SelectionWhile waiting for better days, it is possible to discover the world without leaving your room. Never quite the same, never quite another, the Italian capital constantly reveals new charms.
Ride a scooter like Nanni Moretti
Black Vespa and white helmet on the head, in the first chapter of his film Personal diary (1993), Nanni Moretti slowly crosses the city seized in the torpor of August. From his favorite neighborhood, Garbatella, in Monteverde, Vigne Nuove, Spinaceto, Casalpalocco, and to the beach of Ostia where Pier Paolo Pasolini was assassinated, the director evokes the birth of these “Urban areas” built in the last century. With panoramic images of the facades and an irresistible soundtrack, he manages in a few words to sketch their history, that of popular struggles or gentrification. “How beautiful it would be a film made only of houses”, he comments in a voice over with poetry.
In Rome with Nanni Moretti, Giorgio Biferali and Paolo Di Paolo, La Table Ronde, 2017, 176 P., € 17.50.
Munch on a puntarelle salad
From the large and beautiful chicory family, the puntarelle, which recently made its entry into restaurants in France, has always appeared on the cards of Roman establishments among the contorni, these accompaniments that can be tasted between two dishes. Mainly consumed in the Lazio region, puntarelle is best enjoyed raw, in salads. The leaves are then set aside to focus on the shoots forming the heart of the vegetable. Washed and cut lengthwise into thin strips, they first soak in a bowl with ice cubes and half a lemon. In a mortar, crush 7 to 8 anchovy fillets in oil, one or two cloves of garlic, and add olive oil and white vinegar. Mix everything to combine the deep flavor of the anchovy with the bitterness and crunch of the puntarelle. A beautiful Italian wedding.
Succumb to the Italian song
Coming from the Trastevere district, the young people of “Crew CXXVI” (pronounce “Centoventisei”) owe this 126 attached to their artist name to the number of steps of the Scalea del Tamburino, a large staircase closer to a place where one is in a zone than to a Baroque masterpiece. Among them, Franco 126, who, along with Carl Brave, came out in 2017 Polaroid, album of a little idle Roman youth, who grew up on the sanpietrini, in the midst of tourists and a past that was sometimes too heavy for her. Light melodies, melancholic autotune and Roman dialect manage to convey the hot summer nights spent wandering the city on foot, odd jobs in the dark, nostalgic grandfathers of the Duce, Sunday mornings at the mythical Porta Portese market and evenings at the San Calisto, a must-see harbor next to Piazza di Santa Maria in Trastevere.
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