Martina Smeraldi doesn’t just live in Rome-she rewrites its rhythm. While tourists line up for the Trevi Fountain and snap selfies in front of the Colosseum, Smeraldi walks through backstreets where graffiti bleeds into Renaissance arches and old workshops still smell of linseed oil and cigarette smoke. Her Rome isn’t the one in postcards. It’s the one where a 17th-century chapel hides a neon-lit performance space, and where a former nun turned sculptor sells clay figures out of a van near Trastevere. This is the city’s edge-the raw, unpolished layer that most visitors never see, and the one Smeraldi has spent years mapping, documenting, and living inside.
Where Art Meets the Unspoken
Smeraldi’s work isn’t confined to galleries. She doesn’t wait for permission to exhibit. In 2023, she turned a derelict printing press in the San Giovanni district into a three-week immersive installation called Whispers in the Ink. Visitors entered through a rusted metal door, walked over cracked tiles, and found walls covered in handwritten letters-some from prisoners, others from lovers who never sent them. The air smelled of damp paper and burnt coffee. No ticket was needed. No curator stood at the entrance. People just showed up. By the end, over 2,000 visitors had left their own notes tucked into the walls. No one removed them. No one was asked to.
This is her method: art that doesn’t ask to be seen, but demands to be felt. She works with materials others discard-broken ceramics from the Tiber’s banks, rusted door handles from abandoned palazzos, old film reels found in attic trunks. She doesn’t restore them. She lets them speak. One piece, Broken Madonna, uses shards of a 19th-century religious statue fused with a cracked smartphone screen displaying a live feed of the Vatican’s empty piazza at 3 a.m. It’s not sacrilege. It’s silence made visible.
The Underground Network
Smeraldi moves through Rome’s hidden networks like a ghost with a purpose. She knows the bar in Testaccio where musicians play cello under the bridge, the basement studio in Monti where a former ballet dancer now teaches tai chi to ex-convicts, the abandoned textile factory in Pigneto that hosts monthly poetry readings under flickering fluorescent lights. These aren’t tourist attractions. They’re lifelines. People come here because they’re tired of polished performances. They want something real.
She doesn’t promote these spaces. She protects them. When developers tried to buy the Pigneto factory in 2022, Smeraldi organized a week-long occupation. Artists, students, retirees, and homeless people slept inside. They cooked meals on portable stoves. They read aloud from books banned under Mussolini. The city didn’t evict them. The developer walked away. The building still stands. The readings continue.
Why Rome’s Edge Matters
Rome is often called a museum. But museums are for looking. Smeraldi’s Rome is for touching, for breathing, for breaking rules quietly. She’s not against history-she’s against its exploitation. The Vatican sells relics. The Colosseum sells audio guides. The Pantheon sells €12 gelato. But in her Rome, value isn’t measured in euros. It’s measured in presence.
She once spent six months tracking the movement of a single marble fragment-once part of a Roman aqueduct, later used in a 1950s apartment building, then discarded in a landfill near Ostia. She found it, cleaned it, and placed it in a small glass case in a neighborhood library. No plaque. No explanation. Just the stone. Within weeks, people started leaving flowers beside it. Then poems. Then small toys. A grandmother brought her grandchild every Sunday to sit with it. No one knew why. They just felt it mattered.
The Artists Who Follow Her Lead
Smeraldi doesn’t run a school. But she’s taught more than any professor in Rome. Young artists come to her not for advice, but for silence. She’ll sit with them for hours in a courtyard, saying nothing, watching the light shift on the walls. When they finally speak, she asks one question: What are you afraid to show?
One of them, 24-year-old Luca Moretti, started painting on the underside of bridges after meeting her. His work-bright, chaotic murals visible only to people walking below-now appears on over 30 bridges across the city. No permits. No signatures. Just color. He says he doesn’t paint for fame. He paints because Smeraldi showed him that art doesn’t need approval to be true.
What You Won’t Find in Travel Guides
If you want to find Smeraldi’s Rome, you won’t find it on Google Maps. You won’t find it in Instagram reels. You won’t find it in the Rome Travel Guide published by Lonely Planet. You’ll find it in the way a woman in her 70s, wearing a wool coat and carrying a bag of bread, stops to talk to a street musician who plays only on Tuesdays. You’ll find it in the smell of wet stone after rain, when the shadows of ancient columns stretch just right over a pile of discarded newspapers. You’ll find it in the quiet spaces where people don’t take photos-they just sit.
Smeraldi’s art isn’t about spectacle. It’s about attention. In a city that sells its past for €50 a tour, she reminds people that the most powerful things aren’t the ones you pay to see. They’re the ones you notice when you stop looking for them.
Where to Start
You don’t need to know her name to find her world. Start here:
- Walk through the Testaccio market on a Tuesday morning. Look for the stall with the hand-painted sign: “Ceramiche da Rifiuti”. The woman selling them doesn’t speak English. She’ll smile and hand you a cup made from broken tiles.
- Go to the church of San Carlo alle Quattro Fontane at dusk. Sit in the back. Listen. Sometimes, a violin plays-no announcement, no program. Just music.
- Visit the library at Via del Boschetto 17. Check the third shelf on the left. There’s a book with no title. Open it. Inside, someone wrote a letter to their younger self. It’s still there.
- Don’t ask for directions. Get lost in Trastevere after 8 p.m. Let the alleys lead you. If you hear laughter coming from a basement, go down.
There’s no map. No app. No guidebook. Just curiosity. And maybe, if you’re quiet enough, you’ll find something that stays with you longer than any statue ever could.
Who is Martina Smeraldi?
Martina Smeraldi is an Italian artist and cultural observer based in Rome. She’s known for creating immersive, site-specific installations using discarded materials and hidden urban spaces. Her work focuses on silence, memory, and the unnoticed layers of Roman life. She doesn’t seek fame or gallery representation-her art lives in alleyways, libraries, and abandoned buildings.
Is Martina Smeraldi a well-known artist?
She’s not famous in the traditional sense. You won’t find her name in major art magazines or on auction catalogs. But within Rome’s underground art circles, she’s a quiet legend. People who’ve experienced her work-whether through a whispered invitation or stumbling upon an installation-often describe it as life-changing. Her influence spreads through word of mouth, not marketing.
Can I visit Martina Smeraldi’s installations?
You can, but not by booking a tour. Her installations are temporary, unannounced, and often hidden. They appear without warning-sometimes for a few hours, sometimes for weeks. The best way to find them is to wander slowly through neighborhoods like Testaccio, Pigneto, and Monti, and pay attention to small signs: an open door, a chalk mark on a wall, a single flower left on a step. She believes art should be found, not scheduled.
Does Martina Smeraldi have a studio?
She doesn’t have a traditional studio. She works wherever she finds materials-on the floor of a friend’s apartment, in the back of a van, inside a disused subway tunnel. Her tools are simple: glue, wire, brushes, and a notebook. She collects fragments of Rome’s past and turns them into quiet monuments. She says the city itself is her studio.
How is Martina Smeraldi different from other Roman artists?
Most Roman artists work within the system-galleries, grants, exhibitions. Smeraldi works outside it. She doesn’t apply for funding. She doesn’t sell her work. She doesn’t even sign it. Her art exists to create moments of connection, not to be owned or displayed. While others focus on beauty, she focuses on truth-even when it’s messy, quiet, or uncomfortable.
