Back to Work & Love

Only a short stroll from the smart shops of famed Piazza di Spagna begins Via Margutta, one of Rome's most remarkable streets. It is shabby, narrow, and lined by drab, ocher-colored buildings. Not until a visitor pushes through any of a dozen open archways into a maze of courtyards, stone stairs and quiet, hidden gardens, is the secret of the street revealed. For here live some of Italy's most colorful artists, their names often scrawled on rickety doors. Via Margutta has been the Roman artists' quarter since the 16th century Today, in the center of a city of 1,700,000 it seems as remote and self-sufficient as a country village. Everybody knows everybody else, and the most diverse types share the street in perfect harmony.

A current Margutta Who's Who would include Sculptor Pericle Fazzini (TIME, March 10, 1952), who holds court in his ground-floor studio; Bulgarian-born Assen Peikov, a society portrait painter who affects a Mongol-style mustache; brunette Novella Parigini, a great friend of Errol Flynn's, who paints sexy calendar girls and looks like one; dignified, 70-year-old Giuseppe Carosi, who lives with his cats in a genteel Victorian apartment; lean, intense Communist Sculptor Nino Franchina, who does abstractions in metals.

Via Margutta enjoyed its golden age in the 19th century. Then the hill villages of Anticoli and Saracinesco, which have traditionally supplied artist models to the capital, still sent their handsomest daughters to Margutta studios. Fashionable painters gave parties at which young artists sipped champagne with Adelina Patti, Franz Liszt and Richard Wagner. Wagner was so fascinated with Via Margutta that he considered settling down there. The Marguttiani, appalled at having their peace disturbed by "a German who writes futuristic music," were relieved when the composer abandoned the idea.

The 20th century brought worse disturbances. A gasoline station, dance studios and a movie company took over space once occupied by bearded brush and chisel wielders. The worst blow came after World War II when a huge, jaundice-yellow garage appeared at one end of the famed old street. The Marguttiani organized a committee for the defense of their neighborhood, and last fall the Italian Ministry of Public Instruction halted further ravages by decreeing that Via Margutta is a "zone of notable public interest," in which no new buildings may be built or existing decor altered without government consent.* Last week Italian architects were hard at work on plans for the restoration of the street. The government had offered a prize of 1,000,000 lire ($1,600) for the best plan, recommending that the offending garage "be considered an object of special study." Both artists and government hope to get the Via Margutta back to the way it was, as the late Roman poet Augusto Jandolo (1873-1952) described it: "A quiet street, anything but severe; just made for work and for love."

-- In the U.S., a similar problem exists in the Vieux Carre, New Orleans' famed French Quarter. Since 1937, a special commission has controlled changes in the Quarter.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.