Editor’s note
If you are holding this magazine, you’ve just found Roman Radar.
What started as a weekly digital newsletter on Substack – a curated guide to the 10 best cultural happenings in Rome each week – has now taken a physical form.
Roman Radar was created to bridge the gap between the Rome you see in postcards and the real, gritty, and vibrant city we live in, regardless if you’re a seasoned local or just passing through.
The magazine in your hands is the launch of a travelling concept. In collaboration with the Rome-based collective c+e hub (read more about them on page 4), we are embarking on a journey through different Roman neighbourhoods, launching a magazine at a different edicola for every stop.
This is our starting point: San Lorenzo, a neighbourhood that Rome and its visitors tend to get wrong.
It’s often dismissed as a student quarter or romanticized as a working-class relic, but beyond the graffitied-covered walls and the reputation for chaotic nightlife, lies a district that has always been the city’s conscience. San Lorenzo is a place of hard edges and high stakes. It is the memory of the 1943 bombings and the barricades of the 70s (which you can read more about on page 10), but it is also a living laboratory.
It is the tension between the historic botteghe and the new creative studios taking over abandoned garages. It’s the student-driven protests in the main square, and the quiet consistency of people like Sergio who runs the Enoteca Sabelli – a place without signs, but which has kept locals fed with wine, regional cheese and cold cuts for years. It is a district that doesn't try to please you. It is stubborn, independent, and fiercely protective of its identity.
Inside these pages, you'll find conversations with local artists about whether San Lorenzo is becoming Rome's most unexpected art district and what that means in terms of gentrification. You’ll find an essay exploring how the student protests against femicide are challenging unwritten rules, a portrait of Tania's kitchen, a restaurant that has fed generations of locals – along with a deep dive into the anti fascist history of the neighbourhood, and a guide to spending a day here the way locals do.
The photographs in this magazine are all taken by Rome-based artists who generously lent us their eyes to capture the district’s shifting light and shadows.
This project is produced entirely independently by three women, so this magazine is a labor of love. Think of this issue as a spotlight, a conversation, or a fragment of a larger map. Like everything we do, this is not a complete guide but rather a carefully curated selection. Start anywhere. And if you want to know where the Radar is heading next, join us online on Substack or Instagram.
Happy to have you on our Radar
Nora, Giulia & Stella
