Roma Trastevere Revisited

Roma Trastevere

A Dance to the Music of Time

        

It is late October; late evening.  Harsh pop music clammers from a tinny cassette player in the corner of the Piazza Santa Maria in Trastevere by the end of Via della Lungaretta.  A woman, no longer young, no longer agile, dances to the rhythm, changing feet on a piece of cardboard dance floor, her arms rectangularly poised moving forward and back as her knees rise and fall as if jogging on the spot, warming up for a marathon.  A faded headscarf covers her hair.  Faded clothes and a faded apron cover her limbs.  Her eagle nose and dark eyes face front, to boldly ignore ignobility.  Her stature is short, strong, durable, but slight compared to the passing foreigners. She could be a marionette, such as Geppetto might have carved before Pinocchio, stepping to the rhythm of the changing world.  She dances with a determination born of deprivation.  Her roots in the basalt stones beneath her, her culture in the peeling ochre walls above her.  Her religion housed in the dark chapels of the nearby church.  A sign close by her, written boldly on white paper, taped to a box, states, “Ho bisogno[i]….”

Nearby, blazing bright blue in contrast to the subdued ochres of the walls and dark igneous tones of the sampietrini[ii] cobbled piazza, an illuminated plastic sign says, “Blue Ice,” and the young crowd round to indulge in gelatinous fantasy.

---

Time dances on.  I have returned to Trastevere in a fit of nostalgia, for it was my home for seven years from 1976.  It is strange to think that that was then only a little more than a hundred years after the Risorgimento and the unification of Italy and just 31 years since the end of World War II, when deprivation and destruction were the orders of the day.  Already there is an adult generation who have grown up since I lived there, connected to a more affluent and technological world.  Then we had neither mobile phones nor computers, and my contact with any other world was via a payphone in full public earshot in a bar, fed by gettoni and hassled by others needing to make even more important calls than mine.  It was a world of noise and contrast.  The delicacy of the virgins with their oil lamps on the façade of Santa Maria in Trastevere were mocked by the scippatori on motorini who snatched bags from the unwary in the piazza, the snarling engines gunning off into the maze of viuzze beyond.  The hand-made clothes of stars such as Lucio Dalla dining in style at Sabatini were ignored by the women who lowered baskets of contraband cigarettes from the upper floors of Via della Lungharetta only steps away.  In the same street, groups of people used to gather round fires lit in old steel cans or drums to keep warm in winter, as there was no heating in their flats.  Cars, motorbikes, ape, lorries, all contributed to the confusion and stress of perambulation.  On a warm night, with the windows open, the occasional vehicle would shatter your dreams and taint the air with its acrid fumes.  

The local cinema, a Cinema d’Essai which showed a different (old) film every day, was a place to rest after shopping, or to sleep off lunch.  Footballs occasionally bounced in through the curtain from the kids’ games outside.  It was a carefree, careless world, which came to a roaring conclusion each year on New Year’s Eve when at midnight the streets became insanely dangerous as the detritus of the old year - furniture, empty bottles, boxes of rubbish, even whole carpets (don’t ask) - were ejected from upper storey windows without a thought for where they might land.  Thunder flashes caused blast waves you could feel fifty metres away, and I can still clearly see (and hear) a neighbour on his balcony wildly firing a handgun at the heavens.

Not quite the world captured by Ettore Roesler Franz (Rome 1845 - 1907), in which we see the daily lives of ordinary people in what was more like a village than a city, and where cartwheels and barrows rolled through gates, and artisans worked outside their tiny shops.  The series of watercolours known as “Vanished Rome” were produced in the years after 1875 when the reconstruction of Rome had begun following the turbulence of the Risorgimento.   

Some of Roesler Franz’s paintings would be currently visible in the Museo di Roma in Trastevere (if it were open[iii]) but they are part of the wider collection dedicated to "Roma sparita” which is kept in the Museo di Roma in Palazzo Braschi.  Roesler Franz (who was born and lived and worked in Rome) was moved to photograph and paint areas affected by the rapid urban reconstruction desired by the new government after the unification of Italy.  He concentrated on the rioni most dramatically involved in this tide of change.  His watercolours show the Rome of the medieval papacy, without reference to the new middle classes which were to come to dominate much of the city.  It seems that Roesler Franz, like me, sought to live, at least in part, in a world of nostalgia.

His pictures, most of which are delicate and small, are now much sought after, and this one, “The courtyard of the Anguillara Palace in Trastevere, Rome” (a building which is now known as the “Casa di Dante” as it houses the Dante Institute) was recently on sale by auction in New Bond Street, London, at a price estimated between £4,000 and £6,000.

In fact, I have a bone to pick with Ettore Roesler Franz; in his picture “Arco Tolomei” there is something missing.  This particularly picturesque corner of Trastevere housed one of the last surviving open “Vespasiani” in Rome, a (or should that be an?) urinoir initially provided for the public by the Emperor Vespasian (and not just for modesty or hygiene – he made a fortune by selling the urine on to the Fullers in the wool trade!).  Now whether Ettore used artistic licence to erase the aforesaid convenience or what, I shall probably never know, but I have photographic proof of its existence in the 1970s, and I doubt that it was a recent addition at that time! 

However, there is a further chapter to this tale, which might actually please the soul of the prurient painter.  On my latest visit, I regret to say I found the marble slabs have been broken out and traces of this aspect of Roman civilisation are almost lost!

Some might say that Trastevere is not the “real” Rome, as it only officially became a part of the city in comparatively recent times. Two thousand years ago it was occupied by, or regularly raided by, Etruscans, then Aurelian enclosed a part of it with his walls in the third century AD, but it was for a long time sailors and fishermen and foreigners who made their homes here, and pilgrims who passed through on their way to the Basilica di San Pietro. The streets had no paving until the end of the 15th century. Much of the area was literally closed – with barricaded gates and boarded windows – to prevent an outbreak of plague spreading in 1656.

However, in my “Guida D’Italia del Touring Club Italiano: Roma e Dintorni, Settima Edizione, 1977” I read that, “Trastevere…. is notoriously the most populous and the most Roman quarter of Rome.”  In fact, this intensive guide also says a couple of pages later that the “Rione di Trastevere” is, “il piu popolarmente romano [Rione di Roma] per origine e per carattere dei suoi abitanti[iv].” This may be partly because of the uneven and narrow streets of sampietrini, walled in by cliffs of yellow and pink ochres, but it may also be due to the enduring presence of one G G Belli, whose marble statue stands beneath the monumental Roman Pines at the head of the Viale di Trastevere, where it meets the Lungotevere at Ponte Garibaldi.

Giuseppe Gioachino Belli, who grew up as part of the minority middle classes in the Papal States, before the Risorgimento, took it upon himself to write poetry in the dialect known as “Romanesco[v],” the traditional speech of lower class Romans of the time (the early 19^th Century).  This dialect, still heard in Trastevere (and some other parts of the city) and occasionally written in menus, records a vitality and idiosyncrasy that reflects all of Italy of the days before Berlusconi and the media homogenised the way people speak.  It is a rough, abbreviated way of speaking Italian that puts on few airs, but rolls the consonants and probably echoes the guttural sounds of the crowds who once thronged the Coliseum.

His skill was to give voice to the illiterate populace of his world, and to add a waspish humour to that as well.  He wrote over two thousand sonnets, all in the Romanesque dialect, but none were published in his lifetime and he left instructions, thankfully disobeyed, that they should be destroyed on his death.  For example, with a nod to Shakespeare and Jacques’s seven ages of man:

La vita dell'Omo

Nove mesi a la puzza: poi in fassciola
tra sbasciucchi, lattime e llagrimoni:
poi p'er laccio, in ner crino, e in vesticciola,
cor torcolo e l'imbraghe pe ccarzoni.
Poi comincia er tormento de la scola,
l'abbeccé, le frustate, li ggeloni,
la rosalia, la cacca a la ssediola,
e un po' de scarlattina e vvormijjoni.
Poi viè ll'arte, er diggiuno, la fatica,
la piggione, le carcere, er governo,
lo spedale, li debbiti, la fica,
er zol d'istate, la neve d'inverno...
E pper urtimo, Iddio sce bbenedica,
viè la Morte, e ffinisce co l'inferno.

For those who cannot read Italian or more accurately who are perplexed by the Romanesco dialect, this poem charts the “Life of Man” from nine months in the stink of the uterus, through the torment of school, being whipped and frozen, through diseases such as german measles, scarlet fever and smallpox, to the world of work, with hunger and rent to pay, suffering imprisonment, hospitalisation, problems of debt and of sex, until at the end, God bless us! it all finishes with death, and ultimately, Hell!  But as an example of the dialect in writing, note the double consonants at the beginning of words and the characteristic “er” for “il” as in “er tormento” – this is still very much a part of the local speech.

Another poet who favoured both Romanesco and the sonnet form was Carlo Alberto Camillo Salustri who was born in 1871 and who was known as Trilussa (a pseudonym he adopted in 1888; an anagram of his family name).  Although he died in 1950 (before I was born) I once had the pleasure of lunching in a local trattoria with three of his old buddies (and though they were pretty old, they were still full of life).  I was with an American friend, a journalist, one Dale McAdoo, who had spent much of his life in Italy since arriving here in the war as a young soldier, and it was a strangely “impressionante” occasion for me as a naïve youth, reaching back into a past that I was only just becoming aware of, but which seemed very tangible to me.  His picture, painted in 1915, portrays a rakish, confident man, and he clearly drew affection and perhaps awe from those who knew him, though at the end of his life, sadly impoverished and suffering badly from asthma, he had given up his beloved frascati.  Trilussa had admired Belli as a young man and he achieved wide fame for his writings (and was also recognised for his opposition to fascism).  This poem, written in 1940, recounts drinking a half litre of good wine from Frascati, while contemplating the stains on the wall of the dining room.  He finds it amusing that he can see shapes in the combination of saltpetre and mould in the plaster, and allows his imagination to interpret the shapes as an eagle, then a bear, a cockerel, wolves, sheep, rams and then even a horse leaping over cannon.  Then in the background he spies a woman, who in some ways represents both love and faith.  He drinks wine and looks at the wall, feeling a little drunk but at ease, and sure of himself.

Vino Bono

Mentre bevo mezzo litro,
de Frascati abboccatello,
guardo er muro der tinello
co’ le macchie de salnitro.
Guardo e penso quant’è buffa
certe vorte la natura
che combina una figura
cor salnitro e co’ la muffa.
Scopro infatti in una macchia
una specie d’animale:
pare un’aquila reale
co’ la coda de cornacchia.
Là c’è un orso, qui c’è un gallo,
lupi, pecore, montoni,
e su un mucchio de cannoni
passa un diavolo a cavallo!
Ma ner fonno s’intravede
una donna ne la posa
de chi aspetta quarche cosa
da l’Amore e da la Fede…
Bevo er vino e guardo er muro
con un bon presentimento:
sarò sbronzo, ma me sento
più tranquillo e più sicuro.

To me this touches on a familiar world, though one that is now part of the past.  Indeed, opposite my flat in Via di S Francesco a Ripa there was, in the 70s, an old ostaria, where only white wine from the Colli Albani was served, and the walls were distinctly cracked and stained.  This has long gone, and now, in its place, I see a smart new restaurant, with shiny glasses and white cloths.  Shining.  Smart.  And empty…..

As a footnote on the dialect, it is not only Trastevere that maintains its own style of speaking, of course.  Trilussa in fact participated in competitions among dialect poets, and to this day the speech of various parts of Italy is far more diverse than the equivalent in England (excepting the Welsh, as always!)  As an example, I remember watching Ermanno Olmi’s film “L’Albero degli Zoccoli” (which won the Palme d’Or for the best film at the Cannes Festival in 1978) in the Novocine down my street and at a certain point a rough local voice called out, “Ma che parlanno?  Italiano?[vi]”  Subsequently they showed it with subtitles in “Italian” as most of the dialogue was improvised with amateur actors from the area around Bergamo in the north and was completely unintelligible to most other Italians (let alone foreigners like me!)

---

Time dances on.  In the Piazza di S Cosimato, while there is still a small set of stalls, there was once a vibrant market which rivalled that of Campo de' Fiori across the river.  Here the daily riot of colour in flowers and vegetables was enhanced by the olfactory glories of cheeses, salted meats, fresh cuts of bloody animals and glistening, slimy fish.  Here you could buy anything and everything that was good to eat, and in any amount you cared to ask for.  One image from these days that lives in a remote corner of my mind is that of a woman buying a chicken.  Chickens were displayed half plucked but otherwise entire, and when you had chosen yours, the butcher would cut off the heads and feet, draw the innards, and then wrap everything up in paper and hand it over (we had some delicious gravies in those days!)  On this particular occasion the woman asked for it to be split open (so it could be cooked on the grill).  As the butcher pressed down on the legs to flatten the carcass, the woman’s hand darted forward and grasped two yellow globules – unformed eggs – from the poor bird’s womb.  Without hesitation she sucked them from her hand and licked her lips, a faint smile vanishing as soon as it appeared.  Then she paid and walked off with her parcel.  That lady could be dancing in the Piazza di S Maria today, but she won’t be plucking neck feathers from a market chicken any more.

Another venerable place of my youth still exists but is somewhat changed.  When I first arrived, there were three of us sharing the flat (as the monthly rent equalled my income at the time).  With reference to eating out, I was told by one friend, who had lived in the area for a few years before me, that we had already missed the best and that now it was becoming expensive!  Well we reckoned that it was still cheaper to eat out than to cook at home (not a very tested argument I have to concede!) and so we trawled the area for cheap eats, and probably dined at least once in almost every trattoria in the area.  Our rule of thumb was that if a quarter roast chicken cost more than 1,000 lire (about 60 pence) then it was expensive; we reckoned that we should be able to get a three course meal with wine, coffee and a digestivo for about £1.  The place we kept going back to was called “da Mario” in Via del Moro (not far from the Antica Caffe del Moro which has preserved its curious sign, though nothing else of its character), and this was an experience.  You had to take a book, and a long one at that, as waiting to be served was part of the game.  It was frequented by young men in uniform, those unfortunates who had to spend a year doing military service after school.  They always found the cheapest places (they were hardly paid at all) and had time on their hands.

It was not a bad place to eat.  Mario served, his wife cooked, and on one occasion his little daughter peed on the floor (Mario scolded her and threw a handful of sawdust over it, and carried on).  Somehow I had the impression this was the real world; the old world; Trastevere as she had been before me….  Then one day I was behind Mario in a queue in a photographic shop I used; he bought a brand new Zenza Bronica 6 x 6 camera with cash…. I couldn’t quite understand it.  How could he afford that?  It was never the same eating there, and, though it is still there, it will never be the same.  Ever.

---

The flat.  As mentioned, when I arrived the rent equalled my income.  As the years passed, and my income improved, the landlord decided he should have more rent.  He was a hard man who ran a successful sausage and preserved meats company.  The flat was his mother’s property and he had no need of it, but he felt I should pay more.  I had to go to his office once a year to renew the contract and my heart sank when I learned what he wanted.  I consulted a lawyer.  A new, “fair rent” (“equo canone”), law had been passed and legal advice was available to support tenants.  I think this was my first real experience of Left and Right in Italian politics and it was with great fear and trembling that I went for my annual meeting with my good friend the landlord.  I refused his request to pay more.  His reaction was astonishing and for a while I thought I was sausage meat.  However, I got away with it and he never spoke to me again, except to abuse me when I left.  He never even visited when the ceiling nearly came down when a tenant above had gone away leaving a badly fitted water heater to boil over and flood three flats below (that was fun!  We had the whole street in, and the fire brigade, and I climbed up the pipes and railings on the inside of the block to investigate the two flats above me – lovely exposed beams!  Lovely terracotta floors!  Pity about the inundation!)

I loved that flat.  My room was at the back, with an internal terrace overlooking a courtyard below and the back windows of other flats on the next street.  The woman opposite had an exquisite voice, and she would sing snatches of Roman songs while cooking or hanging out her washing on a squeaky line strung between the blocks.  I don’t know whether they loved me – I had a piano, and I am no pianist!  (And the men to whom this was strapped to carry it up, and then eventually down, two floors of tight curling stairs didn’t love me, neither.  Especially those who took it away!  It was June, and 35º in the shade!)

We had some parties there.  There was hardly any furniture (what we did have was either purchased for next to nothing from a junk shop or given by people who would otherwise have thrown it away) so there was plenty of room.  It must have been a pretty mixed crowd – assorted journalists (including Matt Frei) from the International Daily News and Daily American; staff and parents from various international schools; members of the Irish community (through connections at the Fiddler’s Elbow); musicians, artists, priests, au pairs, and at least one German who lived in a beaten up old VW on the other side of town.  We were a couple of doors from one of the best Pizzerie in Rome (Da Ivo), so it wasn’t difficult to get something to eat.  And just a few steps away, under the Arco di S Callisto, was an old-fashioned Vini et Oli where a few litres of castelli wine could be decanted for the price of a packet of cigarettes.

In some ways the tripping of time has not changed the appearance of the street.  What was my entrance is sprayed with graffiti, and the leather man has gone from next door (though the shop hasn’t changed much) but the aspect of the buildings and the sampietrini of the street are still the same.  The nearest bar has become a motor bike shop, but the next bar is still the same.  The newsstand is the same, though the restaurant next to it has become a fast food outlet.

My barber is still there, although his associate died last year (“quel dannato male incurabile"[vii]) and he had great pleasure in trimming my thinning locks.  Giorgio Rinaldi, now 72 years of age, born and bred in Trastevere, living in Piazza di S Cosimato, cutting hair since he was 14 and at the same shop (Via di S Francesco a Ripa 17/A) since 1978.  A haircut is €15, and, according to his receipts (though I’m not sure it’s all still on offer) you could also have a shave, a shampoo, a perm, a dye, a manicure and a pedicure.  We talked of the passage of time and the changes in the area.  He didn’t lament the increase in the number of tourists, though he did sing the praises of real local food (“Coda alla vaccinara!  Aaah[viii]!”)  I hope I will find him there when I next return, but who knows if we’ll dance together again?

Nowadays Trastevere comes to life mostly at night, when droves of tourists cross the Ponte Sisto and head into the maze of characteristic lanes to find “characteristic” places to eat.  During the day, more serious tourists seek out the art and architecture of the past, whether in galleries and palazzo or in the churches, of which there are a good number (between the stunning cosmatesque paving of S Crisogono - originally from the 13^th century and built over an older church and some buildings from the imperial age – to the glittering mosaics of S Maria in Trastevere, there are three other churches in about four hundred metres).  Though I lived there seven years, I only scratched the surface and some parts of the Rione still feel strange to me. 

One part I always liked, however, was the walk up to the Janiculum (Monte Gianicolo). Here, in 1849, Garibaldi defended the Roman Republic against the French (it’s a strange thing that one of my younger daughter’s friends in England is a direct descendant of the great hero) and from the piazza in his honour (presided over by a grand equestrian statue) there is a fine panorama of the city and the surrounding hills – even snowy mountains on a fine day in winter.  From just below this piazza a cannon is fired every day at exactly noon (the tradition was started in 1847 to synchronise the church bells and has continued every day since, with the exception of 20 years from 1939).  It’s a classic bit of Roman contradiction – where time is sometimes slow and sometimes quick, where you can expect trains to only nod to a timetable, this cannon shot is exactly timed and perfectly executed.  You could set your blackberry to it!

G G Belli and Ettore Roesler Franz crossed paths and in their own ways are custodians of a Rome that has really disappeared.  But then, with buildings from the time of Christ rubbing shoulders with buildings from the Renaissance, even they were perhaps preserving a kind of nostalgia.  Belli referred to Roesler Franz’s family, with their aristocratic connections, in his sonnets but they shared a reverence for the world that was changing and we owe them both much for giving life to our imagination; when we see the traffic on the Lungotevere, we can, partly thanks to them, filter out the modernity and perhaps see a picture more like these, one a photograph upstream from Castel Sant’Angelo or the other, painted by Roesler Franz in 1888, and entitled Porto di Ripetta verso Levante, which hints at how the commercial life of the river was highly important, though by the time these pictures were made the busiest days were already well in the past.

This is also borne out by the name of the church dedicated to S Francesco a Ripa.  For some time, in my innocence (ignorance?) I believed this to be some lesser known Saint Francis, from somewhere called Ripa rather than Assisi, though living in a 17^th century palazzo on the street of the same name, I suppose I should have cottoned on quicker.  The name in fact commemorates the convent in which San Francesco (the one and only) lodged when he came to Rome, though it was at the time (late 13^th century) a Benedictine convent, and the existing church is baroque (and currently most famous for a late Bernini sculpture of a lady in rapture).  However, the addition of “Ripa” signifies that this place was on the bank of the Tiber, and in fact this was where the main port of Rome used to be (as opposed to the smaller “ripetta” mentioned above which was upstream on the other bank.)

In connection with this theme of ports, and sailors, not far from this church, around the corner from that dedicated to Santa Cecilia, is the Ospizio dei Genovesi and the church of S Giovanni dei Genovesi (on Via dei Genovesi) all of which commemorate the significant presence of sailors and merchants from Genova (Genoa) in this area in the past.  Incidentally, this little complex has the most elegant and well kept fifteenth century cloister, in which from time to time I sought, and found, great peace at times of stress.

The Church of S Cecilia in Trastevere, by the way, also has a beautiful garden courtyard, in front of the church, and is of considerable interest, partly for the beautiful sculpture of the martyred saint, which lies below the main altar, but also for the crypt and remains of the Roman house and baths where Cecilia lived (with her husband Valerian), and, perhaps most strikingly, for the fresco of the Last Judgement painted by Cavallini in 1293, which can be found inside the adjoining convent.  It is actually painted on the inside of the façade of the church, but this was sealed away when a gallery was built for the closed order of nuns (who still live there).  It is a beautiful work, and the colours of the angels’ wings convey a depth of care that puts Cavallini (who also embellished the church of Santa Maria in Trastevere) in the highest league of medieval artists.  It is now slightly awkward to see the picture and it is not possible to appreciate how it dominated the church over the main entrance, but, when I commented on this to the aged nun who was guarding it, she laconically observed that at least it had survived.

In July the Rione celebrates the “Festa di Noantri” (or the Festival of Us Others – “Noi Altri”) – a snook at the rest of Rome, when the Trasteverini dance together as a special kind of Roman (though of course they love to have everyone else dancing with them.)  Fellini caught the atmosphere in the penultimate scenes of his “Roma” (1972).  The wealthy and comfortable dine da Sabatini while police bludgeon and chase peace-loving youths from the fountain in Piazza di Santa Maria.  Gore Vidal and John Francis Lane (a journalist, but also walk-on player in some 26 Italian films, including Pasolini’s “Canterbury Tales,” Fellini’s “8½” and “La Dolce Vita,” but, more importantly to me, the landlord of the first flat I stayed in in Trastevere, which was directly below his own, round the corner from Piazza Sidney Sonnino – sorry, I digress) talk of the attractions of Trastevere over a table of food and wine.  In fact the scene is surprisingly modern despite the forty years that have passed since it was filmed.  Rome is hugely attractive to Americans, and English.  It has a romance; it has warmth and colour; it doesn’t care (Gore Vidal mentions the quality of “menefreghismo[ix]”) and yet it has a throbbing heart where people do look out for each other (the man who ran the garage where I kept my 750cc Triumph Trident kindly said he would keep an eye out for some friends’ car when they came to stay – “Just tell me where it’s parked and I’ll see no one touches it,” he said.  And it was fine.)

At the end of the scene Anna Magnani, the most magnetic of all Roman actresses, is stalked by the film crew on her way home (believe what you see!)  Fellini asks her to talk as she enters her portone.  “No,” she says, “I don’t trust you.  Good night.” The smiling ambivalence works perfectly with the huge and impenetrable doors behind which the actress lives her private life.  The camera lights in the darkened street represent the intrusive nature of the Roman character, the desire to carry on partying, the reluctance to go home.  But at the end, the door is shut, and the party is over.  No more dancing; just a polite farewell.

It is late October; late night.  Gentle music plays at the corner of the Piazza Santa Maria in Trastevere where Via della Lungaretta issues.  A young woman, agile and delicate, dances lightly to the rhythm, her tripping feet hardly touching the dance floor beneath her; her gossamer shawl bright against the fresh ochre walls above.  Her eyes glitter in reflection of the guttering torches which light the night, while her clothes shimmer like the mosaics on the façade of the church dedicated to Santa Maria.  Passers-by do just that, pass by.  Streams of them, in military uniforms of various ages, in rags and finery, unwashed as well as pomaded.  A horse clatters on the cobble stones, and I shrink back in fear of the sparks from the hooves.  There is a taint of sulphur in the air, as I approach the dancing girl.  Her hair slips from her head-scarf, dropping dishevelled over her eyes.  She falls; she curls, she becomes a child, a rag-doll, a marionette who rests from the dance.  Behind me I hear a shriek outside the bar as a flashing blade draws blood from a young man’s midriff.  In the distance I hear a fusillade scatter shot in the leaves on the Gianicolo.  The dancing ends.  A faint glow haunts the rooftops as gradually the moon rises, huge and yellow.  The light completes the darkness as shades deepen and the piazza stills, holds its breath and falls to sleep.  On the wall someone has written in a shaky hand, scratched, not chalked:  “Ho bisogno….”

Footnotes:

[i] “I have need….”

[ii] Sampietrini are cobble stones, smooth surfaced, but with a tapered underside.  They were introduced as a hard-wearing but flexible street paving (they allow water to soak away and do not crack with subsidence or earth movement).  However, in 2005 the Mayor of Rome, Walter Veltroni, declared his intention to remove them from all but pedestrian areas.  I have noticed that where they have been taken up in recent years (such as for service conduits) they have not been relayed with the care or expertise of old.

[iii] The Museum of Rome in Trastevere – opened in 1976 as the “Museum of Folklore and Romanesque Poets” - is housed in what was once the Monastery of Sant'Egidio, where barefoot Carmelite nuns lived until the fall of Rome. In 2000 the museum was reopened to the public with the name of “The Museum of Rome in Trastevere” and it focuses on aspects of everyday Roman life in the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.  The collection includes paintings, prints, drawings and watercolours, among them the series of "Vanished Rome" by Ettore Roesler Franz, a crib incorporating scenes of daily Roman life in the nineteenth century, and six life-size representations of day to day life in the period, known as "Roman Scenes". The museum also contains some of the personal possessions of Trilussa, which were donated to the Municipality of Rome after his death and are in part exhibited in the video installation space named after him. Unfotunately none of this was available to us on our recent visit.

[iv] The most popularly Roman [of the Quarters of Rome] both for its roots and for the character of its people.

[v] Romanesco or Romanesque is a regional language or sociolect within Italian.  It is spoken in Rome and is part of the Central Italian Dialects and is therefore close to the Tuscan dialect and Standard Italian.  There are few grammatical and idiomatic differences from Standard Italian. It is however rich in expressions and sayings, and is used for informal communication by most natives of Rome, often in a mix with Italian.

[vi] “What are they talking?  Italian?” (ie: “What language is this?”)

[vii] “That damned incurable disease.” (ie: Cancer)

[viii] “Tail cooked in the herdsman’s way!  Aaah!” (A popular way of cooking ox tail)

[ix] The attitude of carelessness – “I don’t give a damn!” (or: “Who gives a shit?”)

Dedicated to all friends in Italy, particularly Gino and Mary, Simon and Connie, Gerry and Maria, and Antonio.



Civitella in Val di Chiana

Orders from Above?

18^th June 1944

and

29^th June 1944

It is cold, dark December. December 29^th.  1170.  Canterbury. It is evening and vespers are being sung. At the door of the north transept Thomas Beckett encounters some frightened monks; he orders them back to the choir. They withdraw and he enters the church, but Reginald Fitzurse, William de Tracy, Hugh de Morville, and Richard le Bret appear behind him in the dim light. The monks slam the door on them but in their confusion they shut out several of their own brothers, who begin beating on the door.  Fitzurse flings down his axe and draws his sword. "You owe me fealty and submission!" exclaims the archbishop. Fitzurse shouts back, "I owe no fealty contrary to the King!" and knocks off Thomas's cap. Thomas covers his face and calls aloud to God and the saints. Tracy strikes a blow, which is intercepted by the arm of the monk Grim, but which grazes Thomas’s head and blood trickles into his eyes. He wipes the stain away and calls out, "Into Thy hands, O Lord, I commend my spirit!" Grim’s eyewitness account continues: "Then he received a second blow on the head but still stood firm. At the third blow he fell on his knees and elbows, offering himself a living victim, and saying in a low voice, 'For the Name of Jesus and the protection of the Church I am ready to embrace death.' Then the third knight inflicted a terrible wound as he lay, by which the sword was broken against the pavement, and the crown which was large was separated from the head. The fourth knight prevented any from interfering so that the others might freely perpetrate the murder. As to the fifth, no knight but that clerk who had entered with the knights, that a fifth blow might not be wanting to the martyr who was in other things like to Christ, he put his foot on the neck of the holy Priest and precious martyr, and, horrible to say, scattered his brain and blood over the pavement, calling out to the others, 'Let us away, knights; he will rise no more.'”   The King’s supposed words, “Who will rid me of this troublesome Priest?” echo in the minds of the murderers, who now rush away through the cloisters, waving their swords and shouting, "The King's men! The King's men!" The cathedral fills with people unaware of the catastrophe, and a thunderstorm breaks overhead, as if God himself is angry. The archbishop's body lies in the middle of the transept, and for a time no one dares approach it.

We visit Canterbury to see our daughter, a student at the University of Kent, and we stand in silence at the place of martyrdom.  Time does not diminish the fact of killing.  The changes of the centuries cannot erase or excuse such spilling of blood. But can such misunderstanding, or mis-command, ever be forgiven?  Should we not have learned from Henry’s penance and the footsteps of the pilgrims?

The Via Francigena is the 9th century name for the Pilgrim Route from Canterbury to Rome, which is still taken by pilgrims. Previously it had been called the Lombard Way, after the Germanic conquerors of Italy in the 6th and 7th Centuries. The Lombards gave us Lombardy but their name derives from Langobards, or Longbeards, and they were kind of land-locked Vikings who may have originated in Sweden but progressed through the Elbe valley in Germany, then settling in the Danube valley in the 5th Century. They conquered Byzantine Italy in AD 568 and established a Lombard Kingdom in Italy, later named Kingdom of Italy, which lasted until 774, when it was conquered by the Franks. Lombard nobles did however continue to rule parts of the Italian peninsula well into the 11th century and they constructed a series of castles which still dominate the landscape. Those were not peaceful times, and some of their leaders were exceptionally violent, behaving in the worst traditions of barbarian conquerors; murdering landlords and seizing their lands, plundering the countryside and taking the cities for themselves.

 

One small trace of that German occupation can be found in the village of Civitella della Chiana, or Civitella in Val di Chiana, which is in the Province of Arezzo.  It sits on the top of a hill at about 500 metres above sea level, overlooking the valley towards Arezzo and controlling the north/south road. The population currently is about eight thousand, and until her death in 2006 it was the home, for thirty years, of the author Dame Muriel Spark, who was made an honorary citizen in 2005.

This small town dates back to Etrusco-Roman times, but took its current shape under the Lombards, who built the Rocca and the fortified walls.  It was damaged and tussled over during the wars between the Ghibellines and the Guelfs and ultimately was the subject of a brutal and destructive attack on 29^th June 1944, along with the neighbouring villages of Cornia and San Pancrazio.  While many of the inhabitants were at an early mass to celebrate the feast of St Peter and St Paul, troops of the Hermann Göering Division moved in and killed 115 people in Civitella, 58 in Cornia and 71 in San Pancrazio. In 1963, because of this, the Comune of Civitella in Val di Chiana was awarded the “medaglia d'oro al valore civile.”

Earlier this year we chanced upon Civitella in Val di Chiana for no profound reason. We were en route between il Casentino (where we visited Camaldoli) and Monte Amiata. The Italian Slowfood organisation suggested a Bed and Breakfast, L’Antico Borgo, (http://www.antborgo.it/) which was attached to a restaurant in Civitella and, since we also wanted to review Piero della Francesca’s frescos in Arezzo, this fitted perfectly with our itinerary.

It was quiet when we arrived in the afternoon – not even our host was to be found.  We parked near the monumental Cisterna (collected rainwater used to be the only source of water) in front of the Church, and strolled down the main street.

A doorway under the arcade was open and a small group of people were busy sorting out an audio-visual display.  We went in, and found a small room, La Sala della Memoria, completely filled with mementoes and newspaper clippings, artefacts and pictures, all of which together told the story of June 29^th 1944.  The room was inaugurated in 2004, for the sixtieth anniversary of the massacre, “Per non dimenticare questo tragico e doloroso evento che sconvolse l’intera comunità e cambiò tanti aspetti della vita quotidiana e quindi ricordare alle generazioni future gli errori e gli orrori di ogni guerra, con la speranza di diffondere un messaggio di pace.[1]”  On October 7^th, 2004, the then Presidente della Repubblica, Carlo Azelio Ciampi, visited Civitella and signed the guest book here.

In the piazza in front of the church there is a memorial to the victims of the massacre, which included the Parish Priest and all the men who had been in the church that morning, who were all shot in the head, in groups.  There was one survivor from the intended victims, a young seminarian, Don Daniele Tiezzi, who was born in Civitella in 1926.  He dug his elbow into the fat stomach of the officer in charge and leapt for freedom.  He was shot, and fell into a doorway, but was left for dead and lived to tell the tale.  His vivid account was recorded on 24^th August 1993 and is visible on youtube, at:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hWw9seebZFo&feature=player_detailpage  

His father and brother died in the massacre.

Other victims were killed in their homes when the soldiers concluded their exercise with grenades and machine guns and burning. Nearby there is another plaque mounted on the wall, this time to commemorate one who helped the survivors when the allies arrived. 

It was still quiet.  The occasional vehicle came and went, our host arrived and showed us to our beautiful room in a reconstructed palazzo on the square, which rises above an old Olive Mill which is now one of Civitella’s two restaurants.

It was strange to sleep there, on the site of such a comparatively recent slaughter.  1944 was a year of unbelievable destruction for central Italy, with the front line gradually creeping northward, daily air raids pounding roads and key points, and villages being reduced to rubble by artillery from both sides.  65,000 partisans and 153,100 civilians died throughout Italy in the war, with an estimated 3,650 victims in Tuscany alone, many of whom were killed as part of the anti-resistance campaign. 

The Resistance movement in Italy did not start until after the invasion of Sicily and the fall of Mussolini in July 1943, when Nazism became the enemy of the Italians, rather than the ally.  The trouble for Civitella really began in Via Rasella, in Rome, on March 23^rd 1944.  It was the 25^th anniversary of Mussolini’s founding of the Fascist party and 156 men of the 11th Company of the German 3rd Battalion of the SS Polizei Regiment 'Bozen' were marching to their barracks when a bomb which had been placed in a road-sweeper’s cart exploded, killing 28 and injuring 60.  The number of deaths quickly rose to 33.  The German Commandant of Rome, General Kurt Malzer, who was said to be drunk and incandescent with rage at the time, ordered the immediate arrest of the 200 people who lived on that street.  When Hitler heard of the attack, he ordered 30, then 50, civilians to be shot for each of the victims.  With the intervention of Field Marshal Albert Kesselring (Commander-in-Chief of the German Troops in Italy) this number was subsequently reduced to 10 for each victim, but nevertheless by 8.00pm the following day 335 Italian citizens had been taken to a series of caves on the Via Ardeatina and shot in the back of the head.

This first reprisal for a partisan attack led to many others, as Rome fell at the beginning of June.  The policy of taking severe action against partisans was endorsed by Kesselring, following a proclamation by General Harold Alexander (Supreme Allied Commander in Italy from September 1943 to May 1945) on the 9^th June who called on partisans to carry out acts of sabotage.  The proclamation, which was broadcast by radio, called for an avoidance of outright battle, but a concentration on incursions into small command centres and hitting transport columns in the night.  It also recommending killing Germans but in a way which allowed for rapid flight and the ability to strike again.  In response Kesselring ordered a “Reorganization of the Struggle Against Bandits,” on June 17, 1944. This order unambiguously sanctioned the use of terror as a means of retaliation and gave carte blanche to the military to treat partisans as “bandits” rather than as organised service personnel. According to the leadership’s orders, bandits were to be exterminated and destroyed.  He also ordered that, if attacked, his troops should respond immediately without any regard to the presence of others.  And, most significantly, he ordered that after an attack civilians should be arrested and their houses burned.  These orders from above, together with a “scorched earth” policy and frustration at an inability to gather workers to create defence installations, caused untold suffering as the German army withdrew through Tuscany and to the north.

When we came to leave Civitella, our host presented us with a book, entitled, Civitella 18 Giugno 1944 – Eutanasia di una data [2]. I assumed, without thinking at that moment, that this was an account of the massacre, but then, realising that the massacre had happened on June 29^th, I found that there was much more to unravel about this story.

Sunday, June 18th 1944 was an overcast day[3] in central Italy. On that day a group of German soldiers from the 4th Parachute Division were in the area and four of them decided to go into the dopolavoro[4] in Civitella. They were friendly to the local people and even gave the 14 year old Alberto Rossi a pocketful of sweets. They put their weapons down and played cards, and drank wine, until about 8.00pm. When they had finished their game three of them listened to the radio while the other went into the next room to watch the locals playing cards.

At 9.00pm five members of the local partisan group led by Edoardo Succhiello and accompanied by Vasco Caroti, came into the room and ordered the three seated Germans to put their hands up.  One of them reacted by reaching for his bayonet and Dario Polletti opened fire with his machine gun, killing two immediately and leaving the other to die a few days later. The remaining German took his wounded companion away while the partisans and most of the villagers fled.

The following day the Germans delivered an ultimatum to the villagers to give up the names of those responsible.  This was not accepted.  On the 20^th the Parish Priest conducted the funerals of the two men who had been killed.

On June 23^rd, close to the nearby village of San Pancrazio, there was action between partisans and the Germans. 

From the 24^th to the 28^th the villagers began to return to their homes in Civitella, reassured in part by the Parish Priest who affirmed that there would not be any reprisal.

At 7.00am on the 29th, while the village was celebrating mass in honour of Saints Peter and Paul, a unit of the Hermann Göering division arrived in the village with armoured vehicles and systematically executed 115 people, principally men and boys. The operation, which included burning houses, took four hours. On the same day 71 civilians were killed in San Pancrazio and 58 in Cornia[5]. In charge on that day was Captain Heinz Barz. The Hermann Göering division was, from January 1944, nominally a parachute brigade of the Luftwaffe, but its men were volunteers selected principally from the Hitler Youth movement; they tended to be very young, and were ideologically fanatical supporters of Nazism. From March 1944 the division had been employed in a number of anti-partisan operations in Tuscany. After June 29th, they took part in massacres at Castelnuovo del Sabbioni and at Meleto, but then they were transferred to the Eastern Front on July 5th.

Two weeks later British troops arrived at Civitella. There is horrific Imperial War Museum archive film of what they found, which can be seen on youtube:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=Ywe2XK7MopM

After the war, in 1946, a military court sentenced a former SS commander to life in prison for the Ardeatine Caves massacre. But plans for further trials were soon shelved and silence fell as the Cold War dampened enthusiasm for tracking down Nazi war criminals. "There was a growing reluctance to embarrass Germany," said Dr Paolo Pezzino, a teacher of contemporary history at the University of Pisa.  "International justice took a back seat to realpolitik.  The Communists were now the enemy." 

 

So, in Civitella, where the pain was still very real, the link between the action of the partisans on June 18^th and the massacre of the villagers on June 29^th remained very clear.  In some sense this also reflected the political scene, as partisans had been, in general, on the left (and therefore aligned with the communists) and the citizens who aligned with the church were perhaps more to the right, perhaps Christian Democrats (and possibly in sympathy with fascism). 

On April 28^th 1950 the newspaper Avanti published what was intended to be a clarification by Edoardo Succhiello about the event which took place in Civitella on June 18^th.  In this he claimed that they had been called to the village because the Germans were causing trouble; he said there was a fight in the bar; and he claimed that the local people had disguised the surviving German so that he escaped.

On May 24^th a reaction by a group of the inhabitants of Civitella was published in the newspaper Il Mattino dell’Italia Centrale. In this, with the preface that they did not wish to diminish the patriotic work of the partisans, they denounced certain falsehoods in Succhiello’s account, asking why the partisans had come to kill Germans in the village in the first place, why they had not stayed to defend the village afterwards, and why they did not return to help the innocent?

Succhiello’s response to this was to take Il Mattino to court for defamation of character.  The trial lasted from May 28^th 1951 to February 9^th 1953 when it concluded without judgement, except that Succhiello was ordered to pay costs.  If anything, this increased the bitterness of the rift between the partisans and the people of Civitella, and public memory continued to link the killing of the German soldiers on June 18^th with the extreme violence of June 29^th.

On December 23^rd 1993 Edoardo Succhiello and Dario Polletti, whose wife Modesta was among those killed on June 29^th 1944, recorded an interview about their memories of what happened.  This is now viewable on youtube:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DpIO16Af8Eg&feature=player_detailpage

Then, in 1994, a forgotten archive at the military tribunal in Rome was discovered, which revealed evidence on hundreds of wartime atrocities, documented by Allied and Italian investigators.  The discovery of the so-called "cabinet of shame" triggered public outcry - and a renewed call for justice.

"I felt I had a moral obligation to provide answers," said Marco De Paolis, Italy's chief military prosecutor at the time, who played a key role in reopening war crime cases. "And to bring a sense of justice to hundreds of people who had been waiting over 50 years."  Since 2002, De Paolis has tried more than a dozen cases, several resulting in convictions.

On October 12^th 2006, the Italian military Court of La Spezia sentenced in absentia an 82 year old German citizen, Max Josef Milde, the only surviving member of the unit, to life imprisonment for his role in the Civitella massacre. He was sentenced for the murder of 203 of the men, women and children in San Pancrazio, Civitella and Cornia, pursuant Article 185 of the Italian Military Penal Code in time of war. The Court also upheld the complaints for compensation filed by the relatives of the victims against Germany, ordering the German Government to pay one million euros (£787,000) to the relatives of nine victims in the town of Civitella. "When the sentence was pronounced, I felt the cry of justice," recalled Sauro Testi, who accompanied survivors and family members to the sentencing. "The state had finally responded."

On October 21^st 2008, the Italian Supreme Court (Corte suprema di cassazione) upheld the Tribunal’s decision that the massacre of Civitella amounted to a war crime, and that no immunity from jurisdiction could be accorded to Germany for such acts. This case was part of a series of cases in which the Italian Courts developed a firm jurisprudence excluding State immunity in the case of violations of basic human rights or international crimes.

On December 22^nd 2008, Germany filed an application instituting proceedings against Italy before the International Court of Justice, arguing that since 2004 “Italian judicial bodies have repeatedly disregarded the jurisdictional immunity of Germany as a sovereign State.”  

On Monday, September 12th 2011, The International Court of Justice at The Hague began hearing arguments from Germany and Italy, which is seeking damages from Germany for crimes committed by Nazis during World War II.

One day, perhaps, there will be no memories, just as visitors to Civitella who look at the remains of the Lombard Castle will have no consciousness of the brutalities brought to Italy by the Swabian overlords.    

As things are Civitella is a place of peace – or so it seems.  The town rests atop the hill, above the valley of traffic and trains, its red tiles glowing in the sun.  Its inhabitants are kind and welcoming and daily life goes on.  As ‘torto78’ wrote on January 27^th 2009 when uploading the archive footage of the destruction of Civitella and its inhabitants, “I want to share this video not to intensify the rancour but to give evidence to brutality and madness of EVERY war. Everywhere and everytime.....”

I sit for a few moments in the chapel of the martyrdom in Canterbury Cathedral, a place reserved for silent prayer.  My thoughts focus on my dad, just a year since he died.  Although he had survived 88 years, I think of him in Italy in 1944.  After a winter in Naples he was unexpectedly landed at Anzio, and then, after the fall of Rome in June he progressed north and spent his 21^st birthday on a 3-ton truck in Tuscany, not far from Civitella.  That dull, overcast summer must have been fly-blown with the unknown: the Germans on the back foot; the skies criss-crossed by allied aircraft, strafing and bombing almost at will (the Luftwaffe had been withdrawn by then), the allied drive forward temporarily unstoppable, but nothing certain.  Victory was certainly not in sight, and the Italian people, deprived and confused, were torn apart like their villages by passing and seemingly interminable warfare.  I wonder where he was exactly on the morning of June 29^th, the Feast of Saints Peter and Paul (his name was Peter; he christened me Paul) when the first shots ripped through the people of Civitella. 

My thoughts fly up, but my soul remains below.  The connection between the murder in the cathedral and the deaths of hundreds of Italians in 1944 may be stretched, like the Via Francigena, but I cannot help feel the common thread of outrage.  The excuse of obeying orders, the justification of man’s violent inhumanity – these wrongs surround and confuse me.  I am startled by a vexed official, with a tetchy voice, telling me that this chapel is reserved for prayer; it is not for visitors.  Perhaps it is my attire, perhaps my backpack, perhaps my camera.  I look at his sash of rank; catch his officious eye.  For a moment I feel like reacting. But then, in the gloom, with half a mind in the past, I slowly lay down my bayonet…..

Notes:

[1] “In order not to forget this tragic and sad event, which changed the daily life of this people, the Organizing Committee with population and local government has organized a ”Memory Room”. They want to remember the mistakes and the horrors of all wars to the future generations with the hope to propagate a peace message” – from http://testx1.ar-tel.it/comune.civitella-in-val-di-chiana.ar.it/default.asp?cnt_id=752&cnt_idpadre=737&tipodoc=1

[2] Civitella 18th June 1944 – Euthanasia of a Date.

[3] Sunday, 18 June 1944: USAAF Chronology: MTO Tactical Operations (12th AF): In Italy, bad weather grounds medium and light bombers; fighter-bombers and fighters are restricted to patrols, mainly over the Piombino area and island of Elba, during which several gun positions, boats, and barges are hit; 111th Tactical Reconnaissance Squadron, XII Tactical Air Command, moves from Galera to Voltone with F-6s; and 525th Fighter Squadron, 86th Fighter Group, moves from Ciampino to Orbetello with P-47s. 

[4] Working men’s club – really the village bar.

[5] A nine minute film of the memorial to these people can be seen on youtube at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hpqJuOpQ6-M&feature=player_detailpage

Acknowledgements

For information regarding Thomas Beckett:

http://www.ewtn.com/library/MARY/THOMBECK.htm

The starting point was Don Francesco Sensini’s book “Civitella 18 Giugno 1944 – Eutanasia di una data,” to which I hope I have been faithful.

I also found James Hollland’s, “Italy’s Sorrow – A Year of War, 1944-45,” inspirational.

Similarly the film, “L’Uomo che verrà” by Giorgio Diritti, Italia 2009, moved me immensely.

I am indebted to many websites for information, most particularly the official website of the Comune of Civitella in Val di Chiana:

http://testx1.ar-tel.it/comune.civitella-in-val-di-chiana.ar.it/default.asp

Richard Paul Gibbs

20th November 2011

---