As Stefano introduced himself and the Tor Marancia street art project he co-founded, his dog Tricky hobbled his way out of the walls of this open-air museum.
“The word museum,” Stefano explained, “comes from the Greek word, mouseion. Which literally translates to ‘the place of the muses’.”
Which is why the Big City Life project in Tor Marancia is known as Rome’s open-air street art museum. There is no roof, and there is no door. But each mural has been painted on a building that is part of one shared living complex.
You could say that each building in Tor Marancia is a seat to its own personal muse.
The Birth of the Tor Marancia Street Art in Rome
The neighbourhood of Tor Marancia was built in 1947. It wasn’t built as a luxury new estate, or a new modern housing district in Rome. It was built to accommodate families who had been uprooted from their homes near the Vatican, when the fascist regime decided to develop the area in the 1920s. Some of those families had lived in their homes for generations. Most of them were relocated to Tor Marancia without so much as a roof for their heads. The social housing complex that stands today was built two-decades after.
Due to the regular floods, poor social support and shared facilities, Tor Marancia was soon nicknamed the ‘Shanghai’ of Rome by its residents. So Stefano S. Antonelli and his partners decided to tackle a huge art project that they hoped would help improve the futures of those that lived in Tor Marancia.
Thousands of Euros were raised independently of state support to help to create the murals you can visit today. Each of those murals is now owned, in part, by each of the families that live in the buildings.
And the neighbourhood has become a magnet for street art fans from all over Europe, if not the world. No longer an abandoned estate on the edge of Rome, the Tor Marancia street art museum is the cultural hub of the district. And one that both residents and visitors can admire together.
It was this convergence of resident and visitor that was most inspiring to witness during my recent tour at the Tor Marancia street art museum. The two-hour tour is run by Stefano himself, and costs just €5! Which in my opinion makes it a must-do activity for street art fans and travellers to Rome.
The Stories Behind the Tor Marancia Street Art Museum
Aside from Stefano’s passion for his project, there was one thing that really stood out for me during this street art tour. And that was the stories that Stefano told of how the residents and the artists interacted. And how the residents still interact with the murals today.
Before painting their murals, each artist spent time getting to know the families who lived in each building. And after getting to know them, many of their initial concepts were scrapped.
What now stands in Tor Marancia are murals that have been whole-heartedly inspired by the neighbourhood’s residents. And here are two of my favourite examples.
The woman who quit smoking thanks to Mr Klevra’s ‘Our Lady of Shanghai’
One woman who lives in the neighbourhood had smoked her whole life. That was until her morning walk to the shops brought her past ‘Our Lady of Shanghai’, a mural by Roman artist Mr Klevra.
As Stefano told us, the shame of walking past the overtly religiously inspired mural was too much. Her age prevented her form walking the long route around the building.
And so, she quit smoking!
The son who became Seth’s ‘The Redentore Child’
One of the more emotional murals in the Tor Marancia street art museum is ‘The Redentore Child’, painted by Parisian artist Seth.
The Redentore Child was originally meant to be a more fun interpretation of a young boy peering over the wall of the building. However, Seth soon learnt that there had been a boy who had lived in this building, and had passed away in his sleep at a very young age.
And so, his mural became a memorial to that boy.
How to book a tour of the Tor Marancia Street Art Museum
As I’ve already mentioned, tours with the curator of the open-air street art museum in Rome cost just €5. So if you’re a street art fan, or you just want to experience a side of the city that very few tourists know about, then I highly suggest this tour!
To book a tour, just send an email to Stefano at visit@bigcitylife.it with the time and date you’d like to visit.
More details about the guided tour can be found here on their website.
And if you’re lucky, Stefano might even bring his adorable dog, Tricky, along!
How to get to the Tor Marancia Street Art Museum
It really couldn’t be simpler, or cheaper(!), to get to the Tor Marancia Street Art museum.
Bus tickets in Rome cost €1.50 and can be bought from any metro station or tabbachi. And the streets around 63, Viale Tor Marancia (the location of the Tor Marancia Street Art museum, are served by a number of central buses.
From Termini: If you’re coming from the Termini district of Rome then you can take bus 714. The trip from Termini to Tor Marancia is just 20 minutes.
From Campo de’ Fiori: If you’re coming from central Rome, around the Campo de’ Fiori area, then you can take bus 30, which is also just a 20 minute trip.
P.s. I use the MyCicero app to buy all my bus and metro tickets in Rome on the go. You can download it for yourself from here.
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I just want to give a shout out to Stefano. Not only for his brilliant tour of Tor Marancia, but also for all the effort he bought in to make this project come to life!
I took this tour as part of a blogger trip I organised on behalf of The RomeHello: Rome’s newest street art hostel. You can get 10% off your stay with them by using the promo code ‘THEHOSTELGIRL’ when booking online.