Walks in Rome
Quartiere Coppede'
Our Sunday itinerary will cover the Coppedé neighbourhood, which all of us who live in Rome are certainly familiar with, but we want you to appreciate it with stories and anecdotes. The Coppedè district is a kind of bizarre theatrical setting, which has maintained its fairy-tale charm over time. The complex of buildings and small villas takes its name from the famous architect who designed and built it between 1913 and 1926 for the capital's emerging bourgeoisie. The architectures in their exuberant decoration represent a unicum of eclectic taste of the early 20th century, in which the Art Nouveau and Deco styles are associated with an imaginative and original repertoire of ornamental motifs. The squares and buildings that sprang from Gino Coppedè's imagination have been a source of inspiration for cinema and fiction, while in the wild 1960s the Beatles bathed in the Fountain of Frogs after one of their concerts held in the nearby Piper disco!
Il Ghetto
The Ghetto is a corner of Rome where you can breathe in a unique atmosphere, framing one of the souls of our city. Here, streets, squares and alleys are strewn with testimonies that tell the story of the ancient 'menagerie of the Jews', which was partly sacrificed in the late 19th century for the construction of the embankments of the Lungotevere. The original area of the Sant'Angelo district, between the Theatre of Marcellus and the river bank opposite the Tiber Island, had been delimited in 1555, at the behest of Paul IV Carafa, by a wall with three gates, inside which the Jewish community lived and practised its activities for centuries. The wall was in fact only torn down in 1848 on the initiative of Pope Pius IX. Strolling between the Portico d'Ottavia, the site of the ancient Pescheria (fish market) at the evocative church of Sant'Angelo, and the Via del Tempio you will encounter many traces of a bygone era and of vanished Rome, but also of more recent history, in a sort of chronological and historical palimpsest. In the Synagogue, built by 1904 in an eclectic style that combines Assyrian Babylonian motifs with those typical of art nouveau, one can visit the very interesting Jewish Museum, whose exceptional heritage is not only a sign of memory, but also a 'laboratory of coexistence'.
Finally, you cannot miss a gourmet stop for a tasting of kosher dishes.
La magia del Teatro
A special visit to the Teatro Argentina
Theatre is known to have an extra magic and if it is a special place like the Teatro Argentina that hosts the show, it is worth lingering a few minutes to observe and appreciate details that we may never have noticed. And we want to show you the secret places of this historic and fascinating theatre as you have never seen them! We propose a special visit to the Teatro Argentina, one of the most beautiful Italian-style theatres in the world.
The tour will take the form of a small theatrical performance, where young actors from the 'Silvio d'Amico' National Academy of Dramatic Art will guide visitors/spectators through some of the most historically and archaeologically significant places.
An itinerary in the theatre and of the theatre, among stories and memories: the museum, the foyer, the stage, the auditorium, concluding in the refectory of the Benedictine monastery of the Abbey of Farfa, which stands in the archaeological area between the theatre and the Curia of Pompey, the site of Julius Caesar's assassination.
The actors will then give voice to the great plays that have been performed precisely at the Teatro Argentina, many of them for the first time. They will therefore recite Gabriele D'Annunzio, Luigi Pirandello, Sem Benelli, the chronicles of foreign travellers passing through Rome from the notebooks of Goethe and Stendhal, the amusing sonnets of Belli and finally the funeral oration of Antony in William Shakespeare's Julius Caesar.
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