Rome Travel Guide

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Thursday, February 14, 2013

Graffiti Wisdom: Rome is for...

"Roma da Vedere/Milano da Bere"   There's no perfect translation for this bit of rhyming graffiti, spotted in Monti, but something like "Rome is for looking, Milan is for drinking" would be about right. 

1 comment:

Frederika said...

"Milano da bere" is an expression from the 1980s meaning "drinkable Milan" or "fizzy Milan". If I'm not mistaken it originated in an advertisement for some aperativo, but was soon taken up as an apt expression to describe a certain culture of hip urbanity, fashion, advertising, and cuisine linked with money and political clout that the city prided itself on in those days. Milan da bere was the fief of Bettino Craxi, one time Socialist potentate, and deeply implicated in the bribery scandal of the subsequent decade, called Tangentopoli, or Bribesville. Thus Milan da bere came to its end in the courtrooms of the Milan tribunal in 1992-94.
"Roma da vedere" is thus a bit of (probably quite unjustified) local pride, as in "we never stooped that low."