August is always rough in Rome: stores and restaurants close and normal daily life comes to a grinding halt as the city’s residents head for the seashore.

Those who are left in Rome (and numbers have been rising for years, but the economic downturn has certainly left lots of Romans unable to head out on vacation for the month of August) are always in search of a cooling breeze, some chlorinated water, and a place to get away from the stifling heat of the city.  Yesterday we showed you a photo of the pool, bar, disco, and poker club called All’Ombra dell Colosseo.  Today we bring you our favorite piece of publicity for All’Ombra – a sign for the poker club reminding Romans that they can play Texas Hold ‘Em in the shadow of the Colosseum.

We love this on so many levels.  The juxtaposition of Texas and Rome seems strangely apropos when illustrated by the Colosseum.  And we’re reminded that the ancient Romans had the same love-hate relationship with gambling that continues today.   Though some late Republican statesmen argued that gambling corrupted morals and though all gambling, except betting at the circus and races, was forbidden by law, archaeological and literary evidence suggests that the Romans gambled with aplomb, especially emperors like Augustus and Nero, but also common people, whose dice and gaming boards have survived the ages.

There are members of the eCool Team who have started to call the Compound by another name–sweat lodge.  It’s mid-August and it’s just plain hot in Rome.  That heat doesn’t keep the eCool team from showing up for work.  Oh no!  They’re here bright and early, slogging away at their computers, trying to think of clever things write, trying to find amazing things to post, and generally trying to work out the proof that informs the equation (Rome = Eternally Cool).

Each day by about 2pm, however, the eCoolers have had it.  Despite our instance that they need to stay and work and despite the fact that we provide them them with an unending supply of cold coffee and other iced beverages, each afternoon there’s a moment when our highly-paid team just deserts us.  They say that they’re heading out into the streets to look for eCool material.  We know that no one in their right minds would wander the streets of Rome in the middle of the afternoon in August.  And we know that they’re really sitting in air-conditioned bookstores reading trashy vampire novels, but we don’t press the point.

Every once in a while, however, our team does return to the Compound with something ultra-awesome.  Dripping with sweat, they download their photos onto the eCool computer and then show us something so amazing that we cease to care what they’re doing with their time and lavish praise upon them.  That exact series of events happened recently and so today we’re happy to share with you the photo that our badass team brought home late last week.

It’s a stencil that currently embellishes a wall flanking Via di San Giovanni in Laterano, quite near the Colosseum.   A Roman centurion–the kind that poses for a picture with you outside the Colosseum and then demands an exorbitant price for the privilege–stands holding a paint roller in his hand.  Above him are the words “When in Rome.”  Are we meant to read him as the artist of this oh-so-apropos artwork? (The artist, by the way, seems to have claimed their work here in the form of a signature below the figure that reads “Above.”)  Or are we meant to see him as representing an antiquated authority figure who will come and erase this bit of stupendous stencil work with another coat of paint.  We don’t know the answer but we love this addition to the streetscape.

Buon Ferragosto a tutti!  Today, August 15th, is Ferragosto, one of Italy’s biggest holidays.  Stores are closed and Italians have headed to the beach in order to avoid the swelter of summer in the city.  Ferragosto is more than that, however.  It’s a religious holiday too.  If you’re not up on this celebration, you can read all about it by clicking over to our 2007 entry about the day.

Here in the Compound we’re celebrating in various ways, not least of which is the posting of this fine Roman street photo by Susan Sanders.   Shot near Piazza Trilussa in Trastevere, the image documents the layers of street art applied to walls in this area known for late-night partying and hipster fun.  Someone, it seems, has been appropriating from Warhol, sticking up his Marilyn (and his banana) on the city streets though with some modifications–are those bullet holes between her eyes?

For other fab photos by Susan, click on over to her Rome With A View website.

In Rome, things move a bit more slowly in August.  It’s hot; almost everyone is out of town; stores and restaurants are closed; only a fraction of the usual buses and taxis are on the street.  In short, there’s just no reason to hurry.

The lazy slowness of August is exactly and precisely the reason that we’re a bit late with our Photo Friday post this week–though our tardiness makes Susan Sanders’ shot no less humorous.   She snapped this photo of a Bernabei van in Piazza del Popolo.  Bernabei is one of Rome’s major distributors of alcohol, so we’re betting that the van’s exterior embellishment is meant to encourage those who imbibe to consider their actions carefully while under the influence.

The icons on the van suggest that such activities as littering, painting on walls, sleeping in piazzas, and talking loudly should be avoided.  We agree.  We’d also go so far as to suggest that one’s spelling should always be checked–even in cases of extreme inebriation.

For more photos by Susan, visit her awesome blog: Rome With A View

It’s Photo Friday!  Faithful eCoolers will know that photographer Susan Sanders loves the writing on the wall.  She spends lots of time on Rome’s streets looking for witty juxtapositions of word and image and that which she brings us today certainly doesn’t disappoint.

The sole-ful photograph above was shot near St. John Lateran, where a colossal bronze statue of St. Francis and his friars commemorates the visit of Assisi’s saint to Pope Urban III in Rome in 1209. The Pope, it seems, expected to meet a radical preacher, but instead found himself in admiration of St. Francis’s humility and faith and granted him permission to continue his work as the founder of a religious order.

The sculpture of Francis and his followers stands facing the church of St. John Lateran. Tourists and Romans alike pose for photos with the over-sized friars, but it’s when you walk around the back of the sculpture that things really get interesting, for the youth of Rome have applied their paint pens to the feet of one of the friars.  We wouldn’t call it art, but the tags inscribed on the kneeling friar’s soles seem to suggest a new spelling for the word gra-feety.

Here in the Compound, we start to get excited when July rolls around and Trastevere’s annual Festa dei Noantri nears.  The week-long celebration seems to be a combination of two things:  while, in Roman dialect, “festa dei noantri” means the celebration of “we the others” and refers to people who live in Trastevere district rather than across the river in the centro storico, that celebration of the “Trastevere others” is combined with adulation of the Madonna del Carmelo or the Madonna Fiumarola, an image of the Virgin Mary that was miraculously fished out of the Tiber River and has since agreed to protect the neighborhood.

Each year, on a mid-July Saturday evening, the Festa dei Noantri is kicked off with a procession by which the Madonna Fiumarola tours the Trastevere neighborhood.  Streets are closed and those Trasteverini who are not participating in the procession push and shove their way to the front of the crowds in order to get the best possible view of the Virgin.

The procession begins when the Virgin takes leave of her usual home, the church of Sant’Agata in Largo San Giovanni de Matha.  This year, her departure from the church was especially celebratory, being marked by thousands of  pieces of gold mylar ribbon that fluttered down from the heavens as she made her way into the street.

Representatives of Rome’s dashingly-dressed Carabinieri sit astride noble horses and lead the way through the neighborhood, followed by a lively police band.  This year the city’s mayor, Gianni Alemanno (see above, he’s wearing the striped sash) also joined the celebration, as did hundreds of devotees.

As the Madonna winds her way down the Via della Lungaretta and the Via della Luce, local residents lean out their windows, shouting, “Viva Madonna” and joining in with the chanted prayers that are broadcast by means of portable speakers carried by strapping Roman youths.

Carried through the neighborhood atop a litter that weighs hundreds of pounds, the Madonna makes stops at all the local churches, including Santa Maria della  Luce, San Francesco a Ripa, and San Cosimato, while crowds eagerly anticipate her arrival at ever corner.

The movement through the neighborhood takes several hours adn at the end of the procession, the Virgin is placed in the church of San Crisogono on Viale Trastevere, where she receives visitors until midnight before being returned to Sant’Agata by means of a candlelight procession.  She’ll remain in Sant’Agata, splendidly decked out in a new dress made just for the occasion, visited by droves of faithful for a week, before being taken on another journey, this time down the Tiber River from Castel Sant’Angelo to the riverbanks in Trastevere and on to the church of Santa Maria in Trastevere.

We cover this event every year and so we have a whole range of spectacular photos taken by Susan Sanders (including those in this entry).   The procession varies in size and quality each year, so you’ll want to click on over to these other entries to see the Madonna as she makes her way through the ‘hood each and every year:

On the legend of La Madonna Fiumarola and to see the Virgin escorted by Roman soldiers, click here.

The Madonna on the River:  click here and here.

A devotee of the Madonna Fiumarola advocates for peace: click here.

For the 2008 procession including a close-up view of the Madonna statue, click here.