Roma e i mercati rionali coperti del Novecento: un patrimonio dal futuro incerto

Markets are the place where demand meets supply, but most importantly they are areas for sociality. They are gathering and aggregation spaces, where the economic dimension interlaces with the socio-cultural one, and their architecture is just one element of a complex system. In Rome there are currently more than 120 local markets and about thirty of them are covered markets, mostly built between 1920 and 1960. Actually, markets represent a variegated scene, where few historical buildings, or particularly valuable architectures, hardly survive in the contemporary city. However, even if most of the markets are located in modest quality buildings, they are integral part of the socio-economic structure of the neighbourhood. The paper illustrates a synthetic overview of the covered neighbourhood markets of Rome, built during the twentieth century, offering some reflections on their destiny.