Day 60 (5/20/11)

Our final Rome Walk began at Termini Station bright and early at 7:45…ugh. There I purchased my tickets for this weekend’s trip to Pisa and Florence, so it was not all bad, and before I knew it we were on our way! We took the subway out to the INA Casa housing projects that we saw exhibited inside Meier’s Ara Pacis Museum. Three of the projects are out in Tuscolano, and unfortunately it turned out that these three were not any of the interesting ones we learned about. When we got there we talked as a group for a little bit before walking down a major road filled with tons of awful buildings. We did pass a pretty great market on the way, and the streets themselves were pretty interesting so it wasn’t all bad.
We then came to the first project (actually number II if we are keeping track), which acts as both a gate and a pathway. We talked a bit about the mentality of these housing projects and how they were built to incorporate amenities into the countless residences in order to create a self-sustaining city (within a city). This first (II) project was actually pretty good; the beginning was a large V-shaped medium height block that was the cap of the zone as well as the primary entrance. Perspectively it was pretty interesting, since the kink in the form really started to cause the form to diminish rapidly. Plus the brickwork looked great in the morning sun. As we passed through the entrance to the major street of the project we stopped and saw some pretty great graffiti before continuing. The buildings down along the axis, while laid out in a similar bent V fashion, are much less interesting and look quite discombobulated. However, much like the first form, the perspective down the street was pretty interesting, especially because the view changes drastically once you make it to the end of the road. One last observation, this area has a pretty great mix of heights and sizes of the housing blocks, creating a dense but highly varied landscape.
When we made it through Tuscolano II we came to III, which acted as an end cap to this street. The layout of this project is an enlarged palazzo, with a pretty fantastic public green space in the center surrounded by single-story residences. An interesting point that we discussed was how since these projects were designed to be cities, this green space thus embodies the “city center.” However, the space has an inverse relationship with its surroundings compared to typical centers: rather than being a place of extreme public and high energy movement, this area is extremely private and peaceful; even the noise of the city nearby is lost in this oasis. We were given a few minutes to explore this area, and I really enjoyed the density of the low-rise housing here, especially the series of identical alleys radiating from the green center all painted different colors. These “districts” seemed to have slightly different character, even though they were all the same and within twenty feet of each other.
After finishing here we walked down another major road filled with more colorful but truly unfortunate buildings. Aside from the nice streetscape, this area is actually a little sad, seeing as how these ambitious goals and unified efforts have fallen so far. We eventually came to Tuscolano I, and this one somehow was worse than the rest. Designed as a series of mini palazzos crammed into one large district, this one had the potential to be interesting. However, the advent of the parking lot and the general disarray of the spaces really denied this typology from being recognized as the interesting and often impressive space it is. We were given more time to walk so we ended up wandering around aimlessly before coming back to the market. Inside was one of the more impressive markets that I have been to, filled with some of the best looking produce that I have seen so far!
Once we had met back up we set off for the nearby aqueduct park, where we would see some architecture done right (no matter how decayed, the mastery displayed by the Romans always impresses!). The park was a whole lot of green and a little bit of aqueduct, but the state of the space with extremely active people coupled with the stoic ruins provides a fantastic juxtaposition. We walked around here for a good bit exploring the two aqueducts plowing through the space (one was pretty intact and the other very ruined) and just enjoying the beautiful scenery. I think that the nature here was more impressive than that of the Appian Way from our earlier walk, although the ruins were a bit less impressive based solely on quantity (type of ruin goes to the aqueduct). Once we had finished here we began our walk back towards the city for our appointment at Cinecittá, one of the most famous movie studios in all of Italy.
After a ton of walking through an extremely varying cityscape filled with both interesting and awful buildings, we made it to the studio. Once our tour guide arrived we learned a little about the history of the studios and how it began as the propaganda studio for Mussolini! We walked around for a little bit and saw a couple sets with fake houses from some very famous Italian shows. I really like walking around these “buildings” and seeing how it transitions from a skeletal structure to a full-fledge imitation. This façade characteristics, although I already understood it, is still a lot of fun to experience first-hand. From there we came upon a fake street that makes my comment about those houses being only facades seem silly. These were literally walls propped up and supported by an immensely dense web of steel piping to create a very odd, ghost town-like space down the center of the street. The state of ruin of some of these “buildings” was quite spooky, and the ability to see through some of them to their bones behind was both interesting and odd.
From there we came upon what they called the most expensive set design in the history of cinema, and although it was pretty fantastic, I found this hard to believe. The set was essentially highlights of ancient Rome jam-packed together in one small area. It was pretty great to see these mostly recognizable architectural monuments like a pseudo-Pantheon all fixed up and squished next to other great buildings. The best part of this was touching the surface of these buildings, as they are all paper-thin and hollow. We continued walking around these various sets and saw one dedicated to Medieval Florence, which we got to go inside of (climbing the paper-mâché stairs was pretty harrowing). Once we had finished our tour of the various relics of Italian film sets we came to a pretty fantastic film and prop museum where we saw a cool movie about the process of editing and filming a specific scene as well as a bunch of cool relics. My favorite part was the sound effects guy because at one point he was using coconuts to mimic horses, just like in Monty Python!
Once we had all gathered back up it was time to take the Metro back to Termini, where I helped my newly acquired travel-buddies get their tickets for this weekend before coming home and going grocery shopping. After a quick lunch it was off to work catching up on the blog and going through pictures. For dinner I made meat ravioli with the make-believe vodka sauce with onions and chopped up leftover hamburger, which was pretty fantastic if I do say so myself! After dinner it was back to work before heading to bed to prepare for a long day of traveling and sightseeing tomorrow!