Word: trasteverini
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Trastevere is a boisterous, reeking, junglelike quarter that lies across a turbulent stretch of the Tiber river quite apart from most of Rome. The Trasteverini think the separation is fine. They like their dizzy labyrinth of alleyways, the Queen of Heaven jail and the little shop where the baker's daughter and the artist Raphael lived and lusted 400 years ago. They also delight in the dark, heavy-bosomed beauty of their women, the deftly handled stiletto and heroic quantities of dry, amber Frascati...
...since the Romans first settled across the Tiber. It achieved its earliest fame by supplying Rome's toughest gladiators and most durable prostitutes. Since then it has energetically produced a steady stream of hoodlums, revolutionaries, first-class soccer teams and the most colorful nicknames on the Italian peninsula (Trasteverini know each other by such names as the Mosquito, the Tub and the Big Balloon). "We don't quite know how we got to be different from everyone else," said the Mosquito last week as he polished up the wine glasses at his bar in the Via della Lungaretta...
Enter the Communists. Once a year, Trasteverini hold a Procession of the Madonna del Carmine; they have added to it an additional celebration called the Festa de Nojantri (The Feast of Us Others). Together the two occasions are good for at least two weeks of sports, drinking, feasting, beauty and wine-tippling contests, and a lively spate of knife fights...