Postcard from Rome: a walking tour through faded, fabulous Garbatella

Rome is a strange place to be cripplingly lonely. From robed priests striding towards the Vatican to the remains of temples decomposing on street corners, there’s something melodramatic about the city. Every emotion seems heightened here. Throw in travelling solo, a recent break-up and finding myself unexpectedly caught in a far stricter lockdown than anticipated and you have the perfect recipe for rampant self-pity — Italian style. 

Throughout my trip, Rome moves in and out of “colour zones” (the equivalent of the tier system), each bringing with it a slew of restrictions on socialising. During my 14-day quarantine I coordinate meals with the family who live above me despite the fact they have no idea I exist, enjoying the murmur of their muffled voices. When nail salons open I’m first in line, purely so I can hold the nail technician’s hand. Desperate times, desperate measures.

When the proprietor of my local coffee bar — pretty much the only other person I speak to — tells me about Garbatella, a suburb famed for its tight-knit community located a mere two metro stops from the Circus Maximus, my interest is piqued. His descriptions of open-armed families feasting on velvety artichokes and street football games call to me with as much conviction as cacio e pepe does a Roman stranded in Illinois.

Faded, fabulous and with a distinct anti-establishment whiff, the historic part of Garbatella was built in the 1920s and is similar in size to Vatican City. A team of architects at the Institute of Public Housing (or ATER as it’s now known) led by Innocenzo Sabbatini borrowed concepts from the UK’s burgeoning garden city movement to create an urban district with the intimacy of a village. Romans flock here at weekends to sip spritz, see street art and wash down pasta with flagons of wine at family-run trattorias.

The area is divided into 62 lotti, low-rise apartment blocks built around garden squares to encourage neighbourly mingling. ATER still owns most of them and caps rents, which allows many of the original families to remain — but also explains the peeling paint and ripped awnings. In Italy, no institution moves fast.

Garbatella’s blue-collar roots run deep. It was originally designed to house country folk who’d found jobs in the industrial Ostiense district; one of the area’s waymarkers is the gazometro, a gasworks affectionately nicknamed “the working man’s colosseum”. In the latter half of the decade, Garbatella was co-opted by Fascists to rehouse families displaced when many of the medieval alleys in Rome’s centre were torn down to create avenues wide enough for military processions.

Unlike the rest of Rome — which the late writer Graham Joyce described as “a place almost worn out by being looked at, a city collapsing under the weight of reference” — Garbatella is barely mentioned in guidebooks. Those that do visit will find a unique “barocchetto” architecture, which references everything from Baroque to Art Nouveau. Panthers stalk curvaceous arches, chubby cupids prop up drainpipes and distinctive stone slabs slyly mock Rome’s noble elite, as the style was traditionally used on Renaissance palazzi.

Romans flock here at weekends to sip spritz, see street art and wash down pasta with flagons of wine at family-run trattorias

Few people are better equipped to bring the area to life than Valeria Castiello, a local travel photographer and licensed guide who trained as an architect and now runs a B&B called Unexpected Rome with her husband. She has just launched the first walking tour of Garbatella in English and I’m her inaugural, and only, guidee. After weeks of deafening silence, she couldn’t have a more eager audience.

“Sabbatini understood the value of community and how architecture can help foster it. To cultivate a new shared heritage, you have to respect where people have come from and understand what really matters to them.”

Over the next two hours Valeria points out numerous examples of architectural kookery: an inviting square copied stone for stone from a village in Lazio; a coat of arms engraved with the housing institute’s initials instead of a noble crest; the shrine dedicated to Roma FC (long the city’s left-wing football team) rather than a saint.

“Rather than destroying the landscape, Sabbatini’s team incorporated it — see how those Baroque-style stairs hug that hill,” she points across the leafy courtyard of lotto 14.

Towards the end of Valeria’s tour we pause at what was Sabbatini’s final project: the Scalinata degli Innamorati (lovers’ staircase). This elegant curve is where local teenagers come to smoke cigarettes, eat gelato and fall in love — or so I’m told. On this particular afternoon, it’s as empty as the grave. Love waits.

“The spring at the bottom is called ‘Carlotta’s fountain’. Neighbourhood kids reckoned the statue looked like a lady who used to live here and the name stuck. They say if you drink three sips and make a wish it will come true.” I wander down the staircase, look Carlotta bang in the eye and wish with all my might.

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