Saturday, January 25, 2014

Not just asphalt


In a way, Rome's cobbles have risen from the depths of the earth. They are made of the volcanic rock that welled up in the hills behind the city. And each stone is very slightly different - each has taken different blows from a chisel as it was knocked into shape. And of course cobblestones have about them the air and feel of history - they are just the right kind of surface to connect ancient churches with famous fountains, and palaces, and piazzas.

As Roberto Giacobbi put it, the cobbles are part of the pride of Rome. He is a big man in his 50s with grey hair and dusty boots. He has spent all his working life putting down stones in the city's streets, just as his father and his grandfather did before him. And as we stood talking at the end of an alley, the air was filled with the sound of mallets clanging off cobbles. Three of Roberto's colleagues were on their knees re-laying a few square metres. He said there was no great secret to doing it right, but it did take a good eye to get every stone level with its neighbour.You get to know instinctively how many blows of the mallet each one needs.

Roberto is proudest of the work he did on Piazza di Spagna, which lies at the foot of the Spanish Steps. Every day tourists from all around the world climb them, and then look down on the square. And Roberto said that it was not that nobody else could have laid the cobbles there, but he said he had done it with passion - with care for the way it would look. But there was something I wanted to ask Roberto.

I had read that, actually, Rome's cobbles were no longer worked out of that volcanic rock up in the hills behind in the city. That these days, incredibly, the stones were being brought in from China. Could it possibly be true?

A man from the public works department at the city council said absolutely not. There was no need for new stone, he said. Old ones were being recycled - Romans were not walking around on cobbles from China or anywhere else in Asia. But when I checked with Roberto he pointed at the stones along the curb at our feet - a slightly different colour and shape from the rest. He said that they were not from China - but he insisted that they were from Vietnam.

Cobblestones in Rome are known as "Sampietrini", which translates as "little St Peters". In this most Catholic of cities you sometimes hear that there are supposed to be as many cobbles as there are souls that St Peter saved. But the stones probably got their name because the first place where they were put down was on St Peter's Square. And it remains today a vast expanse of cobbles.
Alleyway in Rome Many drivers dislike the cobblestones, which force cars and motorbikes to travel at slower speeds

It is near where I work, and I was in the piazza one evening recently when it was almost deserted. It was raining and every wet cobblestone seemed to be catching the streetlight, gleaming. The square was like a field of diamonds.

The uneven charm of Rome's cobblestones (BBC)

Its good points are:

    - it does not completely cover the ground, leaving small spaces for the water to pass through
    - it easily adapts to the irregularities of the ground
    - it is very strong
    - after it has been placed, it can resist quite big movements of the ground

Its negative points are:

    - the ground becomes irregular over time
    - if wet, it can become very slippery

Because of its peculiarities, the sampietrini are not suitable for streets where traffic travels at high speed. Nowadays its use is largely confined to historical or very narrow streets in the centre of Rome (in Trastevere for example), where the traffic is light and slow.

Sampietrini (Wikipedia)

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