Alice's wonderland

“I like so much grandparents' hands. Not only the ones of my own grandparents, but of all those gentlemen and ladies who are very, very old, in fact the hands of the elders. Often when I go to the market with Mommy, I get stuck to look at hands while they work. And if they are old hands, I'm even more fascinated.
When I went to Catania road market, I was conquered by Mrs. Pina's hands. Who – as a job – slips peas. All day long, from morning till night, she cleans peas. And her hands are a little knotty, a little crooked after slipping all those peas. To prevent them from getting all green, Mrs. Pina wears some thin white gloves, made of plastic, as the ones Mommy uses to wash dishes, just thinner. Despite the gloves, I looked thoroughly at her hands and I have to say one thing: with or without the gloves, you could tell those hands have slipped many, but many peas!”.

 ALICE' S TIP

Close to Italia's market there are two places I suggest. One is just aside the market, it's called L'altracittà and it's a bookshop, but not only. There are a lot of nice little books, but also a piano, you can find many wood games and accessories that Mummy likes so much and also music even for the youngest ones, including workshops and listenings for "small ears".
For those a little older, let's say 4 years old or more, there is another good place, especially if you like science and technology. It's called Technotown, a play area inside Villa Torlonia, which has a beautiful green garden. But if the weather is not good or it's cold, you can get into Technotown and look at the stars in the inflatable planetarium, or build your own robot and play with it, or put on some 3D glasses to see how earth was born or what happens when a tsunami comes. Exciting!

Just around the corner

Six blocks east of the market, and six feet under the ground, beats the deep heart of the city: to protect it, the MONUMENTAL CEMETERY OF VERANO, the Père Lachaise cemetery of the Italian capital. With its Parisian "twin", it shares the same putative father (Napoleon, who at the beginning of '800 imposed burials outside of town) and also the prestige of the guests: walking among its gravestones is like walking into the history of a city, and of a nation. Going through the last century as you would leaf through a newspaper, the headlines would be dedicated to politics, with the graves of men and women who have marked the birth and the events of the Italian Republic: from Andreotti to Togliatti, from Nenni to La Malfa, from Almirante to Saragat, from Claretta Petacci to Nilde Iotti. But the story of a country can also be told through the major cases of crime. And at Verano rest the protagonists of some of the most dramatic events which have marked Italy in the last decades: the poor Wilma Montesi, killed in the 50s with the first real scandal of the Republic; the young Alfredino Rampi, who died in 1981 (ten days after the fatal accident of the popular singer-songwriter Rino Gaetano, who was also buried within these walls); the student Marta Russo, shot at university in the 90s. And then, still leafing through, after the news, there are the cultural pages: here the Muses mourn Eduardo De Filippo's death, Fregoli, Ungaretti, Moravia, Giacomo Balla, Gianni Rodari. And those who want to follow a fully feminine path, will stumble into the genius of Grazia Deledda and Maria Montessori, the first Italian Nobel women, or in the strength and grace of Sibilla Aleramo's verses or of Alida Valli's interpretations.
But the heart of Verano vibrates especially in the verses and words of those who have spent their lives telling Rome, spreading out pages that would otherwise have been confined in local chronicles. Big dialect poets (Belli, Pascarella, Trilussa), passionate singers (Gabriella Ferri), directors who have immortalized Rome torn by the war (Rossellini), in search of redemption (De Sica), scarred by corruption (Petri). But above all, faces and voices of famous actors: from Ettore Petrolini to ALBERTO SORDI, from Nino Manfredi to Marcello Mastroianni, from Vittorio Gassman to Aldo Fabrizi. And the words on the grave of the latter are probably the best summary of "Romanity", a mixture of fatalism, cynicism and irony that even in the most dramatic moment can make a last joke "Taken away from this world too al dente" (meaning too early). Last but not least, sport. A few meters away from each other rest
Guido Masetti, goal keeper in the first championship Rome won, and the presidents who took the yellow and red jerseys up to the top two more times, making the crowd crazy for happiness: Dino Viola and Franco Sensi. Not to mention the first captain of Rome’s history, that Attilio Ferraris who wanted to carve on the stone his greatest triumph, having written on his grave simply “World Champion”.
But if we had to choose a quote to say goodbye to this place of peace and meditation, we would probably go back to TRILUSSA’s tomb of the poet and read his delicate epitaph: "There's a bee who stops on a rose sprout / it sucks it and flies away… after all, happiness / is a small thing. "

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