✍️ Rome, from the Right Angle

A year of looking at my adopted home city through new eyes

Anna Magnani at home (Wikimedia image)

There’s a photo of Anna Magnani that fascinated me ever since I first saw it.

Taken in 1961 by Swiss photographer Hans Krebs, Magnani leans against a grand piano in her apartment just off Piazza Venezia. The photograph is intimate; it makes me feel like I’ve walked in on something. The living room is wonderfully cluttered: heavy drapery, candelabras, a portrait, a still life, and -- jarringly -- what looks like a painting of a brutalist tower block. Krebs himself is visible in a gilded mirror, but every time I notice him there, I think for a moment it’s my reflection.

Magnani was Rome before Rome became a tourist backdrop. She was dark-eyed, unpolished, furious, tender. She worked with Rossellini, Visconti, De Sica, and Fellini and won an Oscar. But to me, she seemed to belong to Rome more than to her films.

The image, the one that made me feel like an intruder, was the way I pictured her in my mind -- until about a year ago. That’s when Magnani stepped out of the Krebs photo and started appearing on the walls of Rome.

Magnani as Superwoman by street artist Lediesis (EJL photo)

More likely: that’s when I started noticing her appearing on the walls of Rome. Before then, I hadn’t been paying close enough attention.

That changed with The Italian Dispatch, which made me see the city I’d lived in for more than two decades differently, including my regular encounters with Magnani. I first saw her posing as Superwoman in an alleyway; then in a diver’s mask; soon after, she was peering from behind graffiti on a doorway; and then stretched across an outdoor staircase. She even sneaked into the newsletter’s Notes feed now and then.

But Magnani was just the start.

The structure of my weeks changed. I file on Tuesdays -- sometimes not finishing until late in the day -- and then almost immediately begin circling the next idea. It might come from the news, or from a comment a reader left, or from an ever-growing list of essay ideas. By the weekend, I’m usually testing ledes and mulling over which images to use.

Magnani by street artist Blub (EJL photo)

I still work full time. The newsletter fits around that -- in theory. In practice, it’s often the other way around.

But there’s a deeper change that’s harder to describe. I think I operate differently now: always observing, always scribbling notes, always bouncing ideas and theories off of friends and acquaintances. It might be an overheard remark, something I read, a charming new restaurant, an architectural detail. Everything feels like potential material. I can’t decide if it’s a burden or a gift.

The Italian Dispatch itself has changed over the year as well. Some things have been consistent -- I still try to reply to every thoughtful comment left on an essay or note, and to avoid cliché in the way I present my adopted home. But what started out as something oriented toward gastronomy and commentary has gradually become essayistic, cultural, and much more personal.

Peering from a doorframe (EJL photo)

The first essay went out to 27 faithful subscribers, all friends. This one was mailed to nearly 1,400. But what surprised me the most wasn’t the growth -- I didn’t know what to expect there -- it was the conversation. The comment section of most posts is vibrant, smart, often funny, and occasionally argumentative (in a positive way). Readers correct me, add context, and share their own versions of the same story. The newsletter sent to subscribers on Tuesdays is never the same as the one it becomes a day or two later.

All told, there are more than 50 essays and nearly 2,500 comments in the newsletter’s archive, fully available to paid subscribers.

A few weeks back, I walked past the alleyway in Trastevere where Magnani had been posing as Superwoman. But she was gone, torn off the wall, leaving just a faint outline and a few scraps of her dress still clinging to the plaster.

A year ago, I wouldn’t have noticed it at all. But like most of Italy’s past, you can still see it -- if you catch it from just the right angle.

Magnani’s ghostly outline, as seen from the right angle (EJL photo)