Before starting these pages on "Curious Rome" i could not image that Rome could have so many hidden & original aspects! That's ok! I'll have topics for the next 2 or 3 months & you'll always have something to read!!
I've always had the curiosity to know more about the living wolf of Campidoglio. Sometime Rome's beauties disappear in a City full of traffic, people & caos. Our start & end point today is Via del Teatro Marcello, near the Campidoglio. Look at the right of the Campidoglio perron, behind the bus stop, hidden by grass bushes there is a big cage that looks like an aviary...oh yes i have to admit for many years i've thought that there were birds, instead....
of the living “Lupa del Campidoglio”!! The story of a living "meat & bones" wolfe put in a cage at the slopes of the Campidoglio hill began at the end of 1800. It was the 28 august 1872 when the Communal Council of Rome, with its decision n° 52630, decided to put “..in the gardens of the Campidoglio hill, in an appropriate cage, a living wolfe as a symbol of Rome, the Communal Council previews for his maintenance the expense of lire 23.50 monthly” . When Rome became the Capital of the united nation Italia in 1870, decided to assert and celebrate her public and new laic image using the master symbol typical of the Imperial Rome: the wolfe, to remind that one who, according to the legend, noursed Romolo (founder of Rome) and Remo. Romans liked very much the idea to show a wolf as the symbol of the City, so lot that the wild animal became quickly the first symbol of the City and many were the romans who stopped in front of the cage looking at the animal. Years passed by slowly and the wolfe, always sobstituted by new exemplaries, still hold in the small cage obtained inside the cove on the slopes of the hill. His way to walk, going on and back, was so typical that became a "way to say" when someone is phrenetic: " me pari 'a lupa der campidojo!" (you look like the Campidoglio wolfe!). Only in 1975, the Communal Council of Rome, decided to stop this sad exhibition which not only didn’t celebrate the glory of the city but, on the contrary, forced a wild animal who lives in wide spaces, to live in a small an humid cage just to exposure!We have to say that the bad tradition to show animals on the Campidoglio hill didn't start with the wolfe, many ancient reports of 1400 tell, infact, the story of a magnificent lion caught in the far lands of Africa and hold in a cage on the Campidoglio hill, until the time he was pulled down for having killed a passing. He was then immediately sobstituted by a new one in marble...beautiful & less aggressive!!
Dear roman wolfe...
