Monday, August 08, 2005
Virtual Streets
She would never have dreamed that one day she would have a street named after her. Yet today Rome has a Via Modesta Valenti. It is home to almost 700 people.
But try to get a taxi driver to take you there, and you will have difficulties. Look it up in a street guide and you will draw a blank.
For Via Modesta Valenti is one of at least a half a dozen "virtual streets" in Italy that bear witness to Italian inventiveness, soft-heartedness - and skill at dodging awkward laws. The streets' "existence" was brought to light yesterday in a report published by the weekly supplement of the daily Corriere della Sera.
They were invented by local authority bureaucrats as a way of providing help to the homeless. Under Italian law, you cannot get identity documents without a registered address - and without identity documents you cannot receive benefits, medical care or even, sometimes, charitable help.
It seems it was a caring bureaucrat in Bologna who hit upon the idea of creating a fictitious street for the homeless. He or she called it Via Senza Tetto, or Roofless Street.
The biggest such community is in Florence where Via Lastrucci is "home" to more than 1,300 people. (Link)
