Rebibbia (Rome)

“Caesar Must Die” is a 2012 movie by Taviani Brothers, inspired by the Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar. The directors had seen the Rebibbia ensemble at work and were convinced of its cinematic potential but needed a story with universal resonance. Conspiracy, betrayal, guilt, leadership, and the corruption of power—all central themes in Shakespeare’s tragedy—echoed the actors’ own lives and the paths that had led them to prison.

The prison is a crucial passage for those who end up inside it. Fuori, the film by Mario Martone, shot in prison and based on Goliarda Sapienza’s novel The University of Rebibbia, portrays the spaces of Rebibbia as a labyrinth where fragmented space and disoriented senses contribute to “regressing you to childhood,” as Goliarda writes, and which can suddenly become a kind of home, strangely similar to the outside world.

Among gardens and walls unfolds the tragic story of Germana Stefanini, a guard executed by three self-styled revolutionaries during a so-called “proletarian trial,” whose name was later given to the Female Section of Rebibbia prison.

“Camera Oscura” was a photographic project by Tano D’Amico occurred in Rebibbia. One of the few that let the detainee shoot their own photos. It was a way to overturn photography’s usual role from an instrument of control and transform it into a space of shared freedom, and above all, a way to bridge, or at least narrow, the distance from the outside. As some participants wrote years later: “Since we do not wish anyone to have to come and visit us here, we prefer to reach you ourselves through our images.”

How does a wedding happen in prison? Isabella De Silvestro tells the story of Tiziana, a woman who attended two weddings, one as a guest and the other as the bride, during the 1980s, when they were all political prisoners in Rebibbia.

In early ’90s Rebibbia, three lives crossed: Princesa (Fernanda Farias de Albuquerque), a trans woman from Brazil; Giovanni, a Sardinian lifer; and Maurizio, ex-Brigate Rosse. Their secret letters became the novel Princesa, an act of liberation that lingers on her experiences of desire, sex, and self, while suggesting a historical passing from political struggle to identity struggle.

Pope Francis died in prison. He entered Rebibbia, fell into a coma, and died. It gave meaning to his mission. For the first time in history, a pontiff opened a Holy Door inside a penitentiary. Francis himself said that on that occasion, for one day, Rebibbia became a basilica: “I opened the first Holy Door at Christmas in St Peter’s, but I wanted the second Holy Door to be here, in a prison. I wanted each of us here, inside and outside, to have the chance to fling open the doors of our hearts and understand that hope does not disappoint.”

Sergio Lenci was the architect of the New Rebibbia Penitentiary Complex. A visionary modernist, attentive to social issues and to the living conditions of inmates, he became the victim of an attempted assassination by a group of Brigatisti in the 1970s. From that day and for the rest of his life, Sergio devoted himself to understanding the reasons behind the attack. The story of the new Rebibbia begins in this way: in armed struggle, in the internal conflict within the architectural instrument, and in reflection on the idea of forgiveness.

Check this excerpt: Prison is a country most people never come to know. You don’t set out for it; you end up there, often without quite realising how. No one chooses it, but who lives in it? These are the stories of Rebibbia. The stories of 17 people—a small group who resemble, however, the many who inhabit all these countries where you end up without ever wanting to.

Rebibbia is a “neighborhood that doesn’t exist”: a prison suspended between maps and walls, visibility and invisibility. Hyperlocal explores the shared ground between the district and its prison, two mirrored worlds that surface only in brief flashes of attention before returning to silence, revealing stories, voices, and reflections on justice, time, and coexistence—told directly by inmates and through original narratives that position Rebibbia Prison itself as a central subject.