In 2001, we wished to create a human rights project in Italy. The project consists of the design and preparation of the 5th subway station about Human Rights in Europe. After building 4 subway stations (Paris, Lisbon, Brussels, Stockholm), it appeared crucial to create a Human Rights station in Roma. At the invitation of Bruno Racine, the head of Villa Medicis in Rome, Françoise Schein has spent several months in Rome to learn about the local culture, different potential partners and collaborators, and strategies to start to operate.

This concept of the project represented a memory underground, a quest into the depths of the soul. Writing the human text is the main goal of Inscrire. It is not law but ethics. Underground, every station has the value of a buried work under our feet like an archeology of the future, which resonates in all other European capitals. It is a moral gesture of hope for the next generation.

We proposed to write the Human Rights text on the vault of the Piazza di Spagna station engraved in Travertin stones because it is a historical tradition of the Roma that has spanned many centuries. Intermingled with the text, there will be many miniature replicas of angels from the many Roman churches. Children are our contemporary angels.

This station with its double vault has also long corridors of access, ending by a dark entrance, into a little dead-end, coming from di Piazza di Spagna. It is a terribly ugly station that needs renovation. However, it provides the ideal conditions and location to create Romaetica. The station will resonate with the Concorde subway station in Paris.

Villa Médicis
Bruno Racine

Metropolitana di Roma
City of Roma