You aren’t born a Roman, you become one. A book in one hundred stages

Rome. “No, you can’t do that. You just can’t. I’m giving up on it,” exclaims Mario Mattioli despondently, before continuing, “No, never mind, Rome… Rome isn’t just about the dialect. It’s a quality of life. It’s a way of being. Rome… You can’t explain Rome like that in a few words.” The character played by the actor in Carlo Vanzina’s film “Non si ruba a casa dei ladri” is trying to teach Roman dialect to Vincenzo Salemme, a Neapolitan, and Stefania Rocca, from Turin. To do so, he tries to make them understand what Rome is and what it means to be Roman. Indeed, what does it mean to be Roman and, above all, when can one say they are Roman? In a millennia-old city that has witnessed invasions, plagues and the decline of empires unfold amidst its marble and streets, as well as artists and tourists, being Roman is becoming increasingly complex. Setting aside the mere fact of being born in the city and living there, ‘Roman-ness’ has become a sort of elusive state of mind and a profound understanding of that genius loci, of those attitudes, those quirks, those idiosyncrasies – sometimes good-natured, sometimes less so – that distinguish the true Roman. Valeria Arnaldi has recently published the book “Sei romano se… 100 cose da fare (o sapere) per sentirsi davvero cittadino dell’Urbe” with Olmata, a topography and geology of Roman identity in one hundred stages. Topography, because within the pages of the book the author weaves together places, churches, monuments and hospitals, painting a three-dimensional diorama of what truly matters most to a true Roman. Geology, because in its millennia-old composition the city has allowed different layers to settle, a sort of ascending pyramid upon which grandeur and misery, the sublime and the degraded, rest and rely: and so we find the quirks, the jokes, the character traits, the witticisms and the pride – at times boorish, at others excessive. There it is, the Roman spirit, much like Mattioli, who unravels the essence of the city through his walks, the ponentino wind and carbonara. The volume captures the local accent and dialect—‘anna’ instead of ‘andare’, the ever-present ‘daje’ and ‘a chi tocca nun se ‘ngrugna’—alongside recipes, the massive walls and the fluid boundaries of a city that, when it chooses, can also be tremendously snobbish. It features the stray cats that now serve as icons of the capital. There is the rough-and-ready Rome and the Rome of the ‘three steps’ – the famous saying linked to Regina Coeli prison which, in days gone by, signified genuine Roman spirit: carefree and a bit of a brawler, the world of the ‘più’ – small-time neighbourhood bosses – and of tavern brawls that often ended in murder. Rome is a city of enormous hyperbole, where nothing is ever truly measurable: the great always risks becoming enormous, and the small, enormous too. Time is often reduced to ‘mò’, which is supposed to denote the instant, the moment, the here and now, but which instead stretches out almost to infinity. The Roman character is that which emerges from the gravestones and inscribed marble, from the statues and the passing of the centuries, from the façades of the churches and the lush greenery – now perhaps somewhat duller – of the city’s villas. Rome truly becomes a feeling, a constant and gruff presence, like its inhabitants, in whose very heart one can become Roman even if one is from Naples or Reggio Calabria, Berlin or Detroit. Or from Cuba, like Tomás Milian, who, as a foreigner, became the most authentic cinematic embodiment of the working-class, spirited Roman spirit. He earned the right to be Roman; he won it on the ground. Because it is not enough to understand the city, its slow flow; one must enter into it, respect it and evoke its constant presence. “Only when you truly feel Rome does Roman-ness come naturally,” writes Arnaldi. And that is indeed the case. This city has never claimed to be understood or portrayed as it truly was or is. Rather, in Rome, it has always been enough to feel it deep within and to experience it as if one of its inhabitants, coming from who knows where, had been born in Trastevere or Testaccio or the Rione Monti.

Andrea Venanzoni