Alice’s wonderland

“The first time I went to MercatoMonti I was really surprised. Usually Mummy takes me to markets where you can buy fruits and vegetables, fish or meat, while here I was seeing only sunglasses and little hats, strange bags and shoes and then funny things I had never seen before: a phone with a small wheel instead of the usual keys, a camera from which pictures came out as tongues stuck out of the mouth!
I like the market because I usually get something to eat: a banana, a bite of pizza… When I saw this market I thought: no snacks here. But I was wrong: there was a stall with these nice guys from Puglia, who were doing “fud desain”, which are two English words meaning ‘artistic food’ as Mummy explained me. They were serving a puree of broad beans and chicory in these beautiful bread baskets. Yummy!"

Alice’s recipe
Broad beans and chicory puree

Below the recipe by the ‘nice guys’ working at Carta e Latte

The basket is made of tarallo dough (typical snack from Puglia), but it can be replaced by a little bread shape (in Italian, panino) from which you take out guts and slightly toast it in hoven. For the broad beans puree: put some olive oil, onions and sliced celery in a pan, let them fry for a few minutes, add the dry broad beans (after keeping them in water for an hour to and draining them), add some water and let them cook. Take out the first ‘foam’ that comes up, add some water if needed and cook for a couple of hours until it becomes a puree.
Aside, boil some clean chicory and drain it (in Puglia we use wild chicory!).
Broad beans puree and chicory are usually served in the same plate but separate, then anyone can pick if eating them separately or mixed, with a few drops of saint oil (olive oil with peppers) and a big slice of toasted bread (or in a bread basket).

Just around the corner

Monti’s heart is no doubt the beautiful square of Madonna dei Monti, while its main street is via Cavour (actually breaking the neighbourhood in two, also breaking its ‘magic’ somehow) and its most obscure and mysterious vein passes below a dark arch, on a hill entitled to the Borgias. Here is the so called LUCREZIA BORGIA’s BALCONY, where many stories and legends took place. Our advice is to put aside the historical rigor and follow the legends, as Lord Byron used to do in early
nineteenth century, wandering in Rome streets by night and stopping under the balcony where he used to imagine Pope Alexander VI’s beautiful and cruel daughter standing. The legend says that below the balcony there was a trap door, which Lucrezia would open to her lovers after giving herself to them. It also narrates that Lucrezia was attending her brother Juan’s last supper, organized by the mother Vannozza on June 14,1497, three days before Juan’s young body was found in Tevere river. But an aura of death surrounds this corner of the city long before the Borgias: the hill actually follows the path of the ancient vicus sceleratus, so called because, according to the story, the body of Servius Tullius – sixth king of Rome – was stepped on by the chariot driven by his daughter Tullia right after the murder, by the hands of her father-in-law Lucius Tarquinius. Once completed the conspiracy,
he would sit on the throne with the title of "Superb". The best way to shake off these gloomy suggestions is to climb the stairs and pass the arch, reaching San Pietro in Vincoli square. The church has this name because it stores the chains that were used to tie the apostle during his
imprisonment in Rome.
The most popular attraction is in the right transept: the statue of the MOSE' DI MICHELANGELO. Any description would be redundant: we leave to you the pleasure of looking at one of the master’s best works, to cross his severe look, and maybe try to identify the profile of Pope Julius II among the thick beard folds,
or the female body which Buonarroti carved just below the lower lip, according to another legend. It’s needless to look for signs or scratches on the prophet’s knee, even if no one will be able to uproot from popular imagination the story of the sculptor throwing a scalpel against his creature and shouting "Why don’t you speak?", after having noted its exceptional realism.
There are many other legends about Monti district, one of the most proudly “popular” in town. Legendary are the jokes of Marchese del Grillo (literally, cricket marquis), a character who truly existed, as proved by the palace and the tower still
bearing his name, behind Traiano’s markets.
From the top of his tower, Onofrio del Grillo – a noble from Marche region, who lived in Rome in the eighteenth century – used to enjoy throwing rocks and pine cones on those passing-by, with fierce predilection for Jews. Another authentic “monticiano” (literally, from Monti), although born in Tuscany, is Mario Monicelli, who shot a movie with Alberto Sordi making the Marquis’ bravado immortal and
later dedicated to the neighbourhood also a documentary, his last work as director. The eccentric spirit of the Marquis seems to hover around its properties still today: climbing a few steps the Grillo hill, a curious sign on your right invites you to press a switch. We suggest you just follow the temptation of pressing the button: behind a grating at street level, you will see coming to life under your eyes a sculpture of objects, lights and music, by the artist Saverio Ungheri, founder of the " astralista movement" and since 1976 animator of the cultural center "Pulsating Lung".

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