Vespa Tunes XVI: Per le strade di Roma, Francesco de Gregori, 2006

I find the all-encompassing, enervating, and interminable heat of a Roman high summer swiftly evaporates in memory. One can recall the general outline, so to speak, but not the shading. The stickiness of tacky tarmac, viscous air, and three shower days already feels distant. However the first verse of Francesco de Gregori’s 2006 song Per le strade di Roma brings it all back. E tutto si arroventa e tutto fuma, he sings—both literally and figuratively—of the heat of the city’s underbelly. The Rome of which he sings is not of that of romantic cobbled piazzas and ancient churches, but of the struggle to survive on the scrappy, grubby streets of the periferia.

tutto si arroventa e tutto fuma, July 2022.