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Rome (IT), Factory of the Lazio Milk Producers' Consortium [extant] - 1937

PEOPLE
Santarelli, Raffaello
THEMES/GENRES
City of Rome Romulus
Gemini ad Urbis fata / divinitus lacte servantur.
The twins are preserved for the city’s destiny, by divine will, thanks to the milk.
 
 
BACKGROUND INFORMATION

The inscription (1937) is still visible inside the apsidal niche over the entrance of the former factory of the Lazio Milk Producers Consortium (Consorzio Laziale dei Produttori di Latte, after 1953 named Centrale del Latte di Roma). This building (Via Giovanni Giolitti 275) had been made available to the Consortium by the Governatorato. Its author is Raffaello Santarelli.

 

The inscription is carved in Roman square capitals; its grooves were once filled with bronze, now they are only painted red. The inscription functioned as a kind of caption: originally, a copy of the Capitoline Wolf, nursing Romulus and Remus (no longer extant), stood in the niche below the inscription. The text has the rhythm (not the quantities) of a dactylic hexameter.

 

The inscription can be understood only when taking into account the building’s original destination and the original statue of the she-wolf that accompanied it. Alluding to the building’s original function, the text underlines the importance of milk in Rome’s origin myth. The phrasing of the inscription echoes elegiac poets such as Ovid (Fast. 3.53: Lacte quis infantes nescit crevisse ferino) and Propertius (2.6.20: Nutritus duro, Romule, lacte lupae).

 

The building was designed by Innocenzo Costantini (1881–1962) and its architecture recalls the shape of the nearby ancient aqueduct (Anio Vetus). After the Centrale del Latte di Roma left the building in 1980, it was partially demolished and thoroughly restructured in order to host the power station “Esquilino” of Acea SpA (since 2001).

 

Bibliography

Capalbi, Monica. 2004. ‘Centrale del Latte (1923), oggi Centrale ACEA (2001)’. In Esquilino e Castro Pretorio. Patrimonio storico-artistico e architettonico del Comune di Roma, edited by Nicoletta Cardano, 115–17. Rome: Artemide.

 

Ferraironi, Francesco. 1937. Iscrizioni ornamentali su edifici e monumenti di Roma con appendice sulle iscrizioni scomparse. Rome: Industria Tipografica Romana, no. 596.

 

Nastasi, Antonino. 2019. Le iscrizioni in latino di Roma Capitale (1870-2018). Rome: Edizioni Quasar, 258–59.

 

Antonino Nastasi


Inscription at Via Giovanni Giolitti © A. Nastasi (Rome).