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The
year 1870
by Mauro Scarpati - © Nerone The Insider's Guide to Rome
proofreading by Jennifer Clark
1870 is the crucial year in the modern history of Rome: 20 in september of that year the italian army, after a five hours long skirmish, entered into the city, giving an end to the 15 hundred years of the Church' political control onto the former "Mother of the Empire".
In the years before the conquest of Rome there were two main viewpoints among the italian generals: the Garibaldi and his "red shirts" one, pressing for the necessity to enter in Rome at all costs; and the more political vision of the general Cadorna, looking for a political agreement with the Pope and his "free" abandonment of the political power; despite the greater popularity of Garibaldi, and his two unsuccessful attempts to enter with his own faithful army in the Holy City in 1862 and 1867, the Cadorna strategy prevailed.
More than a real battle, the "Battle of Porta Pia", as that date is traditionally known, has been a sort of theatral rappresentation: the Vatican armies could not simply let enter the Italians, so they had to try to resist a little, but the political situation was all about the riunification of Roma to the new-born Italian Kingdom. The low number of deaths, around twenty in both the armies, is a proof that the Vatican armies scarcely tried to defend the Holy City.
As a matter of fact, lot of signals preceded the entrance of the Italians thru Porta Pia, one of the Mura Aureliane historic doors: since the 1860, when Italy had been founded, it was hardly believable that the new monarchy could do without the most important city on the Italian territory, not only because of its millenary history, but also because the presence of an opposite power as the pope's one was too a limitation in the sovereignty of the new nation and in its political freedom.
As a proof that the situation was coming to a head, the day before, 19 in september, the Pope decided to go for a walk in the city center, up to the Ara Coeli on Campidoglio hill, and then from there up to the roman walls; as a matter of fact, that one has been the farewell to the city he owned for fifteen hundred years. Oddly this one pope, Pio IX, the last "papa re" ( "the Pope King", as the Pope was called by the roman common people in the XIX century), is the last longer Pope so far, reigning him for 32 years!
Rome was, in that year, likely at the lowest step of his long long life, resting in a sort of lethargy after the revolutionary days of the Republican movement in 1848-1849; living for centuries at the brink of the civil european life, the city, reading in the memories written by the foreign tourists of the XIX century, was a sort of a country village, out of the news, indulging in its dusty old glory; so you could imagine how the political changement woke up the city as a breathe of fresh new air: improvised Italian flag apparead in every window, in every street the citizens went out to hug their liberators; and the plebiscite in 2 in october, conferming the annexation of the papal territories to Italy, knew a crushing victory, with 40.785 positive votes and only 46 negative, around 0,1%!
Too bad, as often happens in the "real life", before of the architects, the artists, the politicians as well, the speculators first entered in the new conquered city, conditioning the develop of the city, getting rich with the sale of the building sites where the new neighbourhoods had to be built. That's the reason of the chaotic develop of Rome in the last 130 years, in the lack of a real town-planning scheme, a situation we are still trying to solve; but that's another story we will tell you, soon or later.
That year remained in the roman memory even for the last impressive flood of the Tiber, in the last days of december; nowadays in Piazza Navona is still possible to see an iscription recording the level touched by the water; considering the destruction, the architects started to project the massive walls, the muraglioni, to divide the city from its river; and for us it's a sort of melancholy to see the river running down there, twenty meters below the street level, forgotten by all, out of its central meaning in the roman destiny.
Some suggestions:
Porta Pia, in Via XX Settembre, a roman city door repaired by Michelangelo in the XVI century.
The iscription about the flood in december 1870, in Piazza Navona, on the wall of the Palazzo Doria-Pamphili, nowadays seat of the Brasilian Embassy.
The Museo Garibaldino, inside Porta San Pancrazio, in Largo di Porta San Pancrazio, with witnesses of the Garibaldi "red shirts" army and relics of the "Two worlds hero", as Garibaldi was called after his militar campaigns in South America.
The Museum opens every tuesday and thursday from 9 to 12. |
