Trieste (Rome)


Trieste is the 17th quarter of Rome, identified by the initials Q. XVII.
The toponym also indicates the Urban Zone 2E of the Municipio II of Rome.
The eastern area of the quarter is known as the African Quarter, due to the presence of odonyms relating to the colonies of the Kingdom of Italy.

Geography

The quarter is located in the north-central area of the city.
It borders:

The territory before the urbanization

The first evidence of human presence in the quarter dates back to prehistoric times, when some populations settled in the area of the so-called Sedia del Diavolo and of Monte delle Gioie.
Later, in historical times, a Sabine settlement rose on the Mount Antenne, the remains of which are still visible today; according to the legend, Antemnae was one of the three villages that underwent the famous rape of the Sabine women.
Just few remains survive from the archaic and republican ages, while the area became very popular following the construction of several catacombs, such as the ancient catacomb of Priscilla, built on the villa of the gens Acilia.
Furthermore, the area is crossed by a section of the Via Salaria, a consular road of enormous importance that connected Rome to Porto d'Ascoli, so called for the trade of salt. Nonetheless, the modern road of the same name follows the route of the Salaria Nova, built under the Emperor Nerva.
In the years following the Edict of Milan, a monumental basilica dedicated to St. Agnes, whose family villa rose in Via Nomentana, was built. Next to it, the empress Constantina had her mausoleum built in the second half of the century. Due to its large size, the basilica soon decayed, so as to induce Pope Honorius I to commission the current Byzantine-style basilica. Around these two monuments, during the Middle Ages and at the beginning of the Renaissance, the complex of the Canons Regular of the Lateran was built.
During the Renaissance and the following centuries, the area of the quarter housed only a few noble villas and rustic buildings ; in one of these, on the Via Nomentana, Giuseppe Garibaldi lived at the time of the Roman Republic.

Urbanization and birth of the quarter

Following the Italian unification, the area of Mount Antenne was fortified with large bastions, moats and with an imposing powder keg, since its position was particularly suitable for defending the northern side of the city. Its slopes house since 1906 the seat of the Parioli Tennis Club, still active today and famous for having raised numerous champions.
The first urbanization of the territory took place with the urban plan issued in 1909 by the architect Edmondo Sanjust di Teulada, but the quarter was officially born only in 1926 with the name Savoia, from the nearby royal residence ; the event is commemorated by a plaque today in Via Topino, near Piazza Verbano.
In the first thirty years of the century the area maintained its destination for quality, or even luxury, residential buildings: it is the period of the "villini" and the Quartiere Coppedè.
The intensive urbanization begins in the 1930s. Large, often pretentious condominiums were built on the areas of villas which had been parceled out for this purpose, such as Villa Lancellotti and Villa Chigi : housing for civil servants or buildings granted to cooperatives.
Between 1924 and 1930, with the aim of providing a green lung to an intensively built neighborhood, the architect Raffaele De Vico built the Parco Virgiliano, which was inaugurated in 1936 on the occasion of the Virgilian bimillennium.
Following the birth of the Republic, in 1946 the quarter took on its current name from its main street.
In the 1970s the area was the subject of a new building speculation, which caused the demolition of Tor Fiorenza, a 16th-century fortified farm where anemic children were brought to drink the fresh milk.
The northern part of the quarter, from Piazza Annibaliano to the Rome-Florence railway, is commonly called African quarter, due to its odonomastic inspired by the African colonies of the Kingdom of Italy.
The original nucleus of this "sub-quarter", originally intended for the families of the railway workers, was built in the early 1920s, forming a quadrilateral in the area adjacent to Via Tripoli. Within this quadrilateral, Via Tobruk, Via Derna, Via Cirenaica and Piazza Misurata were also marked out, as well as Via Benadir and Via Migiurtinia outside its perimeter.
These streets were added to Via Asmara and Via Massaua, side streets of Via Nomentana, which had been created shortly before to connect Villa Anziani.
After World War II, the railway workers' quarter, which consisted of some forty buildings, was completely demolished. As evidence of its past presence, part of the road system remains – with the exception of Via Tobruk, Piazza Misurata and Via Derna, which have been deleted – and well as some buildings, favoured villas and more popular palaces, on Via Beandir, Via Homs, Via Tripolitania, Via Cirenaica and Via Migiurtinia.
In the old quarter Pietro Germi shooted A Man of Straw in 1958, while all around, along the axis Viale Eritrea-Viale Libia, the African quarter was being created as it appears today.
A school building, some edifices of the Italian State Railways, a parking lot and two residential buildings were built in place of the quarter of the railway workers.

Lesser history

In those same years, in the clashes between opposing political factions, two young right-wing militants of the organization Fronte della Gioventù also died: Francesco Cecchin, aged just seventeen, who died on 16 June 1979 following an attack near Piazza Vescovio, and Paolo Di Nella, who died on 9 February 1983, after falling into an irreversible coma due to a beatdown near Piazza Gondar.

Civil buildings

Quartiere Coppedè

In an area adjacent to Piazza Buenos Aires there is the Quartiere Coppedè, a small district built in Liberty-eclectic style, designed by the architect Gino Coppedè.
The gate of Piazza Mincio 2, dating back to 1926 and the last work by the master's hand, is an exact replica of a scenery for the 1914 movie Cabiria.

Villa Albani

, also called Albani-Torlonia, which stretches between Via Salaria and Viale Regina Margherita, has been for 50 years the center of European culture, a compulsory stop for the most important travelers and the driving force of cultural phenomena such as Neoclassicism and Archaeology understood as History of Art.
The villa was built in the mid-18th century by Cardinal Alessandro Albani – the nephew of Pope Clement XI, a refined connoisseur of antiquity and protector of artists, including Anton Raphael Mengs – to keep his collections of ancient art, chosen on the advice of Johann Joachim Winckelmann. Thus were born the "Laboratory of Neoclassicism", in which Piranesi also operated, and an "Art Gallery", for centuries inaccessible, which houses works by Niccolò da Foligno, Perugino, Gherardo delle Notti, Van Dyck, Tintoretto, Ribera, Guercino, Giulio Romano, Luca Giordano, David, Vanvitelli.

Religious buildings

Over the years the quarter was often the setting for many Italian movies.
De Sica used the shacks on the river Aniene as the set of the movie The roof in 1955.
Pietro Germi set his 1958 movie A Man of Straw among the buildings, later demolished, of the railway workers' quarter.
Also in the 1950s, the scene of the chase between Aldo Fabrizi and Totò in Cops and Robbers begins at the end of Viale Somalia and continues on a hill where the future Via Olimpica was built.
In 1953, the house of the protagonist of La valigia dei sogni by Luigi Comencini is located in the complex of the railway workers' buildings in Via Mancinelli
The quarter is also the location of the movie The Sign of Venus, with Alberto Sordi and Sophia Loren, which shows its aspect in the 1950s.
Some scenes from Big Deal on Madonna Street are set in the area. Carla Gravina meets her boyfriend in front of the barracks "Bianchi", right on the railway bridge: in the background you can see the first buildings on Viale Etiopia, while all around there is only countryside.
In the opening scenes of the movie Audace colpo dei soliti ignoti, Vittorio Gassman enters a door in Via Dora in the Quartiere Coppedè, while during the movie he walks along Viale Etiopia still under construction.
A breef shot in Be Sick... It's Free, with Alberto Sordi, shows Viale Libia near the UPIM department store.
The same UPIM store in 1960 is the workplace of the three protagonists of Caccia al marito with Sandra Mondaini, while in We All Loved Each Other So Much by Ettore Scola, Piazza Caprera is used to mark a change of time.
Scola himself 20 years later will set his Mario, Maria and Mario, with Giulio Scarpati, in the historic headquarters of the PCI in Via Sebino.
Due to its peculiar architecture, the Quartiere Coppedè was chosen by the director Dario Argento, residing in the quarter Trieste, as the background for some scenes of his movies The Bird with the Crystal Plumage and Inferno.
Among all the sequences, one of the most moving images is the vision of a totally deserted Via Nomentana in the 1941 small masterpiece of De Sica Teresa Venerdì, set in the streets of the quarter.
In more recent times, the public high school "Giulio Cesare" has been the backdrop for the fiction Piper and the movie Scusa ma ti chiamo amore by Federico Moccia.

Anthropic geography

Urban planning

The territory of the quarter coincides with the homonymous urban zone 2E and with the western part of the urban zone 2D Salario.

Odonyms

;Italian lakes and rivers
One of the main streets of the quarter is Via Nemorense, which takes its name from the Lake Nemi.
Many streets near it bear the name of important Italian lakes:
Other strees bear the name of Italian rivers:
;Italian colonies in Africa
The part of the quarter commonly called "Quartiere Africano" is hinged on 4 avenues, bearing the names of the four Italian colonies in Africa, surrounded by streets named after cities and historical regions of the colonies themselves.
;Eritrea
;Etiopia
;Libya
;Somalia
;Toponyms of the Sabina
Piazza Vescovio takes its name from the homonymous ancient locality in the municipality of Torri in Sabina, in the Province of Rieti.
Although the correct accentuation is Vescovìo, there is a widespread tendency to pronounce the toponym as Vescòvio due to an incorrect phonetic interpretation.
In the vicinity of the square, many streets recall toponyms of municipalities or valleys of the Sabina:
;Italian irredentism
Several streets are dedicated to geographic areas inhabited, in whole or in part, currently or in the past, by Italians, but which have never politically joined the Italian state ; or, on the contrary, which have passed to the Kingdom of Italy after the victory over the Austro-Hungarian Empire in the World War I :
;Italian opera composers and madrigalists
In the vicinity of Viale Somalia there is a group of streets whose names are a tribute to Italian opera composers – Arrigo Boito, Niccolò Piccinni, Pietro Mascagni, Alessandro Vessella – or madrigalists – Felice Anerio.
;References to the monuments in the quarter
Piazza Annibaliano takes its name from the husband of the empress Constantina, whose mausoleum stands a few meters away.
Via di Priscilla and Via di Novella are located near the Catacomb of Priscilla.
The square surrounding the so-called Sedia del Diavolo bears the name of Elius Callistius, the freedman of Hadrian to whom the sepulchral monument was erected.

Sport

In 2014 it was the scene of a scandal related to the bankruptcy of the company that managed it, which caused its impromptu closure. Following this event, the facility remained closed for over a year, until it was reopened by a new company in late 2015.
Today the facility has returned to its former grace with the name of Somalia Sport Club and represents a point of reference for indoor sport throughout the northern quadrant of the town.