Guide to Monuments and Landmarks for the LGBT Community
There are some secret places in Rome that deserve to be discovered. Among them are monuments, plaques, and places of interest for the LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender) community, often overlooked or passed unnoticed. This article is intended to be a constantly updated collection, useful for the "Roman of Rome" or anyone who, even for a short or long stay, wants to learn more. Here is the map to help you find your way around the places described., often difficult to trace via house numbers.
..
.
Testaccio – the cradle of the gay movement
Let's start in the historic Testaccio neighborhood, which over the years has hosted—and still hosts—the history of the LGBT community, where historic evenings like Muccassassina and Gay Village have their origins.
In Galvani Street, 29 we find the plaque dedicated to Luciano Massimo Consoli, historic founder of the gay movement. Considered by many to be the father of the LGBT community's struggles, looking up, we notice that a plaque was placed on the historic activist's birthplace in 2010, three years after Consoli's passing, which reads: “Journalist and writer. Founder of the Italian Gay Liberation Movement and the LGBT Archive. This is one of two plaques in Rome that explicitly speak of homosexuality, along with the one, which we will see later, dedicated to Paolo Seganti in the Parco delle Valli.
Speaking of LGBT Archive, we can move a few dozen meters away, in Via Zabaglia, 14, where a part of the is located’Massimo Consoli Archive, precisely at the headquarters of the Gay Center. It is possible to visit the Archive for research purposes, as well as the other part of the Archive – divided in two – kept at the headquarters of the Central State Archives, in Archives Square, 27. The Archive is the only LGBT archive in Italy recognized as a cultural asset since 1997. A precious and unique heritage.
More recently realized is the #rainbowall in via Galvani, 51F. You only need to move a little to encounter this work of modern street art, next to which the construction of the Harvey Milk Garden.
In Via Zabaglia, 14 – at the headquarters of the Gay Center, the new exhibition was inaugurated on April 24, 2021 Commemorative plaque to Daniele Stoppello, historic activist and lawyer of Arcigay, who passed away in 2017.
Always walking in the neighborhood, going along Monte Testaccio Street it is possible to find the buildings that housed the ancient seat of Ompo, one of the very first gay associations in Rome, also founded by Consoli, which in 1976 was located in the current building of the ALIBI, the historic and first gay disco in Rome, at number 45. In 1978 he moved instead to the occupied building of Via del Campo Boario, 22. Instead we have to wait until 1992 for the Gay House of Ompo in via Ghiberti, 8B.
Of particular importance is the Non-Catholic Cemetery, in Via Caio Cestio, 6, which hosts the graves of John Addington Symonds; Hendrick Cristian Andersen and Dario Bellezza, historical homosexual figures, and who still awaits Massimo Consoli's will to be buried in that place, as he left written before he died.
Of fundamental historical importance is the location of the Italy's first gay association, called ROMA-1. The headquarters was located in 1968 in Via Ettore Rolli, 47, a few steps from Testaccio, again by Massimo Consoli, who founded the association itself in 1966.
Pyramid Metro – All Potential Targets
A few steps from the Testaccio district, in Ostiense Square, few people know that there is a reference to the extermination of homosexuals by Nazi-fascism in an often forgotten monument. It is about All Potential Targets, where one of the figures depicted has a pink triangle on the back, a symbol used to identify homosexuals and transsexuals in concentration camps.
Gay Street and Monti District
In 2007 the building was officially inaugurated Gay Street in Via San Giovanni in Laterano. A symbolic place for LGBT nightlife and the LGBT community in Rome, it directly overlooks the Colosseum, making it the most beautiful Gay Street in the world, capable of astonishing tourists and non-tourists alike. Few people know, however, that an attempt to develop Gay Street took place not far from here, in Via Pietro Verri, who for some time tried to gather the interests of Roman gay nightlife. It is also worth mentioning the former Hangar in Via In Selci, 63. The Hangar was the capital's first gay club, opened in 1984, but unfortunately it is now closed.
Tufello: Valli Park – Largo Paolo Seganti & Gay Help Line Murals
In 2005, a terrible homophobic murder claimed the life of Paolo Seganti, a young Roman homosexual. The brutality of the event stirred public opinion, bringing the case to national attention. A memorial is dedicated to Seganti, and to all victims of homophobia. plate In the Valleys Park, the scene of the crime. Seganti's murder also led to the creation of the Gay Help Line, a national hotline against homophobia and transphobia.
Not far away, on March 1, 2021, the Gay Help Line Mural which represents the first official mural in Italy with a kiss between people of the same sex. The mural, which is located on the Jonio Metro, follows the suicide of “Andrea”, a fourteen-year-old from the Nomentano high school, which occurred in 2013.
Also nearby is the Monte Baldo Square, 8, the rainbow bench with the Gay Help Line number 800 713 713.
At the Lepanto metro station, precisely in Via Lepanto 5, there is a rainbow bench inaugurated in 2021.
At the Cinecittà metro it is then present, inside the Town Hall Garden, The monument Revealed, which also commemorates the victims of Nazism, through the representation of triangles, including the pink one. Also at Cinecittà Square there are benches with the colours of the transgender flag. On September 7, 2021, a garden was named here Marcella Di Folco, historic Trans activist.
A Garbatella instead the Crazy Horse Park it presents itself with many rainbow benches, while eight rainbow benches are present in Jimma Square in the Municipio II of Rome. Near the Basilica of San Paolo, on the external wall of the ITIS Armellini in Thessalonica Street, the green mural Outside In dedicated to La Karl Dù Pigné. A few steps away, in Beato Placido Riccardi Square, there is a rainbow bench inaugurated in 2023. At the headquarters of the Municipio VIII, in Via Benedetto Croce 50, in front of the library there are the rainbow pedestrian crossing.
At the Pigneto metro station, in Pigneto Street, 104, there is a rainbow bench.
To the’Eur there is the first plaque dedicated to all the victims of transphobia, inaugurated in 2022 on the occasion of TDoR - Transgender Day Of Remembrance. It is placed in memory of Laura Ursaru, a young trans woman killed in Tourism Park in 2017, and placed above a bench with the colors of the transgender flag.
At the Ludovisi District in Corso d'Italia, 25 CGIL – Italian General Confederation of Labour wanted to inaugurate a rainbow bench in front of its headquarters in June 2023.
At the Municipio XIV, near the Casa del Parco Library in Pineta Sacchetti Street, 78, in 2023 a rainbow bench.
Finally, let's not forget:, the three monuments to Pier Paolo Pasolini, present at Host. Ostia celebrates the memory of Pier Paolo Pasolini with three monuments dedicated to him: the stele by Mario Rosati, inaugurated in 2005, in via dell'’Seaplane base right at the site of the writer's assassination, the monolith by Pietro Consagra placed in 1993 in Anco Marzio Square for the eighteenth anniversary of Pasolini's death, where the 2018 Ostia Pride also stopped for a commemorative remembrance, and the statue by Gaetano Gizzi in Lorenzo Gasparri Square.