IMAGINATION
TRULLO
The Trullo neighbourhood on via Portuense is a suburb built under the Fascist regime, starting in 1938, southwest of the capital, completely isolated from the rest of the city. Even now that the city has expanded, and residential areas like the Corviale and Casetta Mattei have been created, the Trullo seems to belong to a world unto itself. The buildings have a rationalist tendency, they are low with modular homes: every element represents the most rigorous and geometrical essentiality. The public housing that runs along via del Trullo is a world apart, enclosed between the Monte delle Capre and Montecucco.
The three-storey buildings are coloured with murals and poetry. A strong narrative, which from images and words expands to music, painting and cinema. The internal streets that run between the buildings that are parallel to the axis of via del Trullo lead to large courtyards with distinctive social functions, where the washing is hung, and people play football or stop to chat. Nearby, there’s the parish with its oratory, the San Raffaele theatre, the local market. A town where everyone knows each other, fairly self-sufficient.
It is a periphery, both mentally and physically: here, periphery is a feeling of being part of a place unto itself. Ilaria says that she lived a happy childhood in this neighbourhood: “Generations and generations have played in this place, and continue to play, always in different ways, in these spaces”, always stimulating the imagination! Because, as Rodari, who frequented these places, reminds us, “If we had a fantastic in the manner we have a logic, the art of invention would have been – invented.”