Ludovico Quaroni , Roma 1968, 2021

There are many apparently contradictory black and white images of Rome that Ludovico Quaroni has collected around the eternal city. Baroque coexists with shacks, the explosion of consumer society – the Italy of the economic boom – does not erase the traces of a city that seems to have come straight out of a Vittorio De Sica or Roberto Rossellini film. And then the fountains of Rome and the banks of the Tiber, Franco Albini’s Rinascente and Castel Sant’Angelo, EUR and the Vatican, right up to the market in Piazza Vittorio and the Appia Antica. Layers of civilisations that intertwine, and in between the people of Rome, seemingly indifferent to the passing of the centuries. The architect’s eye gives life to an unprecedented and surprising book that can also be considered – this is the red thread – an act of love towards the city that gave him birth. A text by the writer Francesco Pecoraro, a student of Quaroni, pays homage to the great architect’s Rome.