The history of the Campagna Romana is indissolubly linked to the flux-reflux theory of Vico; a history of reclamation, abandon, death and rebirth. There had already been land reclamations in Roman times, perhaps before, when new elements are inserted with which to connect nascent Rome and the countryside: the Consular Roads. Ribbon roads, before beaten earth, then of black basalt on which the life of Rome unfolds.
A brief historical excursus leads us to underline how the Campagna Romana has had, since prehistoric times up to today, an unhomogeneous history.
Characterised first by the dominion of Rome, then by the Papacy, and finally the vicissitudes of Lazio under the Reign of Italy up to the end of 1870.
From Land Reclamation, first Etruscan, then Roman, to the "ora et labora" ("pray and work") of the Middle Ages; then the energies dispersed after the collapse of the Empire are now strengthened and re-oganised by the Benedictine order. From the Fifth Century to the Twelth the self sufficiency of the lord of the manor becomes clear, while dark ages are on the way, illuminated only by the beacon of monasticism.
Then, again, abandon.
Some centuries later, the Seventeenth Century shows some stirs of the Grand Tour. We are towards the end of the century when the Campagna Romana becomes a fascinating theme for travellers, poets, painters, impelled to embark on a long and inconvenient itinerary to enjoy the mildness of the climate and the enchantment of the countryside.
In the Eighteenth Century, painters fascinated and ravished by the beauties of Ninfa, represented it as a crumbling fascination. Their painted description of the ruins is linked to the theme of transitoriness in human affairs and the relentless work wrought by nature upon them. Looking back on the diaries and recollections of the age of the enlightenment we realise that the Campagna Romana does not exert any fascination. On the contrary, the sentiments which prevail in these chronicles are indignation and even scorn: "prodigious expanses of small, barren, uncultivated hills, absolutely deserted, sad and quite horrible, so Romulus would have had to be drunk to think of building Rome in such a place". Travellers show a total lack of interest in the human countryside, as compared with the theme of ruins.
Poetry linked to the theme of ancient ruins was born with Goethe: his spirit guarded the precious lesson of Winklemann and not even the most squalid landscape could upset him. The marshes did not strike him in a negative way, he is even fascinated by the play of lights and shadows produced by the marshes.The variations on this sublime/tragic topos follow one after the other in a range of themes: colour, reproposed in gradations of sunset mixed with the colour of lavander on canvas entitled Sunset by P. Barocci, or mixed w ith bluish colours of sky and muddy green of the marshes of A.Vertunni, in Paludi pontine, really sublime. The theme of malaria intended as a divine interpretation of the corrupt, which Dickens expanded to biblical proportions. The theme of the great solitary expanse, assimilable to the semi deserted city of De Chirico, a real representation of personal nightmares, and finally the theme of brigands, a rooted and ancient, sore, and always a source of romantic invention.
One may say that the conditions of the Campagna Romana, after the unification of Italy were more or less the same as four centuries before: an immense moor of pastures and woods infested by ponds and marshes, interrupted by few arable fields and strips of vineyards, and gardens inside the city.
A very thin popoluation, described as in: "a state of almost wild life, scarce and bad foof render living conditions in the Campagna Romana miserable".
An itinerary of evocative voices supplies us with a more or less homogeneous picture of the CampagnaRomana, of extremely evocative places, which strike the sensibility of the community. So everyone tell us: much has been written and said and painted on the Campagna Romana. One voice, that of Luigi Canna, speaks for all in 1839, when he affirms: "Describing the Campagna Romana in its ancient state (.) is not a theme easy to sum up, when one wishes to say something more useful than has been published up to now."
To this we may add what F. Noack writes at the beginning of the twentyth Century : "(.) on the Campagna Romana as it is well known most, among those who know it, more do so through picturesque images and writings rather than through first hand inspection. There exist few strips of land in our earthly sphere on which so much has been written as on the Campagna Roma (.) few zones exist that have fascinated and enchanted art like those of the Campagna Romana".
