CLOSED ON MONDAY - The Roman Barber Shops
written by Sergio Caggìa for © Nerone the Insider's Guide to Rome

 

I don't know why my best ideas come to me while I'm in the shower. I've said to my publisher that if I will ever have a office it must have a shower! It happened one morning as I was writing this month's Nerone that I finally realized why every time I think of having a haircut it happens on a Monday when the Roman barber-shops are closed. "Statistics!" I thought, "...where is the soap??" It may, in fact, only occur just four or five times a year that I think about it. Considering that they are closed not just on Mondays but on Sundays as well (2 days out of 7) it means that every time I think of it there is about 30% probability that it happens on their closing day! Thus is solved this annual problem (concerning me at least!) Let's see what it was the fashion among our ancestors. Of course fashions of wearing a beard and hairstyles have undergone many changes, but an observation can be made concerning the Romans. The first Romans until the time of the first Punic War used to let their beards grow (III cent. B.C.) Sicilian barbers then moved onto the peninsula and opened their shops. Later when the emperor Adrian let his beard grow to conceal a facial deformity, the fashion changed again. Then people started to shave only at the age of 40 because of the white hair. That's why among the Romans of that time the beard was associated with youth. Later, barbers extended their skills to surgery. Thus their colorful signs in twisting read and white (and sometime blue too in relation of the appearance of the veins) still recall the blood and the bandages of these first operations.