Rome's Electric MiniBuses, Trams and Coppedè

I just ran across Peter Bardwell on the "mini" electric buses that run around the Centro Storico:  "Not enormously quick, occasionally busy and with, sometimes, rather a wait between them - they're nonetheless a joy to use, and easy to board and leave!" At the time he posted the information, two of the lines had stopped operating because of battery problems.  Hopefully they have been restarted and they are probably meant for little old tourists with knee problems like us!  Below are the electric routes from the ATAC website.

ATAC has an iPhone app but it won't do us much good if we don't have an Internet connection on the street.

Bardwell has some interesting articles on riding ATAC, including A Day on Tram 3 which runs out to the Quartiere Coppedè which I had run across before and found interesting but thought might be too hard to get to.  Gino Coppedè (Firenze 1866 - Roma 1927) was an Italian architect who began building this neighborhood in the Art Nouveau style in 1917.  Everything2 says:

"While continental Art Nouveau features open eroticism, Coppedè worked in a version called Liberty Style which tends to suppress it. Liberty Style is named for its most important commercial patron, Arthur Liberty, who ran a decorative-arts store in London; the style not only conforms to Liberty's own tastes, but also to late Victorian middle-class standards. Liberty Style has strong affinities to English Arts and Crafts Style and the sense of moral uprightness that style tried to reflect."

And goes on to say:

"Instead of focusing on sexuality, Coppodè finds his inspiration in a more intellectualized revival of historical styles, which he mixes joyfully and chaotically. The 31,000 square meters of the quarter (with some 40 structures) are alive with Florentine towers and Venetian palazzi decorated with external mosaics and frescoes, Baroque Roman palazzi with real and imitation papal stemmata, a sundial, and even a building devoted to a musical decorative scheme whose exterior ironwork and carvings imitate musical notation. It is literally fantastic, with structures of vastly different period styles sitting next to one another cheek-by-jowl. It is also wonderful."

Coppedè was contemporaneous with Antoni Gaudí (1852-1926) and there is an Italian TripAdvisor collection of photographs called Il Gaudí de noaltri (The  Gaudí of the rest of us or Our own Gaudí), and his style is similarly eclectic.  Design and Art Magazine offers some of the best photos of the buildings.

 

So if we want to take a tram ride, it seems like this would be the perfect destination!  Spotted by Locals recommends taking a tram ride when you are too tuckered out to walk anymore.  It will show you the real Rome.  Tram lines 3 and 19 stop at Piazza Buenos Aires where you can enter the main entrance to the quarter marked by the big Arch on Via Tagliamento, on the corner with Via Dora.