Who are we?
Founded in 2013, Roma Fuit set the objective of encouraging the contemporary citizen and tourist’s desire of culture, through the organization of events and collective, unconventional experiences without losing sight of the cultural offer of the city. From 2018 the association moved its offices to a cross street of Via del Corso.
The association name was born thinking about a form that could include the Italian expression “Roma fu” (Rome was) and its Latin translation “Roma fuit”, leading to the URL of the website:
www.romafu.it
What do you mean for enhancement?
According to our Statute we have a purpose that makes us proud: to approach the city of the present to the city of the past. This is necessary in order to let the past continue to live. In fact, what is today identified as the urban landscape, is the historical result of the city’s stratification, that during the centuries lived and built on itself new layers above the old ones. Nowadays the oldest part of the city, due to cultural reasons, can’t be urbanized anymore and instead needs to be preserved.
Therefore, is becoming necessary the planning of strategies whose purpose is to approach antiquity and modernity.
Which meaning should be given back to a monument or to an archaeological area?
Archaeology has the purpose to rebuild the past through the study of the records that it left. To enhance an archaeological area, one should take this into account, above all. This is a matter of making understandable those elements that, through a monument or a ruin, can give us back information about history. In other words, to retrieve the dialogue between the citizen and the archaeological sources.
What are the instruments used by this cultural association?
1) Guided tours about historical themes
Guided tours Roma Fuit are characterized by a new and alternative method, in order to tell the city from a wider but also a more intuitive point of view. These tours offer itineraries specifically studied to narrate, through monuments and records, the history of the city and to
offer the citizen and the tourist a clearer comprehension of the past. Our visits are characterized by:
-The develop of a linear historical narration understandable to everyone;
-The reading of the sources;
-Participating reflections
2) Blog
The blog’s contents have a didactic purpose and are mostly about archaeology and history of the city of Rome; the blog can be used to analyse the themes we faced during the guided tours.
3) Facebook page and group
The Facebook page RomaFuit offers historical and archaeological contemporary contents (discovers, events, exhibitions, news and debates).
The group “Visite guidate Roma Fuit” is a place of exchange, discussion and organization, and it’s also the hearth of our community.
Why the name Roma Fuit?
When, in 1100, Ildeberto of Lavardin, Le Mans’s bishop, visited Rome, the city’s ruins were conceived as symbols representing the transience of existence, of the pagan religion and of the empire.
Ildeberto was so fascinating by these ruins, that he decided to dedicate a poem to Rome. In this poem he described the city as the never overtaken peak of human arts, Rome itself was able to inspire the divine cult. This was an unimaginable idea in the Middle Ages, no one before him ever dare to say so. But Ildeberto was a poet, and he saw in that past a bright moment of history, overcoming the ideological approach used by the Church, that abandoned these ruins, which were considered symbols of the transience of humanity and of empires.
Ildeberto expressed himself about this:
“The Gods (the Christian trinity) admire the simulacrums of the Gods (the pagan Gods)”
This cultural precondition whose purpose was the discovery of dignity and freedom of thought and moreover of another way of interpreting history, will be one of the Renaissance humanism particular features, thanks to the study of antique culture.“The city has fallen” wrote Idelberto in Latin “while I watch its ruins and consider its state I keep on saying: Rome was”, (Urbs cecidit, de qua si quicquam dicere dignum Moliar, hoc potero dicere:
Roma fuit) like there were no other words to describe what was happening.
What is the meaning of the logo?
The logo is characterized by the typewriter font, because Roma Fuit is first of all a tale. The logo
wants to express the feeling that time has passed but leaving untouched the modernity and the
professionality of the project. Graphically the point of the letter “i” falls down to suggest the “.it” of
the website, just like a stone of an antique ruin. Exactly like “The fallen city” of Ildeberto (look at
the previous question).
Why is Roma Fuit represented by the icon of a temple?
The represented temple is the one of Castor and Pollux in the Roman forum. Differently from the columns of many other temples that needed to be lifted up, the columns of this temple remained always standing, and since the Middle Ages mark out the Forum’s landscape, the most important place of the old city. Besides, the temple is inextricably tied to the roman suburb because, according to the roman sources, the divine twins Castor and Pollux appeared to help the Romans during the epic battle of Lake Regillus, fought in 499 B.C. in the Tuscolana fields, near the current area of Frascati.
Become Roma Fuit members
If you recognize yourself in the objectives and principles expressed by Roma Fuit, you can actively participate to the association life. A citizen who decides to associate represents at the same time the goal and the heritage of this association. You can follow its activities (events, guided tours Roma Fuit and the blog), have the right to vote and the possibility to access the social roles. To become members means to believe and contribute to the project Roma Fuit. In the section How to participate are described the ways of subscription and we give answers to the most frequent questions.
Directive council elected for 2018/2020
Daniele S. Proietti: Archaeologist. President of Roma Fuit.
Andrea Angelucci: Archaeologist. Authorized touristic guide.
Adriano Natale: Music and arts historian.