The heat is on...
...on the street, inside your head, on every beat.
It's really hot in Rome these days (and it seems that next week it's even going to intensify). Even trees swoon from the heat, so all climate change deniers please exit stage left, thank you.
I'm glad I've provided my Mum with A/C, so that she can stay in her living room and watch reruns of Doc Martin (currently her favourite TV show…) every weekday at 11 AM without melting because of the heat.
Ideally, on a Sunday in the summer I would go to Porta Portese (Rome's most famous Sunday flea market, established in 1945) early in the morning, when it's less crowded, and then spend the rest of the day panzallària in a park, in the shadow of a tree, reading a book while eating a grattachecca, but these days just the thought of going to Porta Portese makes me sweat, and even the idyllic setting in a park would be off limits due the heat (trust me, I tried).
In case you're wondering what's “panzallària”, it's just Roman slang for “a pancia all'aria”:
I don't know about you, but I really can't stand the heat, I'm a winter child, so what do I do in my spare time in the summer when I can't do the panzallària thing? The usual: I stay at home and I draw, I paint, I write, and I read books. I mean, I read more books than when the temperatures are bearable (which means below 20 C, thank you).
A few days ago, after reading a post on Faceboomer Facebook and clicking a couple of links, I discovered the existence of a series of mystery books set in my neighbourhood, Monteverde. It's not a new release, the first book of the series was actually published in 2018, and it's been recently reissued by another publisher, but I've been too busy with family issues to pay attention to new books, apart from friends’ ones, so I'm catching up just now.
The author, François Morlupi, is French-Italian (or is that Italo-French? Ah, whichever is correct…), and I haven't asked him yet if he's also from my neighbourhood, but I very much suspect so — which would add up to the already long list of writers, artists, and other celebrities who have lived around here: Pier Paolo Pasolini, Carlo Emilio Gadda, M.C.Escher (whose studio in via Poerio can be seen in one of his most famous works, “Hand with reflecting sphere”)…
…and also Giorgio Caproni, Cleopatra (yes, that Cleopatra, when she came to Rome she lived in a villa in the Horti Caesari, Julius Caesar’s gardens, which is where nowadays there’s Villa Sciarra…), Gianni Rodari (probably Italy's most celebrated children author and pedagogist — he even turned Monteverde’s own bus 75, which back then was a trolleybus, into the main character of one of his short stories for children…), Attilio Bertolucci (writer, poet, and father of Bernardo and Giuseppe, both movie directors), Nanni Moretti… and Damiano from Måneskin.
(I could've added a photo of Damiano for klout here, but I love this picture of Gianni Rodari with a chair on his head so much…)
I've mentioned Villa Sciarra, which, aside from being the place where Cleopatra sojourned when in Rome, is a noteworthy park because:
that's where I caught pinworms infection when I was two, because while playing in the park I ate soil (yes, I was that kind of child…);
that's also where, during a baking hot Roman summer (hello? I thought this was fiction…), a body, or rather, parts of a body are found in Formule mortali, the first book of “i Cinque di Monteverde” series.
The main character of the book (and of the whole series) is Commissario Ansaldi, an extremely clever detective who suffers from a crippling form of anxiety and from panic attacks. He's aided by four equally smart colleagues in his precinct — hence their nickname “i Cinque di Monteverde”, i.e. The Monteverde Five, a bit like The Central Park Five, although here “five” doesn't refer to the number of suspects but to the number of detectives in the unit… Law & Order: Monteverde Unit!
*dun dun!*
Oh, my Dad would've loved these stories…
That photo of Roderi is priceless! I’m adding Monteverde to my list of places to go in Rome and this book series to my reading list (even though you’re not exactly raving about them). I’d like to add panzzallária to my vocabulary but probably no one here would understand it. What the heck, I’ll try it! Thanks for another fun and informative post!
Great piece. Wishing you cooler temperatures! MC Escher also lived in my city Arnhem in The Netherlands. The local school was the inspiration for his famous staircase work!