Rome Is No Longer What It Used To Be…But Has It Ever Been?
Statistics on organized crime and hordes of unaware tourists make me no longer recognize the Italian capital
Dear readers, today I share with you a reflection on my brief, yet highly evocative visit to Rome before leaving for the States earlier this year. If you had experiences in Rome you want to tell or know something about the Italian capital I might not know, leave a comment or send me your thoughts via email 📬
I’ve never felt like this when going to the Italian capital. This sense of inadequacy, to be surrounded by misery at every corner and corruption.
“Maybe I was ignoring it all and just focusing on its helpless fascination when I lived here in 2017 for a semester and during subsequent visits?” I ponder as I exit the Roma Termini station and start heading to a coffee shop for breakfast — of course, a croissant and cappuccino.
I need to head to the American embassy later on to get my visa approved to go to the US. To do so, I’ll cross a big chunk of the city center by foot.
I can’t get out of my mind the stats I recently heard on an Italian investigative journalism program (the last bastion of seriousness in an otherwise trash-populated TV):
80%, perhaps 90% of business activities in Rome are in the hands of mafia.
80, 90%.
There is a chance that I had breakfast in one of their bars, and very likely later on, I will have lunch in another one too.
Businesses of any type are utilized by various Italian mafia clans, as well as by clans of Albanian nationality, as a means for laundering money from their extensive drug dealing operations, which is spread throughout the entire capital.
These are likely things tourists are not aware of (and I don’t blame them for this).
Whenever I go to the US, I receive questions along the lines of:
“So, does the mafia exist?”
“Where is the mafia in Italy?”
My answer?
Mafia is everywhere: from the bakery where you buy your bread to the company or state entity entitled to pick up and dispose of the trash in front of your house, to the apartment buildings where you might live or the hotel where you might stay, to the politicians you vote for. With a high likelihood, the mafia is also in your own country, considering that it spread its power especially in Europe, Australia and the Americas.
A type of mafia called ‘Ndrangheta (originating in the Calabria region) makes in a year more than McDonald’s and Deutsche Bank.
Everyone usually looks at me so confused. They expect me to say something about Sicily, the Godfather, and some dark, smoky basements, I suppose.
After the appointment, it takes me ages to choose a place where the food looks decent and doesn’t cost a fortune.
No, I’m not going to eat pasta with frozen and shipped seafood from China in front of a trafficked and loud corner, even if it’s ‘patio style.’ And no, I refuse to spend 18€ for a plate of something that, in Italy, is as staple as drinking water.
Related to the former, I’m neither mad at nor superior to foreign tourists; I understand the desire to replicate the fascination of a romantic Italian vacation, the wish to fulfill the expectations we have in our minds. We all fall into this mechanism from time to time.
Related to the latter, it simply drives me crazy to be unable to find a restaurant that costs less than that. I get it’s the city center, but it’s staggering how Rome has been transformed into a hub for mostly American tourists.
These are prices a local would never pay or would pay with sacrifice and ‘mangiandosi le mani,’ literally ‘eating one’s hands’ — an Italian expression that stands for regret over something.
Right and left, I notice signs advertising:
‘Scrambled eggs for breakfast.’
Whaaaat? An Italian would likely feel nauseous at the smell of eggs for breakfast. Bars like this transformed for the American palate.
‘We have bagels.’
OMG, the American friend who once went to Rome and texted me that she had eaten the best bagel of her life comes to my mind as a puzzling vision.
In a bar: ‘cappuccino: 1.50 (OK, Italian prices), caffè americano: 2.50 (literally an espresso with water)’— again, American prices.
There seems to be no escape.
At last, tired of walking, my dad picks a random restaurant.
We don’t seem to be able to get it out of our minds: the stats of the 80, 90% of entrepreneurial businesses in the hands of mafia.
With that notion in my mind, everything I see seems beyond weird to me: the waiter and waitress appear as Abercrombie models, to say the least. She is a tall blonde woman with blue eyes and a warm smile, posted at the entrance to greet and captivate customers. He’s the perfect Italian stereotype of a good-looking man, with brown hair, green eyes, wearing a tuxedo that I would reserve for wedding events rather than waiting tables.
We order a plate of gricia (a pasta dish originating from Lazio — Rome’s region — consisting of pasta, pecorino romano, black pepper, and guanciale) and a cacio e pepe (cheese and pepper pasta.)
Much to our disappointment, though not so unexpectedly, the plates of pasta turn out to be unbearably salty. My dad can’t even make it halfway through his plate, whereas I eat it all because, after all the walking, I’m starving, and not even the salt seems able to stop me.
We opt not to say anything to the kitchen. With the stats in our minds, we only look forward to getting out of the city.
We head back to the train station and come across another shocking scene…
Some cops have stopped two people to check their documents, and a third one, visibly high on some substance, shouts to the cops, making fun of them, from a few meters away:
‘Bros! Why on earth would you stop them in the middle of the street. You’re causing traffic!’
My dad and I look at each other. We only missed hearing someone calling the cops ‘bros!’ we think.
On my way back, I ponder whether Rome has always been like that.
As for the awareness on the mafia monopoly, I wonder:
‘Perhaps I was naive? Perhaps I didn’t pay attention?’
But the aforementioned TV program I watched reveals that this has been a problem perpetuating for decades. Businesses are often confiscated by the police, justice takes its course, and at the end of the whole process, the same places might fall back into the hands of the same owners.
The Covid-19 pandemic only exacerbated the problem, and over the years, the mafia developed even more sophisticated ways to pay back the cartels in Latin America for the drug supplies without actually moving a cent between the continents.
As for the city completely changing to accommodate tourist tastes, again, it’s hard to say.
When you live in the city, you don’t go for dinner close to the Trevi Fountain or the Colosseum, and as a result, you have no idea of the standards there. This time, though, I only had a couple of hours to run my chores and have a meal before heading back to the train station, and what I saw was a city center barely recognizable from any other capital.
📩Questions for you, dear reader:
Did anything surprise you from this article?
Were you already aware of some of these facts?
Have you been to Rome, and if so, what was your experience?
OR
If you enjoyed this letter,
That’s all from me this week. Have a good rest of your weekend!
Caterina
That’s wild. I haven’t heard that stat. Though I’m very familiar with the mafia tales. It’s really sad.
So interesting and a little scarry. My husband is going to Rome in a few weeks, but he goes to vegan and vegetarian restaurants. I wonder if they have also been taken over by mafia?
As for the bagels, there's a chance they might be from a little business called, Beehive bagels, owned by a couple from the east coast USA. Hence, why they are so delicious and authentic. If it's them, the couple have been in Rome for decades but only started the bagel business during the pandemic.