Someone in Trastevere must have found themselves in hot water with someone they love recently. The situation drove them to the streets, where they sprayed this charming sentiment on a wall in Via dei Salumi.
The large word reads “Perdonami” or “Forgive me,” while little signs sticking up from the top of the balloon surrounding the word read “Ti prego” or “Please” and “Ti amo” or “I love you.”
We noticed it a few days ago and thought it a lovely way to apologize — though we wondered if the apology had been accepted. By yesterday, a response had been scrawled to the lower right in gold spray paint. It reads, “Sono solo pazzo di te,” or “I’m only crazy about you.” (see photo below)
We’re guessing that paradise has been regained.
We don’t know who’s responsible for this, but someone is posting very simple signs on the back of Rome’s bus stop. They look official — meaning that they seem to be paid advertisement rather than the work of a street artist. They’re minimalist and white; at the center of each sign, the word “DREAM” is written in bold black letters. The only attribution is a small line at the bottom of the sign that reads “yoko ono 2009.”
Who’s up to this? Is it Yoko Ono herself or someone attributing the idea to her? We just don’t know and our efforts to find out have proved futile thus far. If you know the source, please share it. In the meantime, we’ll continue to enjoy these little bits of streetside inspiration.
We spotted this in the Jewish Ghetto just a few days ago. It’s a stencil on a wall that shows the map of Rome’s historic center with a red line around the edge, marking the path of the Aurelian Wall, a defense wall built in the third century AD to protect Rome from invaders. Below, in both Italian and English, is a caption that reads, “You are 2445 steps from the Aurelian Wall.”
Like the Aurelian wall, the serpentine course of the Tiber River is painted red. What are the red crosses? We’re not sure, though we’ve got some theories going — the most persuasive of which is the idea that the red crosses mark the sites of similar stencils that document the walking distance to the wall from other sites in the city. We haven’t gone out on a scavanger hunt for those other yet (too darn hot in the Eterna for walkabouts), but we did find one other example quite by accident and its location corresponds with the position of a cross on the map.
The red 12/21 number above the left side of the map seems to suggest that this is the 12th of 21 such stencils. There’s also a big red dot just near the Tiber Island. What does it represent? We have a theory about that too, but we’ll keep it to ourselves until we’ve done a bit more research.
We don’t know whose project this is or why they’re so busily documenting the distance to the Aurelian Wall, but we like it, like it, yes we do.
On one of our many recent public transporation odysseys, members of the eCool team found themselves strolling down Via Cavour. It’s not the thoroughfare one would choose for an evening walkabout given the traffic, the fume-filled air, and the endless string of cheap tourist eateries. The experience proved rewarding nonetheless when we found ourselves face to face with an advertisement we’d seen some five years ago but failed to photograph — a failure that had left a regrettable hole in our encyclopedic collection of works of art used as advertising.
There, on the back of a bus stop sign was the much-longed for ad. Other posters that had been layered upon it over the years, served to preserve it (isn’t that so archaeological?) but have now had peeled away, leaving us with an image of Michelangelo’s David holding his nose and a clean-up-the-city tagline that reads, “You could cut the air with a knife in Italy’s cities.”
A survey around the eCool Compound suggests that things haven’t improved much since this version of the David first appeared in Italian cities some years ago — a fact suggested by the pollution-grey of the sky behind the sign.
Want more David? There’s a David made of Legos and Fat David as well as a photograph of David as homeland security.
Walking through Rome’s streets provides a sensory overload of which we just can’t get enough! Even a short stroll challenges mind and body: while it’s challenging enough to stay upright on the uneven cobblestones, one must also look down to avoid stepping in something unpleasant while simultaneously looking up and around so as not to be hit by cars or by motorini.
As if that’s not enough, there are all those people and their beautiful (or wacky) outfits to admire, works of art and architecture that will stop you dead in your tracks, and a wealth of fragments attesting to Rome’s long history that are built into houses and shops or fenced off at the edge of the street.
If you can manage all that, you can find even more entertainment in the rich collection of streetside graffiti and pubblicita. Taking in all the ephemeral words and images written or pasted on buildings and billboards is one of our favorite hobbies.
We were especially pleased when we came upon the poster shown above. It’s old — a poster created in the run-up U.S. elections in November 2008 by an organization called US Citizens for Peace and Justice (that we very much admire). We imagine that since the election season, other signs and posters have covered it but have now fallen away, leaving us to ponder once again a message of eternal importance, “Hope is not a crime.”
Some months ago, photographer Susan Sanders caught King Tut, one of Rome’s more popular street performers, taking a break from the grueling and tedious job of standing perfectly still, no doubt hoping that someone will drop a coin in his cup so he’ll have an excuse to bow and stretch his back.
Last Sunday, on a jaunt through the city, another eCooler came upon a street performer picnic in progress. Three of the city’s gilded “mannequins” had ducked into a side street, settled themselves on milk crates, and were in the process of settling into a multi-course Sunday lunch.
After a recent stroll past a scuola media or middle school near the eCool Compound, Susan Sanders gleefully returned to headquarters with this fabulous photo. As the school is located near enough to the Compound to serve as a kind-of soundtrack and stage set for all of our various eCooling activities, we were convinced that there are days when the learning level in this particular educational institution is a bit on the light side. This photo, however, gave us a whole new understanding of the place. Clearly, those fashionable middle-schoolers, lingering on the streets around the compound, adjusting their low-slung jeans, smoking, and tagging surrounding buildings are aereonautical engineers in training! Why didn’t this occur to us sooner?
In fact, it’s blissfully quiet at the Compound today. The 1st of May is a holiday in Italy–it’s labor day. There’s no school and no work; the Romans have headed to the beaches and the mountains–a kind of trial run of the upcoming summer holidays.
For more photos by Susan, visit her blog: Rome With A View.
On Saturday 18 April, Rome’s Piazza del Popolo was invaded by panda bears–the paper-mache kind, that is. Meant to raise awareness about the plight of panda bears–there are only 1600 left in the world–the adorable creatures were placed in the piazza by the World Wildlife Fund, an organization that uses the bear as its symbol.
The pandas have moved on now, to the Sicilian city of Syracuse, where they’ll sit atop a bridge during the meeting of Ministers of the Environment from G8 countries that’s taking place there this week. If you’re dying to have one of these cute black and white bears, stay tuned, as next week they’ll be put on sale on eBay! Prices should soar as some of the bears will be autographed by such superstars as Francesco Totti, Italy’s reigning football king with funds being used to support World Wildlife Fund projects.
If you’d like to help the pandas but want to avoid the eBay fray and don’t really need for your bear to be signed by Totti or anyone else, click on over to the World Wildlife Fund site and adopt your very own cuddly animal.
Photos: La Repubblica
A happy event occurred in Rome last week — the liberation of Piazza Venezia! Two years ago, city officials put a big fence around the center of Piazza Venezia (where the newly planted flowers are seen in this photo) and started archaeological explorations meant to enable the projected construction of a third metro line in Rome.
In the course of the excavations, archaeologists found the remains of a monumental ancient building as well as the foundations and walls of any number of buildings dating to the early modern period.
While all that was going on, we at the eCool Compound practically forgot what Piazza Venezia looked like without the construction. So, we were happy to get the place back last week when Rome’s Mayor, Gianni Alemanno, donned his red, green, and white sash and posed for photos in front of a re-established garden space at the center of the Piazza.
Photo: La Repubblica
It’s only a few days until Easter and it seems that practically every window in Rome is stuffed full of scrumptious chocolate confections. We’ve been out snapping photos of the candy bonanza that is the Easter season in Italy and we’ll be publishing lots of them over the course of the next few days.
These photos show one of Rome’s most famous candy stores, the Confetteria Moriondo and Gariglio at Via Pie’ di Marmo 21-22. Located near the Pantheon and the Palazzo Doria-Pamphili, the shop has been in the same family since the end of the 19th century. It’s known for dark, liqueur-filled chocolates and for dolci made out of nuts, but those items are not what’s in demand at this time of year. Rather, at Easter you’ll find lines of people waiting to buy the eggs, fish, and lambs that are made on-site.
