Chapter 2 - Rome

Summary

In November 1887 the twenty-year-old Pirandello moved from the University of Palermo to the School of Letters of the “Sapienza” in Rome. He was hosted by a maternal uncle, who lived near the Tiber and the (later demolished) Porto di Ripetta. He then went to study in Bonn, Germany, but, after nearly two years, in the summer of 1891 he returned to Rome and decided to book his “forever room” (stanza per sempre). Pirandello and his Sicilian wife Antonietta Portulano would never have a permanent home but a series of rentals: from the city center on Via Sistina; to Prati, a new area under construction; to the Macao district around Termini, the city’s main rail station. From 1913 Pirandello chose a Rome then still partly countryside along the axis of Via Nomentana. The writer’s places would also be those of his characters Mattia Pascal; writer Silvia Roncella in the novel Her Husband; and the protagonist of Shoot!, Serafino Gubbio. Through these and other stories and the historical novel The Old and the Young, also partly set in Rome, the writer’s perspective on the city emerges.