BUFALE ARCHEOLOGICHE in Giornale dell’Arte December 2015 “Rome: a closed city”

Once you could visit the Roman Forum without having to pass through gates or pay an entrance fee, you could freely enter the Colosseum without crossing those hideous Innocenti tubes (placed there provisionally and that then became permanent…like everything in Italy), you could stroll along the Colle Oppio (the Oppian Hill) in the evening or take a walk under the Arch of Janus and into the square, you could either discover a fragment in the ruins and the marble blocks in the area around the Theatre of Marcellus or maybe pass through the Porticus Octaviae… Now you can’t do any of this… It’s all closed..! In the same way as with the Imperial Forums: it starts by banning private traffic, then some areas are closed off and then a ticket office is established… over the last few days, the wretched Marino administration has declared the beginning of the “pedestrianisation” of the Ancient Appian (in other words the Via di Porta S. Sebastiano) closing it to traffic, but not for the VIP residents such as Roberto Benigni…Will it have been him, disturbed by the traffic noise, to suggest the inauspicious idea of “seclusion” to his friend Ignazio..?
Rome is becoming a closed city; open only to the mafia and terrorist attacks… We have seen all this happen in just the last 40 years. But wasn’t Rome once an open-air Museum…?
Then we must open all the museums, take down the barriers around the archaeological sites and create a huge, archaeological museum site free of charge, by charging an initial tourist tax, like a “ski pass” valid for all the sites and museums….but then remove from the historic centre all those unnecessary public or governmental offices that engulf and kill our Eternal City.

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