Roman Hoods: Parioli

Parioli is the snob quarter of Rome. At  least that is what the other Romans say...It is  not one of my personal favorites, but it has its moments. We got to know it better via two home-exchanges. The first one in via Savoia and we loved it.






The house  was right behind a wonderful run down parc and I felt like Fellini.  In the parc is the amazing Villa Albani. Built by cardnial Alessandro Albani, nephew of Pope Clemens XI., who filled it up with an unbelievable treasure of art. At that time the pope's newphews invented nepotism by exploiting the power of their uncle the pope like their was no tomorrow.
Today the villa belongs in theory to the filthy rich Torlonia family. But because of some obscure heritage quarral the whole thing got confiscated by the state. What I story! I will need to do more research on this one.







A bit farther up the life-line of viale Regina Margeritha to the right you will find a special quarter that has been buildt by the architect Gino Coppedé -  a dream in Liberty style.





On our next home-exchange we went a bit further up on via Savoia and stayed in a very typical Roman palazzo with a beautiful court yard. Even the parking space for the scooters look romantic here!






Last year I discovered another corner of the quarter


The down side of Parioli is that it is not very well connected with the public transport. I am not a big fan of stricly residential areas. I need more action. The live-line is the tram 3 that runs from Trastevere to the Museem of Modern Art at the Northern exit of Villa Borghese. I do love this tram dearly. Fellini used to take it, if he was looking for inspirations. For me it is the best real-life city tour you can take. The rest of the quarter is very car dominated. There is the endless Viale Regina Margeritha and the horrendous via Nomentana. Nomentanta is 27 km long and is famous for traffic jams and ugly accidents.
So, in somma, nice quarter between the big parcs of Villa Borghese and Villa Ada. A bit too slow, but with nice highlights worth visiting. I might need to do some more explorations.

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