The historic Prati residence, once home to figures ranging from Fellini to Zalone, is up for sale

There is no anxiety on Viale Mazzini. Not over the end of ‘Rai scuola’, replaced by ‘Italiana’ – a fundamental anthology of villages and squares in our beautiful country, or rather nation – nor over what Ranucci and his ‘Report’ programme will get up to: there is no trace of anxiety, nor of any other feelings, in the sun-drenched and deserted Prati-Delle Vittorie district, where Rai, the Italian Broadcasting Corporation, has been living and languishing since 1965.

One evening in late August, in the grip of the seventh or eighth heatwave (who’s counting any more?), the neighbourhood is half-deserted and tropical. The tower block on Viale Mazzini stands there, gleaming, wrapped up, eternal: it’s known to be undergoing restoration; the wildest urban legends are circulating – that it will one day be turned into a hotel, that it will never reopen – who knows. Meanwhile, those at Rai who can – as was reported here in Il Foglio – are trying to avoid being ‘deported’ to South Rome, to ‘Severo’, named after the street on the Cristoforo Colombo ring road where the new headquarters is located, in a tower block made entirely of glass and steel. Utterly modern. 

But far away. And with technological innovations that not everyone is keen on; an app for booking workspaces in open-plan offices, because there aren’t enough desks to go round. So, those who can manage it hang on, clinging on with all their might: to change, to the future, to the EUR district, to the heat. The bigwigs have set themselves up in Via Asiago, the radio station’s headquarters, even if they’re crammed in and there’s a surplus of staff. The ‘Spin Time’ of the radio and television occupation: many are rediscovering Via Teulada (it seems that even a bank has been requisitioned and turned into offices, for those who simply cannot bear being sent off to the EUR). People are huddling together. They are fighting.

But it’s still early days; there’s time, There is still a heatwave, perhaps the last or the penultimate one, and the streets—not just Mazzini, but also the other avenues of the Rai universe, the boulevards with their 1950s signs that have never been changed, amidst newer, trendier ones, the perfumeries and wine bars—are abandoned to that sweet and somewhat unsettling Roman summer desolation, somewhere between Verdone and Simonetta Cesaroni. The tower blocks, laden with notaries’ and solicitors’ plaques, stand there with their beautiful façades. The Art Nouveau balconies are barred, the blue parking bays miraculously empty. Mirages of the heat: an open gym, ‘Push up’, for die-hard fitness enthusiasts.

Plaques on the walls: ‘Umberto Nobile, conqueror of the North Pole, lived here’. Graffiti: ‘Prati antifa’ altered to ‘Prati antifroci’ (the ‘woke’ craze has come to an end here too, very gently). Ancient manhole covers still bear the inscription ‘EIAR’, the very first, deeply fascist RAI (Italy, the country where cancel culture came to die). On Via Settembrini, the bar of the same name – for years a haunt for Rai cliques, for aperitifs and dinner parties fuelled by gossip and backroom deals – has been closed for some time. The Vanni outpost, on the other hand, stands firm against everything and everyone. The Vanni outpost is the very embodiment of state television history; it comprises a bar-patisserie, a casual dining restaurant on the ground floor (‘Arcipelago’) and, on the first floor, a grand restaurant and events hall with an even more grandiose name (‘Il Peristilio’). Il Peristilio (a sort of Trump-style ballroom, complete with colonnades and stucco, which hosted a packed election brunch for Vannacci in ’24) appears to be closed, whilst the ground-floor bar is open, filled with small families and individuals – it’s hard to tell whether they’ve already returned from their holidays or never left – and they all look rather disoriented.

According to local lore, the Vanni family has been present since 1956—predating Rai’s establishment—and was soon commissioned by the broadcaster to take over the café that had originally been part of the company premises, where staff members would linger. Over time, Rai has grown up around Vanni, or Vanni around Rai; it is no longer clear which is the tree and which the weed. Between the Peristilio and Arcipelago entrances, there is a Rai entrance I had never noticed before, ‘Rai teche’, with display cases among the kitchens (although there may be underground tunnels connecting all the Rai offices in Prati, Rome and the world, except for those in the EUR district). In those kitchens, at Vanni’s, Mina would eat to escape the photographers, and at Vanni’s, Pope Wojtyla found himself at a surprise birthday party. Things that only happen in Rome.

Now Vanni has set up all his tables outside, on a pedestrianised street; there’s a festival going on, ‘Il mondo nuovo’, featuring music and books: perhaps he’s responding to the Rai’s withdrawal by cleverly reinventing himself as the epicentre of events and book and music launches – perhaps the whole neighbourhood is ready to reinvent itself. So why not turn it into a proper Rai theme park? There’s no need to change a thing. Dante, the trattoria on Via Monte Santo, is still closed – here too, amongst shop signs in pure 1950s style that have never been changed – and Dante is a key stop on the theme park tour: Milly Carlucci’s favourite restaurant, where she comes after ‘Ballando con le stelle’; on the only occasion I had lunch there a few months ago, I am quite certain I saw Maria Giovanna Elmi (the fairy!) seated with several former presenters—all blonde, looking as good as ever, legendary figures from another era—amidst the original furnishings and cutlery: Perhaps it was a hallucination, but if we were in America they would have turned it into a ‘Raiwood’ by now, just like Dollywood, Dolly Parton’s kingdom in Tennessee.

I proceed along Rai’s Sunset Boulevard and arrive at Via Nicotera for the primary objective of this summer outing: the Prati residence. Via Nicotera, incidentally, is one of the most beautiful streets in the neighbourhood, boasting plenty of 20th-century architecture: there’s Venturino Ventura’s incredible building with balconies as round as spaceships, a 1960s ‘vertical forest’, and then there’s the Prati residence. It was built in 1938 by Luigi Piccinato, first a renowned Rationalist and later one of the leading post-war urban planners; it was originally conceived as a ‘House-Hotel or House for Artists’, comprising two beautiful separate buildings, with small terraces and recessed penthouses at the top, and zigzagging staircases connecting the two structures, behind a large magnolia tree that still stands there today.

Over the years, the Prati residence has hosted every sort of presenter, actor, director and general manager – whether they were famous or not – in the history of Viale Mazzini. The first notable resident, in the 1940s, was Federico Fellini. “You can find it at 26 Via Nicotera; the telephone number is 32834,” stated an old article (without an area code – back then, it wasn’t needed). The news, however, is that the Prati residence is now up for sale. My obsession with property listings, combined with an algorithm that significantly overestimates my income, led me one day to come across this advert: “In the heart of the Prati district, a stone’s throw from Piazza Mazzini, we are offering for exclusive sale a prestigious free-standing building totalling 1,050 square metres, recently and tastefully refurbished, currently set up as accommodation and characterised by high earning potential.” Price: 8.5 million. The question now is whether mortgage financing is available.

Looking at the advert, though, the photo rings a bell. After some thought, the realisation strikes: it is definitely the old Prati residence, the one everyone has a story about (forget the Cefalù bistro). Checco Zalone stayed there in his early years and during his first films, and in an interview with La Repubblica he said it was perfect because ‘he needed a sad place to write’. The Prati was, in fact, also an unwitting talent factory. Home and office rolled into one, Pieraccioni used to write screenplays there and meet with actors (Il ciclone was conceived there, he said). Giovanni Veronesi came up with the idea for the screenplay of Tutta colpa del Paradiso on those little terraces, whilst Francesco Nuti, who lived there, smoked a cigarette and told him about a dream – the dream of having a son, ‘a little Nuti’. Part “Pensione Maria”, part our very own Chelsea Hotel, the Prati has left its mark on paper and film. Troisi was also a regular there. Federico Moccia set part of Ho voglia di te there.

A young Bibi Ballandi, before becoming the king of television producers, used to have his office there, if you can call it that. “In the late 1980s, Bibi and I had a basement there in that building,” Giovanni Benincasa, a highly successful TV writer, tells Il Foglio. “Our office consisted of a wooden plank resting on two painter’s trestles. We held our castings there and prepared ‘Fantastico’, with Jovanotti arriving on a Vespa. Bibi also had a bedroom for when he came up from Bologna. The room was next to Memo Remigi’s, and we could hear absolutely everything. At one point we heard him crying, in despair, on the phone. He was calling out for ‘his little one’ who was no longer there. So after a while, I couldn’t stand it any longer – I was terribly worried – and I rang his doorbell. And he said: ‘You won’t believe it, they’ve stolen my 500! My little one!’ It was a car.”

These days, the residence appears deserted, although it remains operational and in excellent condition. It is no longer referred to as a ‘residence’ but, more modernly, as ‘Prati Home’, as indicated by the golden plaque. I contact the estate agent; they inform me that it is not possible to view the property, and the owners are still on holiday. You can book online; a room costs around 300 euros. In the entrance hall, you can catch a glimpse of some large cacti. There is no intercom, just an electronic keypad for residents. One notable resident at one point was Carlo Freccero. “It was very convenient,” he tells me. “Fifty metres from Rai, everyone used to pass by. Executives, actors, directors. It was also a place of adventures; I saw directors and footballers’ wives in romantic situations there, and conversely, it was also a sort of way of the cross for the aftermath of such romantic escapades. Actors and actresses in the process of separating, husbands thrown out of the house. A place for atonement.” A convent? “Yes, but in its dual sense – think of the Nun of Monza. It was austere, too. There were little stoves. Not a bar, no drinks, nothing. The owner, a blonde lady, feared moral decay.” The blonde owner—dubbed the “Dolly Parton of Prati”—is said to be the daughter of long-standing local business owners and of a local accountant. Along the street are strategic outposts: the office of film lawyer Assumma, production companies, and bars.

All the people of Prati were united by shared customs and habits, such as operating the ‘painfully slow’ electric shutters, and the evening exodus to the nearby restaurant-trattoria, La Nuova Fiorentina. Everyone had their own reason for being there. “People would pass through looking for their fortune, people in trouble, people who had builders at home and would take refuge there for a while,” Freccero continued. And perhaps they’d never leave.

A writer who stayed there for a few weeks tells me that there was a permanent resident, a very elegant lady from Milan, who had truly made the care home her own, decorating her room with paintings and furnishings, because she had simply grown tired of maintaining a home with all that it entails. When everything ground to a halt due to Covid and the residence was closed, the lady moved straight into a care home of her own accord. Yes, because the upheavals of history also came crashing down on ‘the Prati lot’: as with the Amatrice earthquake, at half past three in the morning on 24 August 2016, when the tremors were felt quite strongly even in Rome, and ‘the Prati lot’ all found themselves out on the street in their pyjamas, barefoot, young and old, Rai and non-Rai alike, waiting to see what would happen, in a scene straight out of an Italian comedy.

For some time, I have wished to craft a narrative about Italy through its residential complexes. In Milan, there is Antonio Ricci. In Rome, the other fateful residence is the Aldrovandi, in the Parioli district opposite the zoo; Dino Risi lived there for the last thirty years of his life, having moved there, he thought, “just for a few days,” following his separation. I undertook a kind of pilgrimage there years later, searching for a trace of that great man among the small electric hobs (not the ceramic variety, but the old-fashioned electric ones—the height of sadness) and that special melancholy that only holiday flats can evoke.

Residences offer all the comforts of a hotel, but without its charm: the temporary nature of a stay, yet without the bars, restaurants, passers-by – in short: life. Some people love residence life, whilst others detest it. “I’ve always lived in residences; I love that feeling of security – it’s like being at boarding school; nothing bad can happen to you,” says Freccero. Ricci, another television legend, is also a fan. “I love residential complexes because they’re emotionally detached. I use them to unwind. I sleep with my suitcase within reach so I can make a getaway,” she tells me. Have you ever been to the Prati? “No, in Rome I stayed in one on Monte Mario at first, then at the Ripetta residential complex.” She then recounts her Milanese residential history: “First, a flat rented from Memo Remigi’s mother-in-law” (Memo Remigi again! Perhaps we need a history of Italy tracing the footsteps of Memo Remigi). “Then the Residence De Angeli. One on Viale Abruzzi. Finally, the Jolly Residence (now NH)”.

One person who did suffer, however, at Prati, was Carlo Verdelli, the Milanese journalist and former editor-in-chief of Vanity Fair, La Repubblica and many other newspapers, who, ten years ago, was for a short while a very important figure at Rai before leaving, deeply embittered; and it seemed to me that part of that bitterness stemmed from his living in this residential complex. I have dug out the book he wrote about that unfortunate episode. “Perhaps sensing it wouldn’t last long, I didn’t rent a flat in Rome,” he writes in Roma non perdona. Come la politica si è ripresa la Rai (a title that speaks for itself, published by Feltrinelli). “They recommended some good rental properties (...). In the end, the decision was made: Mazzini. And so, a residential complex, at least for the first few months. Room 45, in a pale blue block of flats, the sort of place you’d find on a seaside holiday for families with children.”

I’ll ring him straight away. “Ah, the Prati residence,” he says with a bitter laugh. “I’d get into the office at half past seven in the morning and leave at eleven in the evening, so I used it as a dormitory. I remember how dreary that place was; in the room there was a small bed and a sitting area. And then a tiny bathroom. The carpet was red.” Now, at least from the photos, the carpet is gone. Did he meet anyone there? “I remember Freccero lived there, although I didn’t see him much. And then there was Flavio Insinna.” At Rai, Verdelli had been appointed ‘director for the coordination of news coverage’. “A typical Rai bureaucratic quirk to avoid saying outright that I was the director of news. That is, of the three main channels and RaiNews, Rai Sport, plus the radio news bulletins, plus digital news,” he explained. His plan was to sort out the news mess on Viale Mazzini. He worked a lot. “I wanted to leave my mark,” he tells me. Only a Lombard would think of “leaving his mark” at Rai, in Rome, I retort. “Only a daft Lombard,” he replies. The behemoth reacted to the foreign body, and the Lombard Martian was expelled.

During that brief year (from November 2015 to January 2017), Verdelli made a conscious choice. “I was determined to steer clear of Rome’s social circles and parties, so I kept to myself; but, you see, managing to make such a dreary place for oneself in a city like Rome is really difficult,” he says today. And so: “I’d go up to the fourth floor, to a flat with a built-in food warmer in the corridor, a living room with a glass table and a red sofa I didn’t like sitting on because it had a couple of cigarette burns, a one-and-a-half-single bed, and two rather odd paintings. The only advantage was that it took me a minute’s walk from there to the shop – just long enough to smoke half a cigarette.’ But Prati isn’t actually that bad, looking at it today, after the renovation. Piccinato was, after all, a great architect. ‘He must have had the best of intentions,’ Verdelli tells me. A bit like you. ‘A bit like us, yes.’ Verdelli’s predecessor was, in fact, another resourceful northerner who didn’t last long: Antonio Campo Dall’Orto, general manager from 2015 to 2017. Another who lived in student accommodation, though at the Aldrovandi, the one run by Risi. “Every now and then Antonio would say to me: ‘Carlo, you’re not thinking of moving out of student accommodation, are you?’”