A dining room table; a basement; an office room; a former warehouse. Things and places—as Carla Simons, the Jewish writer and journalist murdered at Auschwitz, once noted—come alive only if we give them life (La luce danza irrequieta. Diario 1942-1943, Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura 2023). And in its forty years of existence, Ombre e Luci has sown and tended to a great deal of life. Four decades. Four homes. Each one born as temporary shelter; each one became history—often by chance, always through friendship, and above all through a kind of perfect harmony.
The first seat was, to borrow from feminist language, a starting from ourselves. It began around the large table in the dining room of Mariangela Bertolini's home in Rome, as her son Nanni recalls. There, and at the Nazareth Institute on via Cola di Rienzo (the legal headquarters of Fede e Luce until 2012), Insieme was first printed in 1974.
Then came the decades on via Bessarione, number 30—from the early 1980s onward, for thirty-five years. If any location deserves the title of home base, this is it: via Bessarione was not simply one of Ombre e Luci's offices. It was home.
In 1981, the building's porter's lodge became available. The small apartment "was very tiny," Olga Gammarelli would recall years later, "but it might have been enough to house the magazine, at least at first. Then, once it became economically stable, we would need to find a larger, paid space." The five owners of the building—Francesco, Olga's husband; his brother Filippo; and sisters Paola, Maria, and Anna—agreed to give the magazine free use of the space. So into the Gammarelli condominium they came, where Olga and Francesco lived with their children Max and Sabina, one of Fede e Luce's founding women, who now lives at Il Carro. ("With the journalists down in the porter's lodge," Olga would write, "we had plenty of good laughs!") This is where the first issue of Ombre e Luci was born, dated January/March 1983.
No one knew at first what shape the idea of "founding a magazine" would take. We were fearful and uncertain: there was a real danger we would only produce words
No one knew at first what shape the idea of "founding a magazine" would take. We were fearful and uncertain: there was a real danger we would only produce words
Living together yielded much fruit. Take the words Maria Monica spoke in 2007: "We neighbors have always lived in the greatest sympathy with all the volunteers of the editorial staff who came and went over the years […]. You were always ideal guests—courteous, discreet, joyful, and always bearers of peace." That testimony bore results. Recently, in fact, she inspired our special focus on the history of disability (see OL no. 153) through her proud account of her granddaughter Ludovica's thesis on the deaf community.
Time, however, marks everything—places age like skin, and for structural reasons the small apartment on via Bessarione became unusable. Word spread that we needed a new space, especially since the offices of Ombre e Luci had begun to coincide with those of Fede e Luce. We knocked on many doors. Nothing. Meanwhile, the editorial staff kept working, moving from house to house, until Filippo Ascenzi, an old friend, offered us space in his informatics engineering office on via Nomentana, number 150. We tried to be as discreet as possible—we were hardly light on our feet—yet Filippo never made us feel our presence as a burden. His offer was open-ended. For two years, the early twentieth-century architecture merged with modern interiors, floor-to-ceiling windows overlooked an invisible garden, and white gravel pathways became a forge for countless ideas, changes, and projects. (This is where we worked out the leap into newsletters, though not every leap succeeds; obstacles, however, have never stopped OL.)
Finally, via di Valle Aurelia, number 92—a long path, but necessary for the urgent need to have "a room of one's own." Finding a permanent home was one of Angela Gattulli's goals during her first term as president, but at the end of her mandate, nothing yet. Results came only at the dawn of Angela's second term: thanks to a tip from Vito Giannulo and the domino effect that followed, we entered Rome's bid for non-residential housing stock. Angela, Cristina, and Matteo toured ex-warehouses, ex-garages, basements (the legendary Socialist Party headquarters on via Appia still lives in our hearts, but architectural barriers made it impossible). Then came the spaces on via di Valle Aurelia. On March 24, 2021, a tweet announced—with photos—that President Angela Gattulli had officially received the keys to the new office. Then came months of renovation, countless fundraising attempts (or at least partial ones), until the long-awaited "We made it" of January 10, 2022. The spaces were opened; meetings, visits, encounters, and improvements began. Recently, for instance, the office gained "even more light" when opaque entrance panels were replaced with transparent glass.
And so, forty years after Ombre e Luci's birth, here we are in the converted warehouse, having carried with us a piece of that legendary dining room table, the basement that was home for decades, and the white gravel from our dear friend's office: the fourth chapter of our history is now, here, alongside you.
Giulia Galeotti, 2023