09/01/2003

Down and Out in Rome: a Guide Book for Survival

ROME (Reuters) - The Colosseum and Trevi fountain aren't even mentioned in a hot-off-the-press guide to Rome. Instead, the pocketbook provides a guide to survival for homeless people in the Eternal City.

Some 5,000 people are homeless in Italy's capital and up to 50,000 people are dependent on others for help -- especially the elderly and the handicapped, according to the Sant'Egidio religious charity which drew up the book.

The 2003 edition of "Where to Eat, Sleep and Wash," which has been dubbed the "Poor-Man's Michelin Guide to Rome," tells the needy and homeless where to find shelters, soup kitchens, public baths and health services.

Demand for the book has skyrocketed since it was first published in 1990. The group printed 2,000 copies of the first edition but this year 13,000 copies of the 148-page "Bible" were printed, highlighting 760 locations that provide services for the needy.

"It contains the secrets to survival in Rome," said Mario Marazziti, a spokesman for the Sant'Egidio community. "This is a different face of Rome, and the guide tells us how to cope with its problems."

"Because of the economic crisis, more and more people are falling below the poverty line," Marazziti added.

The book also gives tips on where to wash clothes, get a book to read and take free language courses -- since many of Rome's needy are immigrants.

Every day, hundreds of apparently well-heeled Italians and East Europeans join scruffy tramps at one of the more popular locales highlighted in the guide: a soup kitchen in Rome's trendy Trastevere neighborhood.

Almost 150,000 free suppers were dished up here last year.

"People would die of hunger without this information," said one North African immigrant as he sat down to a hearty meal of "pasta alla bella donna" and hamburger in tomato sauce.

Indeed, it was the death of a vagrant in 1983 after ambulance workers refused to pick him up that inspired Sant'Egidio to start publishing its pocket-sized guides to Rome.

"We discovered that everyone had their own secrets of survival, they were telling us their own ways of getting around Rome, but we were the only ones who knew," Marazziti said.

For the first time, Sant'Egidio also included a fold-out plastic-coated map with symbols representing all of the eating, sleeping and washing hot spots across the city.

Although the Colosseum does not feature in the guide, it appears on this map.

"But it's just a reference," Marazziti said. "The normal Rome that tourists look at is a backdrop for us."

Shasta Darlington