Historic Area Of Rome Threatened By New Car Park - UPDATE

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                                                Historic area of Rome threatened by new car park







By Peter Popham in Rome
Monday, 1 September 2008
The Independent.co.uk

One of the prettiest and most historic corners of Rome will soon be sacrificed for a seven-storey underground car park unless Italy's minister of culture orders a dramatic, and costly, change of course.


For the car park’s supporters, it is the way to rid the Tridente, the corner of central Rome defined by the "trident" of streets shooting out from Piazza del Popolo, of the clutter of cars. But its enemies call it "a sacrilegious car park," "a cultural crime", and compare the excavation of the hill in central Rome to the destruction of the Great Buddhas of Bamiyan by the Taliban.

Gianni Alemanno, the new centre-right mayor of Rome, argued against the car park during his election campaign, but work is already under way and if it were cancelled the penalty fees could amount to €40 million. The mayor chairs a meeting of experts on the issue today, but now Culture Minister Sandro Bondi has intervened, saying the hill is a question of national importance and the final word will be his.



It's called the Pincio and towards the end of the Roman Republic Lucullus, the philosopher-general who conquered northern Anatolia and brought cherries to Europe, built a magnificent villa nearby. The property was later grabbed by the libidinous Empress Valeria Messalina, wife of Claudius, who forced its then-owner to commit suicide. Later she herself was assassinated in the villa's gardens, which were transformed into a formal public garden by the 18th century neo-classical architect Valadier.

Pincio remains one of the most beautiful corners of Rome, home to the Villa Medici, where Galileo was imprisoned during his trials, and boasting great views across to St Peter's and beyond. But if plans backed by Mayor Alemanno's predecessor, Walter Veltroni, go ahead, Pincio will became a huge building site as diggers tear the guts out of the hill and replace them with a seven-floor underground car park with spaces for more than 700 vehicles.

The idea is that, after the dust settles, Pincio will look much as it does today. But that view was contested by Giorgio Muratore, a professor of architecture and one of a group of wise men appointed by the mayor of Rome to advise on the project. In an open letter he said, "This project is a monstrosity. That's all there is to it. There are no possible compromises."

                                                                                 

One of the most grievous losses, he said, would be that of the panoramic piazza on the hill's flat top, "a large part of which would be redefined merely as the roof" of the car park, with "large ventilator wells, extensive grilles, access stairs and emergency exits". Tourists, instead of "enjoying one of the most enchanting panoramas on the planet," would "walk among air vents fixed on the roof of a gigantic car park".

Environmental groups bitterly oppose the project and Carlo Ripa di Meana, the 79-year-old head of Italia Nostra and former head of Italy's Green party, has threatened to go on hunger strike if it goes ahead.

Opponents were heartened by revelations this week that the hill contains a wealth of ancient Roman remains, "a secret Pompeii," which archaeologists have only begun to explore. Angelo Bottini, special superintendent for Rome's archaeological goods, says, "forty per cent of the area on which the car park is to be built is occupied by archaeological remains”.

Chicco Testa, an environmentalist who backs the car park, says: "We must not be provincial. Anyone who goes around Europe sees that in all the capitals you can find underground car parks in the most central locations: and the pavements are not invaded by cars, as they are here".

But Dr Allan Ceen, an American professor of the history of urban planning who is based in Rome, a campaigner against the car park, pointed out that another enormous undergound car park called the Galoppatoio, a mere 130 metres from the Pincio, is chronically under-used - so much so that part of it has been sold off and is now used as a health centre.

"The Galoppatoio car park is half full - while the streets of the centre are jammed with parked cars - because it costs money to park there," he said. And even if the Pincio car park were to be fully used, he went on, it would not solve the city's parking problem. "When you create a car park in the city centre for 700 cars, you draw 700 more cars into the centre."

But Dr Ceen is pessimistic. "I think it's a foregone conclusion that the car park will go ahead. The idea that this project will allow (the Tridente area) to become a pedestrian area is just an excuse. But the mayor, like his predecessor, will be swayed by the money aspect. They are destroying a very beautiful part of Rome."

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PROTESTERS:

                                              "BARBARIANS EVISCERATE 'IL PINCIO'
 
                                           THE CITIZENS AT WAR WITH BARBARIANS"

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Mary Wilsey,
01/10/2008


 
                                           EDITORIAL: Saving the Pincio at a price

 
   
 

Excavate anywhere in the historic centre of Rome and something will turn up.

When work started on the Auditorium Parco della Musica in the 1990s unusual Roman farm buildings came to light. Work stopped, plans were re-drawn and the walls of the farm are now beautifully incorporated into part of the music complex.

When diggers bit into the Gianicolo before the Holy Year 2000 to empty out the hill for a car park,
they were stopped only just in time to save wonderful frescoes from a group of ancient Roman summer houses. These are now housed in the National Museum of Rome at Palazzo Massimo alle Terme.

Most recently, work on the central section of metro C around Piazza Venezia and Largo Argentina has come to a halt while archaeologists and structural engineers debate what to do with important historical finds.

It is hardly surprising therefore that there was going to be trouble when excavators started work on the Pincio hill overlooking Piazza del Popolo for a new car park with about 700 spaces.

Sure enough, up came all sorts of archaeological remains early this summer, work stopped and there
has been controversy ever since; almost everyone who is anyone in Italy has had something to say.
On 10 September the city’s new mayor, Gianni Alemanno, finally took a decision: the Pincio project would be scrapped and about 500 new spaces would be added to the existing car park in Villa Borghese, just round the corner, so to speak, from the planned new one.

Why couldn’t this expansion have been done long ago? And as the Villa Borghese car park is seldom full, why was there a need for the new car park in the first place?

The original idea was to get cars off the street in the areas around Piazza di Spagna by selling the slots in the Pincio car park to residents in the historic centre, as well as to parliamentarians and their staff at the chamber of deputies and the senate. It was never made totally clear exactly who would be the beneficiaries of the 700 slots, but they were certainly going to be privileged people. If this was not controversial enough, environmentalists also argued that the new car park, with all its comings and goings, would actually make traffic in the area worse, not better.

If the very concept of the car park raised questions, its demise raises others. It was not the finding of the archaeological remains that stopped construction. As the special team at the ministry for culture tasked with evaluating the project made clear, the remains could have been incorporated into the car park, making something of a feature. So why did the mayor switch on the red light?

Part of the reason, one assumes, is money. Alemanno has done nothing but complain that the previous left-wing city government left the coffers empty and he has used what he claims is a e6.9 billion deficit as an excuse to stop one project after another. This was just another one waiting for the chop.
However, the main reason seems to be that the mayor just decided that there was a better solution. Many of us can heartily agree with this, whatever our political affiliation. But can one mayor simply change his mind about public works started by another? Do contracts entered into by one political administration not stand up when another one comes into power? The ministry of culture did not say that the archaeological finds were sufficiently important to cancel the whole project, so how can Alemanno justify dumping the car park altogether?

The official communication from his office says that he is on solid legal ground. One can only hope he is, otherwise there will be plenty of litigation in the courts. But, worse still, other mayors across the country could be tempted to change their predecessors’ plans. What would stop a possible successor to Letizia Moratti in Milan from taking a pencil to the more controversial projects for the city’s Expo 2015? There are certainly plenty of these and little enough money to go round. Alemanno could have set a dangerous, and expensive, precedent.