Understanding Italy - Urban speculation in Rome explained by Italian Writer Michele Sanvico

ROME - Dec. 2, 2017 - PRLog -- "When in Rome, do as the Romans do", as the old saying goes. Italian Writer Michele Sanvico launches a new comprehensive site dedicated to Rome as it is today: a new source of information to understand why Italy is the inexplicable, almost indecipherable place which appears to be to most foreigners, and to many Italian residents too, by illustrating the exemplary history of urban speculation in Rome. A tale of political power, Vatican influence and unrestrained, overwhelming profit.

For most tourists, Rome is one of the most beautiful cities in the world, with its Roman ruins, Renaissance palaces and Baroque churches. However, it is not easy to understand how in the last decades Rome has turned into something different: a chaotic, traffic-jammed urban environment, with large concrete buildings raising almost anywhere, historical public gardens besieged by a frantic urban development, and inadequate public transportation and waste management services.

The reason for so remarkable a decline is to be found in predatory urban speculation, a process that has been working on the city since the nineteenth century, with a dramatic boost in the second half of the last century. The key of the speculation in Rome is land: throughout many decades, the extensive rural properties owned by the local, illustrious aristocracy of the Papal States have been turned into plots of development land and intensively built by disseminating them with new concrete urban districts. In addition to that, large corporates owned by the Holy See have grabbed rural land at low prices, subsequently turning it into densely populated neighborhood. A process directly overseen by the Vatican.

«When I started my research on the topic», said Michele Sanvico, an Italian writer of literary fiction and creative nonfiction, «I knew nothing about the recent history of Rome. I soon started to find published - though not widely known - information on the far-reaching speculation that has originated today's Rome. And the more I went into the documents, the more I found the historical evidence of the major role played in the highly-profitable speculation process by the Holy See».

Michele Sanvico's walk across the decades following World War II depicts an amazing portrait of Italy and Rome, a veritable guidebook to Italy's most secretive essence: an apparently inextricable mesh involving the Republican State, municipal authorities, the Holy See with its 'Monsignori', catholic groups and organisations, haughty Roman aristocrats belonging to ancient families, and finally ruthless bankers and offshore tax havens.

«The interesting aspect about my new site», added Michele Sanvico, «is that it is the very first time that all the published information about the history of massive speculation in modern Rome is streamlined in a single, coherent series of articles: it is like drinking at the Well of Knowledge, when you finish your read you find that you are able to understand Italy and the Italian politics much better than ever before. This is a useful tool no other source has ever provided to you».

The website, currently in Italian, is dedicated both to professional journalists and people who are interested in gaining a deeper knowledge of that charming, mysterious, puzzling European country whose name is Italy.

For more information, visit Michele Sanvico's website on urban speculation in Rome (http://www.italianwriter.it/Roma_Speculazione/Roma_Specul...).