Change Festival – Piazza Farnese Roma

Roma, Italy

The image above and follow text is a vision made by Samuel Quagliotto for the exhibition “Roman Vision” directed by TA.RI. for ChangeFestival.
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“A flâneur around Rome walks through the narrow paths that push the urban dimension of the city to the limits.
After getting lost, he finds himself in Piazza Farnese. This was not the image that was imprinted in his memory, it is different from the last time he had been there.
Now nature has taken over this place by wrapping the two fountains placed at the two opposite focus of the square.
In one half it feels immersed in a small enchanted forest full of flowers, mosses and rocks that clung to the banks of one of the two fountains. Under the trees’s foliage with the colour of the autumn, a group of children wander around this green island and feel like explorers of a world to know and respect and share this space together with some animals that have become the permanent inhabitants of the square.
Beyond this enchanted forest, beyond the trees, in the other half of the square you can see the faint reflection of a large body of water in which the second fountain, surrounded by delicate nymphs, seems to navigate like a sailing ship. It is a revealing scene, which recalls the past time, many centuries before the flâneur. The times when, for the first time in the history of Rome, Piazza Farnese was flooded to refresh the hot summer days and give the citizens a festive and playful atmosphere.
The flâneur, perhaps heated by the summer heat wave, was hit by a hallucination. In fact, shortly after, he had the usual image of Piazza Farnese in front of him. Which made him so despaired of the fact that what he saw was only a joyful vision where the city, nature and the human being had found a balanced harmony. He took his notebook and started writing a memorial entitled Roman Vision in Piazza Farnese.”