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The Rioni of Rome: Esquilino
Roman melting-pot


The historic open-air market was moved to a new indoor home a couple of blocks east of the piazza

By Emiliano Pretto
january 2009

The Esquilino neighbourhood is named for the Esquiline hill on which it stands. It lies south of Termini railway station and centres more or less on the piazza Vittorio Emmanuele II.
Many have renamed the quarter “Chinatown”, but in fact immigrants from more than a hundred different countries crowd its busy streets and piazzas. A thriving commercial district, Esquilino also boasts a vibrant cultural and artistic life including the Orchestra di piazza Vittorio, an immigrant band which came to represent the changing, multi-cultural face of modern Italy and became internationally famous thanks to a 2006 documentary by director Agostino Ferrente.
If you want to understand just how much Rome has changed in recent years you have to visit Esquilino. Here the changes have been radically different from the Boho-chic makeover that has transformed the nearby Monti neighbourhood. Esquilino boasts no cutting-edge alternative fashion ateliers or trendy watering-holes and nightspots; it is full of dozens of restaurants featuring every kind of Asian cuisine – most of whose customers are immigrants. There are inumerable wholesale clothes shops; you’ll find Vietnamese supermarkets, chinese barbershops, phone- and internet-centres run by Indians. Immigration has been the driving force behind the transformation of Esquilino. Of the 1,300 or so commercial premises operating in the district 800 are Chinese-owned, around 300 are run by immigrants from other countries around the world and some 200 are owned by Italians.


The gallery of Piazza Vittorio

Before becoming Rome’s most multi-racial neighbourhood Esquilino was a prime example of grimey inner-city degradation. Its rebirth began with a massive city-funded project to renovate and clean up piazza Vittorio. The historic (also by that time decidedly shabby and unsanitary) open-air market was moved to a new indoor home a couple of blocks east of the piazza.

The old market was the location for a key scene in one of the most famous Italian films of all times: Vittorio De Sica’s 1948 neo-realist classic “Bicycle Thieves”. It is one of the least disputed masterpieces in cinema, with one of the least complicated storylines: an impoverished Roman man, Antonio, is thrilled when he is at last offered a job: delivering and putting up movie posters. But he needs a bicycle, and must supply his own, so his wife pawns the family's entire stock of bed linen to redeem the bicycle he had already hocked. On his first day at work, the unlocked machine is stolen and Antonio drops everything to go on a desperate odyssey across Rome with his young son to get his bike back. They create uproar in classic crowd moments: in the streets, at a church mass – and in the piazza Vittorio market, notoriously a site where stolen goods are re-sold.

De Sica's postwar fable, beautifully shot on street locations, is still a joy to watch, and the scene in piazza Vittorio is one of the most memorable.
The market has now moved on but the renovated piazza is still the bustling heart of Esquilino – a quarter which now moves to a multi-racial beat following the influx of immigrants from Asia, Africa, the Balkans and South America. New luxury hotels have been opened, theatres that were abandoned for years are now back in business again. Artists have moved into the district and gleaming loft conversions are being snapped up. And of course nothing could be more emblematic of the Esquilino’s multi-cultural renaissance than the Orchestra di piazza Vittorio.

The second great symbol of the district’s new found vitality is the Teatro Ambra Jovinelli. The Theatre was closed down and abandoned for almost two decades following a fire. Renovated and modernised it was reopened in 2001 and is now a thriving centre for the best of Italian comic theatre, especially for biting political satire. The Ambra Jovinelli’s artistic director, tv host and comedienne Serena Dandini, recently emphasised how vital the theatre’s reopening has been to the redevelopment of Esquilino by both reinvigorating the neighbourhood’s cultural life and creating employment.
In 2004 one of Rome’s most luxurious hotels, the Radisson Sas Es Hotel, opened for business just across the street from Teatro Ambra Jovinelli.
As we have seen many of the businesses in Esquilino are now foreign-owned. But some historic Italian names are not just hanging on but flourishing. None more so than gelateria Fassi (via Via Principe Eugenio, 65-67). Also known as “The Ice Palace”, Fassi’s has been a family-run business since it opened in 1928. It is Italy’s oldest and largest gelateria.
The owner, Leonida Fassi, the son of the gelateria’s founder, makes light of the transformation that has swept Esquilino. Fifty-four of the sixty shops that share the street with Fassi’s are owned by Chinese, and the shop has immigrants among its staff, he explains. “We went through some tough times with all the changes in the area, but now business couldn’t be better.” And good ice cream is delicious whatever language you order it in.
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Different languages, same music


Orchestra di Piazza Vittorio

The Orchestra di Piazza Vittorio was founded in 2002 by Mario Tronco, a long-time resident of Esquilino who wanted to involve the new residents in his quarter in a project that would make new exciting music and a statement about the changing multi-cultural face of Italy.
Most of the musicians in the Orchestra have come here from, among other places, India and Tunisia, Cuba and Argentina, Senegal and Brazil, Hungary and Ecuador; they’re joined by a few Italians.
Their music is instantly recognisable and utterly unique: mixing rhythms and styles ranging from gypsy, jazz, and latin, and traditional music from Africa to India.
The Orchestra has produced 3 cds and performed in more than 300 concerts around the world.

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A Look Around Testaccio
The vibrant colours of fresh fruit and vegetables overflowing from their crates; the smells of fresh fish and flower stalls; people shouting to be heard above the bustle of the day’s trade – Testaccio market on a typical weekday morning.
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EUR
The city within the city
Did you know there were two Colosseums in Rome? One is round, ancient and world famous. The other is square, 20th century and to be found in the most modern district of the city: EUR.
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Monti
The changing face of Rione Monti
The historic neighbourhood stretching between the Colosseum, Piazza Venezia, the Fori Imperiali and the Quirinale has now become one of the capital’s coolest quarters.
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Garbatella
Urban village
Neat little houses set in a warren of narrow, winding streets, steep steps and sudden quiet courtyards. An atmosphere which harks back to Italian village life in the early 1900’s: everybody knows everyone else; children play at football in the small squares; the elderly spend their days on park benches and if a housewife finds she’s run out of salt or wine she can send one of her children to a neighbour to borrow some. This is one of Rome’s most special and enchanting neighbourhoods, Garbatella.
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Esquilino
Roman melting-pot
Esquilino was one of the first new quarters laid out in Rome after the unification of Italy in 1861, as King Vittorio Emanuele II sought to show the rest of the world a new modern face to ancient Rome. Today it is one of the capital’s most multi-ethnic neighbourhoods where you’re more likely to see store signs in Chinese, Hindi or Urdu than Italian.
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