ROME LETTER:A too-hot-to-handle Rome in August may shut up shops – and museums – but what about the tourists, asks PADDY AGNEW
THIS IS the season of visitors. Friends and family members from the grey northern climes are understandably keen to share just a little of our Mediterranean sun and heat. The intriguing thing about having visitors is that their presence can prompt you to go off and visit a sight, sound or exhibition which you might otherwise ignore, caught up as we all tend to be in the daily getting and spending and laying waste of our powers.
Thus it was that the Baroness and self set off the other day to show Renzo Piano’s splendid Auditorium Parco Della Musica to my brother Dermot. As someone “in the trade” (he is the chorus manager at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden), Dermot was curious to see this innovative venue.
However, in our stupidity, we had, just for a second, forgotten about the Roman August. Not only does the auditorium close down for August but the entire eminently handsome complex – comprising three huge cockroach-like concert halls plus walkways, shops, a bar and a restaurant – was also thoroughly chiuso.
This is, of course, proper Rome order. If you are a Roman and if you can manage it, you try to get out of the Eternal City in August.
It is simply too hot to stay, so why would you run a summer programme at the auditorium? Why indeed?
Well, the presence of many of the 30 million-odd tourists who annually visit Rome would be one reason. Surely some of those tourists would like to attend a mid-summer concert? Surely some of them would be curious to admire Piano’s original and engaging creations? Furthermore, the Piano design cleverly converts the piazza where the three main concert halls meet into a cavea or open-air amphitheatre, holding around 3,000 people and intended for fair-weather concerts.
At the end of the day, however, the principle here may indeed be a healthy one. We are Romans, we know how hot and uncomfortable it can be in August in Rome, so why change our custom and practice, merely to accommodate global tourism?
Fortunately, down the road at the MAXXI, Rome’s new 21st-century art museum designed by Iranian architect Zaha Hadid, they take a different attitude. This new Roman landmark, which officially opened last May at a cost of €150 million, was open and doing some quiet business. Over the years to come, there will be a lot of talk about the quality and nature of the “work” that will be amassed at the MAXXI but for the time being, the most interesting art object on view is, at least arguably, the museum itself.
Built, one suspects, as Rome’s answer to the amazing titanium-covered Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, the MAXXI looks for all the world like a huge, flowing concrete ship, stuck in dry dock. Although the building clearly required tonnes and tonnes of concrete, it manages to look mobile and flexible, thanks to its distinctly non-rectangular shape (the walls both inside and outside incline and curve in a most pleasing manner). Inside its range of flowing stairs, hanging tubes and bridges create the sensation of a cultural roller-coaster.
Needless to say, not everything is perfect. The lady who ran the ultra-modern, immensely stylish high-tech bar in the foyer complained that the architect had been so concerned with the (glorious) shape of the bar counter, that she had forgotten to leave a space for the rubbish bin. Maybe so, but what we liked a great deal about the MAXXI was the sense of the space itself, inside and out. On the day we were there, the piazza around the building was being quietly used by tourists and residents alike. On a hot afternoon, chairs placed in the shade of a row of trees offer a tempting resting place. It could be that this will become a space which, irrespective of its cultural/artistic/architectural worth, ends up being much prized by the local community around it.
The MAXXI, too, is in an unusual part of residential, north Rome, not far from the auditorium and adjacent to the area that was designated as the Olympic Village for the 1960 games. This is a zone that Irish rugby fans will know well since the Flaminia stadium, where Italy play nearly all their rugby internationals, is also nearby.
The MAXXI proudly claims that its “mission” is to be “a sort of antenna that transmits Italian cultural impulses abroad and which, in turn, is receptive to the tide and flow of international culture”. A bit grandly stated, perhaps, but the idea is good. Furthermore, it really helps if you are open for business.