Skate park in front of the Colosseum is a new attraction in Rome – 01/21/2023 – Tourism

They built it and people came. Mostly teenage boys, from Roma Nord, Ostia, Prenestina, Monterotondo and other suburbs, walking to the center of Rome, boards in hand, to do heelflips, airwalks and boardslides between the obstacles of a new skatepark, which opened to the public shortly before of Christmas.

“We were desperate; we had nothing,” said Lorenzo Ficini, 27, a marketing specialist and skateboarder who, as if rehearsed, approached the reporter to say he wanted to thank the city for the skatepark. A spontaneous PR triumph.

“For us, it’s a dream come true – the structure is great. And then,” Ficini said, nodding south, where the Colosseum’s upper arches emerged over a line of trees, “we have this. It’s wonderful. .”

The skatepark – located on Mount Opium, like this area overlooking the 1st-century amphitheater^The it has been known since ancient times – it is proudly praised by the city authorities of Rome as the skatepark with the best view in the world.

“Think of a backdrop for photos,” said Alessandro Onorato, member of the Rome City Council responsible for tourism and events.

The unique location, he said, helped convince World Skate, the sports governing body, that it should hold a street skate competition in Rome last summer. The event attracted hundreds of top athletes from around the world, and the state-of-the-art park built for the competition was left to the Romans to enjoy.

“It shows how a single event can have a lasting impact on a city,” said Onorato.

On a recent afternoon, the constant “thump, thump” of skaters landing filled the air. “It’s a great achievement for us,” said Papik Rossi, 49, a regular on Rome’s skate circuit. “We’ve never had a central skatepark.”

He said he fell in love with skateboarding after watching the classic 1985 movie “Back to the Future” and, lowering his voice, added: “They’ll deny it, but half the people I know got into it for the same reason.”

The new park is “good for new skaters,” Rossi said, but he still prefers the streets.

When Rossi started skating in the 1980s, virtually every skater in town was on a first-name basis. Ugo Bertolucci, 49, was also part of that opening scene. Back then, Bertolucci said, skaters were considered “extraterrestrials,” freaks in a nation where soccer was king. “Now it’s an Olympic sport,” he shrugged.

Bertolucci recalled that, before the internet, it was more difficult to learn new tricks. Back then, skaters like him would watch VHS tapes of their peers in the United States – the birthplace of skateboarding –, “repeating over and over until they were exhausted.”

Learning in practice, falls were inevitable. Today, a more formal type of education comes from the many skate schools that have sprung up amidst the sport’s growing popularity.

And you have to be willing to risk fines, because skateboarding is prohibited on the streets of Rome. The rebel strongholds: the Foro Italico, site of the Olympic Stadium, and the peripheral neighborhood of EUR. Both are fascist-era areas, filled with travertine stone in geometric shapes and varying lengths – a skater’s dream.

That dream has now moved to an area that until a few months ago caused nightmares for councilor Onorato.

When Rome’s center-left administration came to power in October 2021, the area where the skatepark now stands was littered with syringes and run down, with broken benches.

A more modest skate park that existed was vandalized several times and then closed when a boy was injured, according to a city spokesman. Local newspapers reported the site’s deterioration, with photos showing piles of rubbish and broken ramps.

“Do you know what my biggest nightmare was?” asked Onorato in a telephone interview. “That nine months ago a foreign correspondent visited the area, because he would have written an article saying that 200 meters from the Coliseum was an area of ​​trafficking and drug users.”

“It is no longer the case,” he said.

The new skatepark is part of a larger playground, and the project, which cost around 200,000 euros (about R$1.1 million) to build, will include a small soccer field, a volleyball court, a gym equipment and an area facing the Coliseum with checkerboards and chess. “So is Central Park,” said Onorato.

And vandalism, according to the Italian authorities, will be a thing of the past. Before, Onorato said, surveillance was sloppy and the area was largely on its own. Now, the maintenance and security of the skatepark are the responsibility of a company linked to the government, which organizes sporting events and promotes well-being.

It’s still too early to say how the project will fare, but officials are optimistic. The skatepark is said to be a way of dusting off Rome’s musty image, which bears the weight of its history.

The skatepark also serves a growing demand in the city, where skateboarding has surged in popularity since the sport was introduced at the Tokyo Olympics, said Marla Ascone, 44, who, with her husband, Nicolò Mattia Cimini, 43, owns and manages a private skatepark in Rome. “Nowadays, when we go out, we often run into skaters we don’t know,” she said. “Before, you knew everybody.”

At dusk, the skaters did their last tricks. One of them, Fabio Spalvieri, lamented the lack of structures in his town, Frosinone, about 75 kilometers southeast of Rome, which forces him to travel. “At least it’s fun,” he said.

Now that the skatepark is ready, Onorato said he’s sure people from abroad will come too, citing emails he’s received from skaters around the world intrigued by the site.

“There’s a whole group of people who, thanks to this park, will come to Rome not to see the Sistine Chapel or St. Peter’s Basilica, but because they want to roll around the park,” he says. “That’s what we wanted – to communicate to the world the image of a more contemporary city.”