Via San Piero is an alley in the center of Carrara, a few steps from the central Piazza Alberica and next to Piazza De André, where the Animosi Theater is located.
This alley is home to the Cooperativa Tipolitografica, the self-managed libertarian print shop that has been printing the main publications, magazines books and pamphlets of the anarchist movement since the 1970s, including Umanità Nova, the newspaper founded in 1920 by Errico Malatesta that is now a weekly.
In 2002, on the initiative of some libertarians, the “Frescoes of Memory” project was developed, which brought various artists from different parts of Europe to work collectively on the wall of the block of flats where the Cooperative is based, and a large mural work was born. The idea was to aesthetically re-evaluate that place while also involving the inhabitants in order to revitalize the alley in a social and political sense; to this end, the creation of the work was accompanied by theatrical performances.
Sixteen years later, thanks to the idea of the Circolo dei Baccanali, a very active and busy ARCI club, and with the same purpose, the “Adopt an alley” project was born, which gave new life to the fountain known as “del pidocchio” (the name by which the place is traditionally known), then filled the street with pots of plants and flowers tended by the alley’s residents and club members, who then invited both famous and emerging street artists, including students from the city’s Academy of Fine Arts, to decorate the walls with their art. The invitation was taken up by dozens of artists who created more than 30 murals along the entire length of the alley that reaches the historic Groppoli Bridge, which connected the eponymous suburb on the right bank of the Carrione River with the city walls and was saved from being torn down by a citizen mobilization. The result is there for all to see: that of the “Pidocchio” (pioč in dialect) that was a degraded and neglected area has become an open-air museum with works of artistic, civic and political value that attracts tourists and the curious, a fine example of urban regeneration from below that has much to teach about the value of art and active citizenship.
The project has not ended, and the works are continuously being expanded, updated, and every free space is filled with new stimuli.