Piazza Vittorio Emanuele II
The Roman Esquiline neighborhood often attracts us with its shops and spaces. We can easily reach it by metro A, getting off at the Vittorio Emanuele stop. We like to go to its ethnic shops where we can find food and drink from all parts of the world.
Especially, in via dello Statuto n. 60, there is one of the most famous Roman shops: the Pasticceria Regoli , founded in 1916. Regoli is famous above all for producing the typical Roman sweet called Maritozzo. Maritozzo looks like a sweet loaf cut in half and stuffed with plenty of whipped cream. We also tried the Bavarian cream which we highly recommend.
The Esquilino is home to the largest square in the capital, almost 10,000 square meters wide. Piazza Vittorio Emanuele II was built after the proclamation of Rome as the capital of Italy, based on a project by the architect Gaetano Koch. On Sunday 10 July 1889 the Municipality of Rome inaugurated the square. On that day, the public was able to visit its parks and gardens that later dedicated to agent Nicola Calipari.
The Municipality renamed the gardens in honor of Nicola Calipari in 2006, a year after his mysterious death in Baghdad. Calipari, an agent of the Italian secret services, negotiated with the Islamist militias who had kidnapped the journalist of the newspaper “Il Manifesto” Giuliana Sgrena.
After long negotiations, the agent managed to negotiate the release of the journalist with the kidnappers. Unfortunately, while taking Giuliana Sgrena back to Baghdad airport, Calipari was killed by a US soldier at a checkpoint. The circumstances that led the military to open fire have never been clarified.
The ancient market
An important market soon arose in the square, a crossroads where hundreds of Romans bought food every day. For example, the pollaroli sold both ready-to-bake chickens and live-plucking chickens. Citizens could also purchase other materials, such as spare parts for bicycles. This trade is shown in the movie Bycicle Thieves (Ladri di Biciclette), Oscar winner for the best foreign movie by the director Vittorio De Sica in 1950.
The market in the center of the square was completely cleared out in 2001. At the end of the twentieth century the authorities had inaugurated the Esquilino Market, a covered market easily accessible from the Roma Termini station.
Looking for the philosopher’s stone
Villa Palombara and the magic door
In the Rome city trip, you can see the Nymphaeum of Alexander, a fountain of ancient Rome，with the function of distributing water in a connection point of the ancient aqueduct In the square. Next to it was Villa Palombara, the seventeenth-century residence of Massimiliano II Savelli, Marquis of Palombara. The villa was confiscated and destroyed at the end of the 19th century but a door remains standing.
The magic door was probably kept due to its aura of a mystery story. The door features two statues of the Egyptian deity Bes and numerous inscriptions that also show the year of construction that is 1680. In the Egyptian religion, Bes was the protector of the house and family, often depicted as an old dwarf. The two deities appear depicted as guardians of the threshold, esoteric figures who repel and frighten the disciples on their path to occult knowledge.
Alchemy experiments
In 1655, Maximilian II made friends with Queen Christina of Sweden, who had reached Rome after converting to Catholicism and abdicating the throne. The friendship was welded thanks to the passion of both for science and alchemy.
The queen lived in Rome in the Palazzo Riario where she built a large alchemical laboratory. According to a legend, the alchemists transmuted materials into gold inside the lab. In homage to this successful experiment, the Marquis had the alchemical door erected, a secondary entrance that led to the laboratory of Villa Palombara.
The most famous legend is narrated by the historian and bibliographer Francesco Cancellieri in 1802. According to Cancellieri, a pilgrim guest of the Marquis wandered in the gardens of the villa to look for grass capable of transforming objects into gold in one night.
The next day, the pilgrim disappeared inside the magic door. He left behind some specks of gold, a sign of the successful transformation. The Marquis found a piece of paper full of illustrations and the magic formula to decipher to obtain the mythical philosopher’s stone:
FILIVS NOSTER
MORTVVS VIVIT
REX AB IGNE REDIT
ET CONIVGIO
GAVDET OCCVLTO
The pilgrim is often identified with Giuseppe Francesco Borri. He was an Italian doctor, alchemist and adventurer, often imprisoned in Castel Sant’Angelo by the papal authorities on charges of heresy. In his moments of freedom, the alchemist frequented both Palazzo Riario and Villa Palombara.
Mixed Fried Fountain
The modern fountain was created by the Sicilian sculptor Mario Rutelli at the beginning of the twentieth century. In 1901, he had sculpted four naked female bodies, representing the water nymphs. The nymphs were placed around the large fountain located in Piazza della Repubblica, opposite the Termini station.
The art style of those naked and lewd bodies had scandalized the Puritan citizenship. But the municipal administration trusted the artist. The nymphs remained in their places and Rutelli was commissioned to carry out the work to be placed in the center of the fountain.
The sculptor sculpted the struggle between a dolphin, an octopus and three entwined tritons. The audience coldly welcomed the work, considered incomprehensible and defined as a “mixed fry”. The municipality of Rome asked the author to create a new, more sober work. Mario Rutelli created a new sculpture and the “mixed fry” was placed in Piazza Vittorio Emanuele II, where it still resides today. In 2020 the fountain was restored.
By coincidences of history, the sculptor Mario was the great-grandfather of the mayor of Rome Francesco Rutelli. Francesco led two center-left councils between 1993 and 2001 before running for the post of Italian prime minister unsuccessfully.
A Multiethnic Square
Today the square is the center of multi-ethnic Rome, a symbol of integration that can work. Children and adolescents of all nationalities are seen running around talking to each other in perfect Italian. This atmosphere gave rise to the multi-ethnic orchestra of Piazza Vittorio .
In 2002, Mario Tronco, keyboardist of the Piccola Orchestra Avion Travel band, had the idea of founding the multi-ethnic orchestra in an area of Rome where Italian nationality is a minority. The self-taxation of some residents has given rise to a peculiar orchestra, based on the research and integration of musical genres from all over the world. So far, the orchestra has had the collaboration of more than 100 artists and has produced five music albums and four theatrical performances.
Written by Enrico, Translated by Hua and Photo from Hua
