Tor Pignattara

Italiano

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There is no single boundary of Tor Pignattara. There are at least two, drawn by different criteria, and confusing them gives strange results: on the City's map the quarter lies somewhere other than where its people look for it.

The administrative boundary. Roma Capitale divides the city into urban zones and publishes them as a vector layer on its Geoportale: the source for anyone who wants to know where, officially, a zone ends. Zone 6A of Municipio V is called “Torpignattara”. But 6A stops at the Casilina and at via di Acqua Bullicante, and contains the Pigneto and the Marranella; via di Tor Pignattara, the market, Villa Certosa and the Vigne Alessandrine fall in 6C “Quadraro”, and the Mausoleum of Helena, the tower with the amphorae that gave the whole place its name, in 6B “Casilino”.1 On the map at the foot of the page these zones are the thin dashed lines.

The maps everyone looks at. Wikipedia opens with “Torpignattara is urban zone 6A of Municipio Roma V”; only further down does it admit that the historical boundaries “straddle the via Casilina” into 6C, and that the quarter is made of three parts, Tor Pignattara, the Marranella, Villa Certosa. Google Maps, if you type “Tor Pignattara”, draws a dashed outline between via Prenestina and via Casilina, from Porta Maggiore towards Villa Gordiani: the Pigneto, the Marranella, and nothing of what lies on the other side of the Casilina. It resembles 6A but is not 6A, it reaches further east. The two most consulted maps put the quarter where its people say it is not.

The historical boundary. The Ecomuseo Casilino ad Duas Lauros draws the quarter by another criterion, historical, morphological and of identity, not bureaucratic. Its Tor Pignattara comprises Tor Pignattara proper, the Marranella, Villa Certosa and the Vigne Alessandrine,2 and is closed to the north by largo Galeazzo Alessi, to the west by the Rome–Naples railway down to via di Porta Furba, to the south by the line running from via degli Oppii to via degli Angeli, via dell'Aeroporto di Centocelle and via dei Gordiani, to the east by via Labico, via Cori, via Formia, via del Pigneto, via Frontino and via Zenodossio. The Ecomuseo itself warns that it is “not a boundary by law, but a heritage boundary”, valid because the communities of the place recognise it.3 On the map it is the thick dashed line, and everything outside it is veiled.

The neighbourhood committee draws the same perimeter, and says in so many words that the urban zone leaves out “what everyone considers the heart of the quarter”: the part straddling the Casilina, along via di Tor Pignattara, from via di Centocelle to viale Filarete. It is the best source for the current use of the name, for how the people who live there say it.

The Ecomuseo's work is not just a neighbourhood website. Stefania Ficacci made it a case study on oral sources and the making of a shared heritage, published by the University of Macerata in Proposte e ricerche, no. 78. By the same author, Tor Pignattara. Fascismo e Resistenza di un quartiere romano (FrancoAngeli, 2007) is the book to start from to understand what Tor Pignattara historically is, the settlement that grew between the Casilina and the Alexandrine aqueduct: archives, newspapers, private memoirs, the accounts of its inhabitants. No polygon to the metre comes out of it, and none is sought.

The boundary of this site. To say that something is in Tor Pignattara, this site uses the historical perimeter of the Ecomuseo and the committee, not 6A. It is not an administrative boundary, and we say so. One simple thing follows: being in urban zone 6C “Quadraro” does not mean not being in Tor Pignattara.

Casale dell'ex MulinoSepolcro di Annia RegillaMausoleo di ElenaColombario di Largo PrenesteMausoleo di Villa GordianiSepolcro dei CorneliCarceres del Circo VarianoCasale della VaccarecciaPalazzo SessorianoSepolcro di Largo TalamoVilla LauricellaColombario di via Olevano RomanoOsteria di CentocelleFioriniAldo FabriziViolaRoma PrenestinaRoma TuscolanaGardenieLodiMalatestaMirtiPonte LungoFurio CamilloColli AlbaniArco di TravertinoNumidio QuadratoPorta Furba/Quadraro6A · Torpignattara6B · Casilino6C · Quadraro6D · Gordiani9B · Tuscolano Sud

Footnotes

  1. 6A measures 2.27 km² (Roma Capitale, statistical yearbook 2024). Its perimeter runs along the Rome–Sulmona–Pescara railway to the north, then via di Portonaccio, via di Acqua Bullicante, via Teano, via Cori, via Norma, via Terracina, via Minturno, via Labico, via Policastro, via di Acqua Bullicante again, the Casilina to the south and the FL4 railway up to the bridge over the Scalo San Lorenzo. The Ecomuseo notes that it includes the Pigneto, the so-called “Villini Santa Maria” between via Minturno and via Formia, and part of Portonaccio and largo Preneste, while leaving out “the area that in the quarter is called, precisely, Tor Pignattara”. ↩

  2. Tor Pignattara proper runs from the Casilina to via degli Angeli, around via di Tor Pignattara; Villa Certosa, the old Borghetto degli Angeli, from via Filarete to the railway; the Marranella sits at the corner of the Casilina and via di Acqua Bullicante; the Vigne Alessandrine along the aqueduct, to the south. There is also a strip called “Parioletti”, from via Tempesta to via Zenodossio, between the Casilina and via Dulceri. Settlements born apart and welded together over time. ↩

  3. The Ecomuseo is recognised by the Regione Lazio as a museum institution of regional interest (resolution of 7 October 2019) and is a member of ICOM; the perimeter comes from work with the inhabitants, archival sources, oral history and community-geography workshops. ↩