They constructed it, and other people got here.
Teenage boys, largely, from Roma Nord, Ostia, Prenestina, Monterotondo and different suburbs, trekking to Rome’s metropolis heart, boards in hand, to heelflip and airwalk and boardslide among the many obstacles of a brand new skatepark, which opened to the general public simply earlier than Christmas.
“We had been determined; we didn’t have something,” stated Lorenzo Ficini, 27, a advertising and marketing specialist and skateboarder who, as if on cue, approached a reporter to say that he needed to thank the town for the skatepark. An unprompted public relations triumph.
“For us, it’s a dream come true — the construction is nice. After which,” Mr. Ficini stated, nodding his head southward, the place the higher arches of the Colosseum emerged above a row of timber. “You’ve received this. It’s marvelous.”
The skatepark — perched on the Oppian Hill, as this space overlooking the first-century amphitheater has been recognized since historical occasions — is openly praised by Rome metropolis officers because the skatepark with the perfect view on the earth.
“Discuss a photograph alternative,” stated Alessandro Onorato, the Rome Metropolis Council member chargeable for tourism and occasions.
The distinctive location, he stated, helped persuade World Skate, the governing physique of all sports activities on skating wheels, that it ought to maintain a road skateboarding competitors in Rome final summer season. The occasion drew a whole bunch of high athletes from around the globe, and the state-of-the-art park constructed for the competitors was left behind for Romans to take pleasure in.
“It reveals how a one-off occasion can have a long-lasting impression on a metropolis,” Mr. Onorato stated.
On a current afternoon, the regular “thump, thump” of skate boarders sticking their landings crammed the air, together with an occasional, “Whoop!”
“It’s a giant deal for us,” stated Papik Rossi, 49, a fixture on the Rome skateboarding circuit. “We by no means had a center-scene skatepark.”
He fell in love with skateboarding after watching the 1985 traditional movie “Again to the Future,” he stated, and, reducing his voice, he added, “They’ll deny it, however half the individuals I do know began for a similar purpose.”
The brand new park is “good for brand new skaters,” he stated, however he nonetheless prefers the streets.
When Mr. Rossi started skateboarding within the Nineteen Eighties, virtually the entire metropolis’s skaters had been on a first-name foundation. Ugo Bertolucci, 49, was additionally part of that early scene. Then, Mr. Bertolucci stated, skate boarders had been thought-about “extraterrestrials,” freaks in a nation the place soccer was king. “Now, it’s an Olympic sport,” he shrugged.
Mr. Bertolucci recalled that, earlier than the web, it was more durable to study new tips. Again then, skate boarders like himself would watch VHS tapes of their counterparts in the US — the birthplace of skateboarding — “over and over, till they had been worn by means of.”
Studying by doing, falls had been inevitable. Right this moment, a extra formal kind of schooling comes from the various skateboarding faculties which have sprung up amid the game’s rising recognition. These classes forestall many accidents, stated Mr. Bertolucci, who now builds skateparks in northern Italy, the place skateboarding is extra frequent.
“Again then,” he stated, “you needed to be powerful.”
And you need to be prepared to danger fines as a result of skateboarding is banned on Rome’s streets. The popular haunts for the rebels: the Foro Italico, the location of the Olympic stadium, and the outlying EUR neighborhood. Each are Fascist-era areas dense with travertine stone of assorted geometric shapes and expanses — a skateboarder’s dream.
That dream has now shifted to an space that till just a few months in the past created nightmares for Mr. Onorato, the town councilor.
When Rome’s center-left administration got here into energy in October 2021, the realm the place the skatepark now stands was plagued by syringes and run down, its benches defaced and damaged.
A extra modest skatepark that was there was repeatedly vandalized after which closed after a younger boy damage himself on a “deteriorated observe,” a metropolis spokesman stated. Native newspapers chronicled the location’s deterioration, photographic indictments displaying piles of garbage and broken ramps.
“Have you learnt what my greatest nightmare was?” Mr. Onorato requested in a phone interview. “That 9 months in the past, a international correspondent would have visited the realm as a result of they’d have written an exposé saying that 200 meters from the Colosseum was an space of drug offers and drug customers.”
“That is not the case,” he stated.
The brand new skatepark is a component of a bigger playground, and the challenge, which price about 200,000 euros, or about $210,000, to construct, will embrace a small soccer pitch, a volleyball courtroom, a spot with health machines and an space dealing with the Colosseum with checker and chess boards. “Identical to Central Park,” Mr. Onorato stated.
And vandalism, Italian officers say, might be a factor of the previous. Earlier than, Mr. Onorato stated, surveillance was slipshod, and the realm had been left largely to itself. Now, upkeep and safety of the skatepark has been entrusted to Sport e Salute (Sport and Well being), an organization owned by the Ministry of Economic system that manages main sporting occasions and promotes sports activities and well-being.
“We’re used to taking care of sporting areas, and we’ll be capable to do the identical for the playground on the Oppian Hill,” stated Vito Cozzoli, the president and chief govt of Sport e Salute. “We additionally spoke to the skaters, who’re the principle customers, and so they’re going to assist us take care of the realm, conscious additionally of privilege of getting at their disposal a park with a view of the Colosseum.”
“It’s in everybody’s curiosity that the park be cared for,” he stated.
It’s nonetheless early to inform how the challenge will pan out, however officers are optimistic. They are saying that the skatepark is a method to mud off Rome’s musty picture, which carries the burden of its historical past.
“We need to communicate to younger individuals with a contemporary language,” Mr. Cozzoli stated, “and the park unites the message of the classical previous with the trendy message of skateboarding.”
The skatepark can be assembly a rising demand within the metropolis, the place skateboarding’s recognition has risen because the sport was featured just a few years in the past within the Tokyo Olympics, stated Marla Ascone, 44, who, together with her husband, Nicolò Mattia Cimini, 43, owns and manages a personal skatepark in Rome. “These days, once we exit, we frequently come throughout skaters we don’t know,” she stated. “Earlier than, you knew all people.”
As nightfall fell, the skate boarders took their final rides. One in every of them, Fabio Spalvieri, bemoaned the dearth of constructions in his metropolis, Frosinone, about 46 miles southeast of Rome, forcing him to journey. “A minimum of it’s enjoyable,” he stated.
Now that the skatepark is finished, Mr. Onorato stated he was sure that folks would come from overseas, too, citing emails he had obtained from skaters around the globe intrigued by the location.
“There’s a complete group of people that, because of that park, will come to Rome to not see the Sistine Chapel or St. Peter’s, however as a result of they need to skate within the park,” he stated. “That is what we needed — to speak to the world a picture of a extra modern metropolis.”
The spruced-up park has made locals pleased, too. Largely.
“It had been deserted. A minimum of now persons are utilizing it,” stated Michele Cubino, the proprietor of a restaurant simply across the nook from the skatepark. “Or a minimum of they’ll use it till somebody hurts themselves as a result of it was unsupervised,” he added. “Then they’ll simply shut it down.”
