A long view from the balcony. Pigneto, Rome, Part 1, 2020- 2025
First 6 photos: The dismantling of the Circonvallazione Casilina Bus Stop. January 2020.
In 2019 I left Stockholm where I had been working for the last few years and took up permanent residence in Rome. I found an apartment in Pigneto, an old working class neighborhood on the South side of the capital. For me it was a smart move, my family and friends live in this neighborhood, and I like the fact that there are still few tourists around. My neighbors are an interesting mix of social activists, theater people, and creative unconventional types. Pigneto is particularly famous for a couple postwar films that were shot here including Roberto Rossellini and Pier Paolo Pasolini.
February 2025
February 2025
March 2025
March 2025
I had a bus stop with a covered shelter just in front of my building across the street from me. Cars parked on either side of the street. But I guess the biggest landscape feature was the broad and submerged rail trench running parallel to my street with four sets of tracks, used by both commuter and freight lines. The commuter trains ran all day, while the slower cargo trains ran all night.
An over grown slope led down from the retaining wall on my side down to the tracks, while directly on the other side of the rail trench stood a massive retaining wall, looking almost like a medieval fortification. Behind this wall was another street much like mine, but instead of small apartment houses lined up one next to the other there was one immense fascist era residential building, built for railway employees.
April 2025
April 2025
June 2025
July_2025
August 2025
So there is plenty of noise and lots of moving objects to contemplate: the cars racing by, bus engines winding to a halt, the constant rolling of trains and the peculiar beat of pedestrian traffic.
But it wasn’t long after I moved in that I began to notice strange occurrences on my street. Little things at first, but by the winter of 2020 there were indeed transformations taking place. I began to note obvious signs of construction activity in the couple blocks around my house. First it looked like only small adjustments. Then my bus stop closed one day and was dismantled, another day the direction of a street changed.
