It's that in between season, when you don't know whether to bundle up or go for the lighter jacket. Romans know how to handle the spring chill: they're bubble wrapped, happy in their quilted outerwear. Based on a few informal surveys, about half--no joke--of our Re-di-Roma-area sample (or via Nazionale, as in the 2nd photo, or Valle Aurelia, as in the other non-manikin photos) were sporting quilted garb. It's a thing.
Bill
Diablo. Diablo, face and name, are all over the in-the-city Tuscolana neighborhood, around Piazza Re di Roma, where we're living on this trip to Rome.
And who is Diablo? Diablo, aka Diabolik, is (that is, was) Fabrizio Piscitelli, the "capo"/head of the Lazio Ultras, a far-right organization of fans of the Lazio football team, the arch-rival of AS-Roma (both teams play in Rome, Lazio being the name of the province). In the photo below, Diablo is closely associated with Gabriele Sandri, also an Ultra fan of the Lazio team. In 2007, while on the road to a game with rival Milan, Sandri was shot and killed at an Autostrada service area by a highway patrol police officer. (We wrote about the latter, "Gabbo," in 2011.)
Diablo was shot, twice, in the back of the head, on August 7, 2019, while sitting on a bench at Parco degli Aquedotti (Aqueduct Park - #2 on RST's Top 40!), off via Tuscolana, southwest of the city center. (It doesn't take a genius to figure out that if wall-writing says "X vive" ("X lives"), X is dead.)
Diablo's killer, disguised as a jogger, was later identified by video surveillance cameras. In the newspaper photo below (published April 15, 2023), Diablo, having just been shot, is circled in red. The presumed shooter, Raul Esteban Calderon (circled in blue as he flees the scene), was found guilty of a second shooting (of another person) and sentenced to 12 years in prison.
Piscitelli had risen to prominence within the Irriducibili, an extreme group of fringe fans of the Lazio team. In 2015, he was sentenced to 4 years and 6 months in prison for trading in drugs.
Bill
From Dianne - why are such lowlifes revered?
