Romans greeted with joy the return of the traditional white-gloved traffic police officer, who rises from a podium in Piazza Venezia to elegantly direct the vehicles coming from three directions around them. They have welcomed a break from the past after Cristina Corbucci, the first female traffic controller to stand on the platform, made her debut this week.
“I think it’s fantastic, and it’s about time,” Giuliana Cazzarolli said as she watched the officers switch shifts on Thursday. “I hope she’s well paid.”
Cazzarolli described the return of the fabled vigili (“watchful”), who are as much a symbol of the Italian capital as the Colosseum, as “a reminder of the beautiful times.”
The platform was first introduced in the late 1920s as a way to make the traffic controllers more visible while directing traffic on what is ordinarily a chaotic square.
At that time, the pedestal was made of wood and carried to the square by the officers at the start of their shift.
Nowadays, the podium rises up and down from the cobblestones at the flick of a switch. It was dormant for a year or so while nearby roadworks were carried out.
Often described as “orchestra directors,” the traffic officers were made famous by the 1960 film The Traffic Policeman, which starred Italian comedy star Alberto Sordi as a hapless traffic cop who caused mayhem with his muddled hand signals.
The podium also featured in a scene in US director Woody Allen’s To Rome With Love in 2012.
Today, about six or seven traffic police officer take to the podium in shifts.
Corbucci, 43, told the Il Messaggero newspaper that the job now has “the female touch.”
“Up there you really feel as if you are in the center of the center of Rome,” she said, adding that “the truly intelligent traffic light is this one.”
To get the role, officers have to take lessons in gestures by traffic officer Fabio Grillo, who has been up and down on the podium since 2004.
“It’s a wonderful job,” he said. “I mean look — we’re in the middle of this fantastic square which is a crossroads for Romans, tourists, everyone. You see everything.”
Even though there is less traffic to conduct amid COVID-19 restrictions, Grillo said that it is great to be back.
“It’s as if some normality has returned,” he said.
Cazzarolli and her husband, Romalo, were born in Rome. Both are in their 80s.
“It gives us joy to see this and reminds me of how it used to be,” Romalo said.
Another onlooker, Micaela Battistoni, who was also born in Rome, said that the novelty of the Piazza Venezia traffic officer never wears off.
“It really is a classic institution in Rome, something that has always been there, and so the absence was strange,” she said. “It’s even better now that there is also woman is doing the job.”
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