In the luxurious Hassler Hotel at the top of the Spanish Steps, Rome’s fabled dolce vita is alive and well.
“There is an aesthetic of beauty and balance here that is not subject to the fluctuations around us,” said owner Roberto Wirth, referring to the financial crisis now imperiling economies around the world.
Down the steps and along the Via del Babuino, art and antiques dealer Romolo Brandimarte proudly pointed to a Roman sarcophagus on display worth more than 500,000 euros (US$685,400).
“Our customers, who are often industrialists, haven’t gone away,” he said.
A little further down, at the Hotel De Russie, where limos were lined up to take stars such as Hollywood actor Richard Gere off to the red carpet at the Rome film festival, it was the same story.
“We are an oasis; we are not suffering,” a spokeswoman said, adding that the 11,000 euro a night rooftop suite was always fully booked.
However, on Friday the expensive peace and quiet to be found in the De Russie’s private garden were spoiled by the jarring sound of a rant echoing across Rome’s rooftops.
Anyone looking down from the huge terrace of the rooftop suite would have seen thousands of furious pensioners in the streets, protesting about the way la dolce vita — the sweet life — has turned very sour.
Marching into the nearby Piazza del Popolo for a rally, waving flags and clutching sandwiches wrapped in foil, the pensioners were furious at Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi’s plan to whittle away at pension rights to help reduce Italy’s staggering 1.8 trillion euro debt and please the markets, which have seized on Italy as the next weak link in Europe after Greece.
“I get 1,100 euros a month, and like 80 percent of the protesters here today, I use it to support my son who is on a temporary contract,” said Ruben Cocci, 66, a former textiles worker from the Tuscan town of Prato.
Increasing the pension age from 65 to 67 was one of the measures offered last week by Berlusconi to placate European leaders worried that Italy is not doing enough to help save the eurozone.
Also contained in the last minute “letter of intent” the prime minister took to Brussels were measures to liberalize Italy’s closed shop and ease red tape to free the economy, which is expected to grow by just 0.3 percent next year, a full point lower than it predicted in June.
With 8 million Italians now officially living in poverty, EU commissioners are expected to keep a close eye on whether the scandal-hit prime minister can deliver.
Berlusconi neatly sidestepped the question of Italy’s so-called length-of-service pensions, which are calculated on the basis of years worked, and often lead to early retirements, a practice fiercely defended by his coalition partner, the Northern League — no surprise given the number of early retirees in northern Italy.
“I may have retired at 52, but I started work at 14, like many people back then,” said Wanda Da Ros, a retired shoemaker who had traveled down from Treviso for the rally. “I get 650 euros a month, which supports my family — so please tell the world we are not greedy.”
Moving off down Via del Babuino, past the Tiffany jewelery store and toward the rally, Da Ros navigated between local ladies with poodles and a beggar praying in the gutter in front of a collecting tin.
Further down the street, pensioner and protester Franco Staderini, 67, was calling for tax rises, not pension cuts.
“The generation that lived the dolce vita is prepared to make sacrifices, but you need to start with the rich,” he said.
Staderini stopped for an espresso at Il Baretto, the unassuming bar on Via del Babuino, which is famous for helping spark the dolce vita phenomenon in the early 1950s when it became a magnet for poets, artists renting studios in nearby Via Margutta and aristocrats trying to pick up girls.
After director Federico Fellini used the phrase as the title for his 1960 film documenting Rome’s era of film stars and paparazzi, la dolce vita came to define Italy’s boom years in the 1960s, when cheap housing drew Sicilians and Calabrians to the north to staff the new factories turning out products such as the Fiat 500, which would make motoring accessible to all.
However, as the economy boomed, few paid attention to the growth of tax evasion, illegal building and corruption in public contracting until the Clean Hands investigations of the early 1990s dismantled an entire political class. And recently published police wiretaps exposing a host of sleazy advisers surrounding Berlusconi have convinced Italians that not even Clean Hands was enough to cleanse Italian business and politics.
Romans got a sharp reminder this month of how corrupt practices could ruin their lives when heavy rains flooded large areas of the capital, an event promptly blamed by Rome Mayor Gianni Alemanno on unscrupulous developers who have built illegally over the years without installing proper drainage.
The flooding was worse in Rome’s drab suburbs, which are as ugly as the historic center of town is beautiful and where the crisis has driven scores of local shops out of business.
Locals were offered distraction from the downturn by their annual film festival, complete with a reminder of the good old days as the city’s most powerful politicians flocked to a party for 600 laid on at Trajan’s Market, the Roman archeological site, to celebrate the launch of Luc Besson’s new film The Lady.
However, cash-strapped Romans were more interested in the opening of a new electronics store in a modern shopping center in the suburbs, where the promise of huge discounts drew a crowd of 8,000 desperate bargain-hunters who brought traffic to a standstill, broke windows and fought each other for the chance to buy a 99 euro flat-screen TV.
“What are they giving away? Free bread?” asked an elderly woman watching the mob.
When the film festival got under way, members of a neo-fascist group were wrestled to the ground by police when they tried to protest on the red carpet against government cuts.
The crisis is even being felt on Via Veneto, where the stars promenaded in the 1950s when in town to film at the Cinecitta studios.
“People who order first and second courses, dessert and champagne are a mirage today,” said Pietro Lepore, owner of the legendary Harry’s Bar. “These days you need to increase volumes.”
Outside the Hassler Hotel, one street artist said even the hotel’s flush patrons were feeling the pinch.
“They stay there for the status, but when they want one of my watercolors they needle me for a 10 percent discount,” she said.
On the Spanish Steps, Franco Germini was working the crowd dressed as a Roman centurion in a cloak, helmet and leather tunic, offering to be photographed by tourists for money.
“I started doing this six years ago after I had to close my clothes store, and the money is terrible right now,” he said.
“I give the pensioners who are protesting my full support,” he added. “After all, one day I will be a retired centurion.”
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