VICOLO DEL BOLOGNA

where you can still breathe the air of a now-forgotten Trastevere.

VICOLO DEL
BOLOGNA

where you can still breathe the air of a now-forgotten Trastevere.

In the heart of Trastevere

The building you are in was built in the early 1600s and, consisting of only one floor, was used as a stable where horses slept and wagons and work tools were stored. So imagine a rather dark and probably smelly place covered with hay where the farmers and ranchers of the alley kept their animals and the tools they needed to work. The streets in those days did not have house numbers, but because of the plague that struck the capital in 1657 it was thought to number the entrances to make it easier for doctors to visit the sick. Therefore the building acquired its house numbers precisely from 45 to 49 at that time.

In the second half of the 1800s the little palace was owned by a certain Sign. Vincenzoni who had used it as a stable for cows. The animals provided the foodstuffs of milk and cheese and were used by farmers to transport water and firewood. Beyond the nearby Settimiana Gate (end of Via della Scala), where John Cabot University is now located, was open country in the late 1800s, and it was there that our Vincenzoni took his cows out to pasture. In 1894 the barn was enlarged and improved and sold to the new owner, Mr. Federici.

The Capitoline archives tell us that by 1900 the building had been fixed up for residential use and passed under the ownership of Mr. Federici. Spinetti. On April 10, 1911, a strong earthquake tremor caused

In the heart of Trastevere

The building you are in was built in the early 1600s and, consisting of only one floor, was used as a stable where horses slept and wagons and work tools were stored. So imagine a rather dark and probably smelly place covered with hay where the farmers and ranchers of the alley kept their animals and the tools they needed to work. The streets in those days did not have house numbers, but because of the plague that struck the capital in 1657 it was thought to number the entrances to make it easier for doctors to visit the sick. Therefore the building acquired its house numbers precisely from 45 to 49 at that time.

In the second half of the 1800s the little palace was owned by a certain Sign. Vincenzoni who had used it as a stable for cows. The animals provided the foodstuffs of milk and cheese and were used by farmers to transport water and firewood. Beyond the nearby Settimiana Gate (end of Via della Scala), where John Cabot University is now located, was open country in the late 1800s, and it was there that our Vincenzoni took his cows out to pasture. In 1894 the barn was enlarged and improved and sold to the new owner, Mr. Federici.

The Capitoline archives tell us that by 1900 the building had been fixed up for residential use and passed under the ownership of Mr. Federici. Spinetti. On April 10, 1911, a strong earthquake tremor caused

The alley… Looking up

The Alley, built in a strange “Y” shape, is dedicated to the carpenter Alessandro
called “The Bologna” because he was born in Bologna in the early 1500s.

Walking through the famous “Y” with an upward gaze reveals an ancient world between daily life and sacredness:
At No. 2 is the November 12, 1735 proclamation by order of Monsignor President of the Orsini Roads, forbidding the dumping of garbage on the streets.
At No. 7 the holy shrine dedicated to the Madonna with cherubs dates back to 1700 and is attributed to an anonymous painter.
At No. 36, just in front of the entrance door to the pizzeria, two columbarium tables (type of funerary buildings) from the first century AD are walled in with Latin inscriptions commemorating the deceased Aemilius and Valeria Pelorides.
The building at No. 37 is from the 1500s, and above the rusticated doorway is a holy shrine depicting the Madonna.
At No. 40, a few steps from the pizzeria going toward Piazza della Scala, there is an 18th-century aedicule of Our Lady of Sorrows with the inscription MARIA, MATER GRATIAE, ORA PRO NOBIS. This aedicule is famous because it is really much “talked about”: in the year 1796, in fact, many said they saw her moving her eyes…
At No. 53 on the small tower-shaped building one can still see an ancient frieze and the coat of arms of the Aversi di Trastevere, an ancient noble family with residence in the nearby Piazza de’ Renzi.

Giuseppe Gioacchino Belli, the Poet

The “Dar Poeta” pizzeria is dedicated to the great Roman poet Giuseppe Gioachino Belli, who throughout his life devoted himself to recounting through his famous sonnets the pure Roman spirit, that of the people, the foul-mouthed, disenchanted and often sly, but which well describes the plebs of the years in which he lived, those that is, between the late 1700s and the mid-1800s. And it was precisely Trastevere that was inhabited by Roman commoners for centuries, and that is why on that now distant April 7, 1995, it appeared a true honor to dedicate these walls to one of Rome’s greatest poets who best chronicled these people and this neighborhood.

In order to pay him greater homage on the walls of the pizzeria, some of Belli’s most famous sonnets that best express his sharp realism, his way of telling and describing without limits and without care of the “moral” inhibitions of the official literature of the times have been placed on the walls.”

VICOLO DEL BOLOGNA

VICOLO DEL BOLOGNA

In the heart of Trastevere

In the heart of Trastevere

The alley… Looking up

The alley… Looking up

Giuseppe Gioacchino Belli, the Poet

Giuseppe Gioacchino Belli, the Poet

PIZZERIA DAR POETA

VICOLO DEL
BOLOGNA