Rome was not built in a day

That is an old proverb that I heard quoted to me often when I was an impatient child. The Italian equivalent is Roma non fu fatta in un giorno. I suspect that the proverb comes from a Latin maxim [nec uno die condita est Roma, nec uno cecidit die] since the phrase seems to be a longstanding saying used in all Western languages. Apart from its educative message, today I have reflected on its practical meaning. Something close to home brought this proverb to mind…

After nearly four years of construction and after we had given up all hope, the Comune di Roma today had workers taking down the barriers around the perimeter of Piazza dell’Ateneo Salesiano and open it for the public.

Even while I was a student at the UPS in the early 1990s, there was serious talk about the City of Rome making plans to excavate beneath the plaza to build parking garages there. Our quarter of the city had become more populated that first projected, and the use of cars had multiplied exponentially since the quarter went into construction in the late 1960s following the construction of the Salesian University in this spot. The building of a parking garage underground seemed logical, straightforward, easily accomplished…

However, once construction began, so did the politics. Many citizens (and the university itself) had believed that there would be underground parking and that the four lanes of traffic through Piazza dell’Ateneo would be restored. Others (the green party of the quarter) had other ideas, and so, in October of 2005, they pushed for public hearings, and demanded that a giardino pubblico (aka, a park) be built into the Piazza, curtailing traffic into two narrow lanes, with now parking above ground. Such a move would mean that the gate of the University would no longer open on to a roadway, but that the piazza itself would never again be filled with automobiles, all parked and hampering traffic anyway. The two carved lanes would permit a constant, if slow, flow of traffic and this would be an improvement.

That was the reasoning to ease the traffic congestion and the danger of racing cars. The park-piazza would also englarge the green footprint in our part of the town (although the University itself has three parks within its perimeter).

Don Mario Toso, rector of the University, protested the arrangement at the time, for he said that this would make it impossible for buses to enter the university grounds. However, his arguments were not heeded and the park project was approved. This, of course, mean a restructuring of the ground level after the garage was completed. According to the original plan, the ground level would be paved over and appear as it had before… a wide piazza with two lanes of traffic in either direction. Instead, the park had to be sculpted into place, and this is what added two more years to the construction job.

But today it is open finally - just in time for the feast of Mary Immaculate (there are festive lights decorating the sidewalks for the Marian celebrations already) and for the Christmas holidays. It is a nice holiday present to the neighborhood. As for the access to the university gate? Well it will not matter now. The piazza has been blocked off for four years already, so no students will remember the easy bus access of years past… nor will they experience the gridlock of the blocked piazza that was the reality of the 1990s.

So, this makes me think that there is a lot of truth to the proverb Rome was not built in a day. It is a lucky thing too. Taking so long to build around here makes people forget the conveniences of the past and welcome new arrangements for the future, because they have had to live with the inconvenient arrangements of construction projects that blocked and bothered for what seemed like a lifetime. Not only do you learn to deal with the waiting, but in the end you are ready for a shift that you might not have welcomed had it come quickly.

This might be kept in mind by liturgists too… but that would take us into another discourse. Nec uno die condita est Roma, nec uno cecidit die… but now that they finished another angle of Rome, it is a wonderful feeling!