Ricerc@Sapienza

The current reality of the historic center of Rome shows how in recent decades the facies of some of the city's districts have been modified, sometimes compromised and conditioned, by interventions not just finalized to restoration and/or maintenance, but rather strong adaptations and also by the so-called re-use or adaptive re-use, often applied to entire building, for touristic use. The diffusion, perhaps in some cases excessive, of new hotels, Bed and breakfast (B&b), Relais etc... was directly proportional and contemporary to the depopulation of the city center by its "historical" inhabitants, delivering entire pieces of the ancient city to a "hit and run" tourism. Parallel to the diffusion of new tourist accommodation facilities, this process of change has also affected the commercial offer of stores that, year after year, project after project, transformed most of the shops and historical shops of artisans and artists into episodes linked to the globalization process (i.e. the insertions of big stores inside historic buildings, particularly nearby Via del Corso). This is certainly an important process of change in the urban dimension that has affected many European capitals and not only, which begun in recent decades and it’s still ongoing. The reading intends to present this phenomenon, to be considered perhaps irreversible, focusing on some episodes of "transformation" of the historical preexistences of the city center, to highlight the economic “pressures” in the implementation of such events that have erased the identity of different realities, expression of history and art over the centuries. It is finally significant to analyze, through a methodological reading of the current state, how and why the needs related to the tourism of a complex city like Rome, have actually determined the "depopulation" of an important part of it and at the same time have modified its “image".