In Ostia, a coastline of contrasts

For Pier Paolo Pasolini, “the land of bandits” was Calabria. This is if we are to believe The long road of sandin which the author recorded his journey along the Italian coastline in a Fiat 1100 in the summer of 1959. Our unfortunate incident took place near the beach at Ostia, where Pasolini was mysteriously murdered in 1975. While we were visiting Zion Beach, a seaside resort popular with alternative youth, the lock of our Fiat Dolce Vita was broken and our suitcases were stolen. “Alas, this type of theft is quite common here! Little chance of getting your things back,” said the policeman at the nearby Fiumicino airport who took our statement.

The crime scene, some 30 kilometres from the heart of the capital, is the centre of all Roman contradictions. Along the beach that runs from Torvaianica to Ostia, a stretch of almost 15 kilometres, public figures and mafiosi, military men and nudists, transsexuals and environmentalists, nostalgic fascists and immigrants, film stars and tourists cross paths. In April 1953, the lifeless body of the young Wilma Montesi was found there. This unsolved incident caused such a stir that the beach was abandoned by Romans for years. They only began to return in 1966, when the then President Giuseppe Saragat (1898-1988) returned a coastal section of the estate, which housed his summer residence in Castelporziano, to the city of Rome. On the 6,000 hectares still owned by the president, the umbrella pines have been decimated by terrifying parasites over the past 10 years. It is like an allegory of this coast, which is at once blessed and disinherited.

Roman film director Saverio Costanzo knows it all too well. He sometimes plays tennis with the children of actor Ugo Tognazzi (1922-1990) in the holiday village that the iconic Italian actor had built opposite the presidential pine forest in the late 1960s. He also filmed part of his fifth feature film Finally Dawn (2023) on the dunes where Montesi was murdered. “Fellini’s The Dolce Vita (1960) was partly inspired by this murder, which came to symbolize the loss of innocence in postwar Italy,” the filmmaker says. “Along this coastline, the two souls of Rome coexist: libertarian and libertine audacity on one side, and withdrawal, fear and crime on the other.”

‘Leave politics out of the door’

If you’re looking for something a little more daring, Capocotta is it. This beach is part of a nature reserve that opened in 1996. On the southern side, there’s a popular nudist area. The signs are self-explanatory: no masturbating, copulating, taking photos or pitching tents. Legend has it that it all stemmed from the whims of a few flight attendants who stripped naked on the dunes between flights. “I don’t believe it,” said Veronica Ciotoli, who runs the oasis with her husband Sandro Lauri. “The first people to really visit Capocotta were the environmentalists and hippies in the early 1970s. They were mobilized to prevent the construction of a housing complex. That’s when Sandro and I met for the first time. He was nine, I was six. Our parents always took us there.”

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