This summer, the Piazza del Popolo hosted some large columnar sculptures. The other night, Michael and I were fortunate enough to happen upon their removal. We were going for our nightly stroll at around 10 pm and we saw workmen eating dinner at the local bar, and large trucks and cranes inside the no-traffic zone of the piazza. We knew something good was about to happen.
It was worth the wait! We got to enjoy more than 2 hours' worth of entertainment, although we didn't stay until the bitter end. We weren't the only spectators by any means: the bar Bacio di Latte ended up closing late because we were all still ordering drinks and gelato past midnight.
Part of the fun was watching the personalities emerge. We had "Mario" (who looked like a character from Mario Brothers) who was a novice on the rental crane but was willing to give it a go. We had Michele, aka "the diggingest dog" who loved using his angle grinder to access various attachment points in the concrete base, we had the workers who were mostly observing dubiously, we had the twins who participated in a carefully choreographed round of wrapping the sculptures in plastic wrap, and we had the experienced crane operator who did a spectacular job of lifting the sculptures, then working with a third crane to rotate them into a horizontal position. After the wrapping, they had to be hoisted into the flatbed trucks in a very precise manner in order to fit everything in to be taken away.
 "Mario" is in the crane loosening the structure |
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| the twins, wrapping one of the columns |
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| Laid out and ready to be loaded |
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| The diggingest dog loved his angle grinder |
Another enjoyable evening for the price of a gelato.
Love,
Alexandra
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