They constructed it, and folks got here.

Teenage boys, largely, from Roma Nord, Ostia, Prenestina, Monterotondo and different suburbs, trekking to Rome’s metropolis middle, boards in hand, to heelflip and airwalk and boardslide among the many obstacles of a brand new skatepark, which opened to the general public simply earlier than Christmas.

“We had been determined; we didn’t have something,” mentioned Lorenzo Ficini, 27, a advertising and marketing specialist and skateboarder who, as if on cue, approached a reporter to say that he needed to thank town for the skatepark. An unprompted public relations triumph.

“For us, it’s a dream come true — the construction is nice. After which,” Mr. Ficini mentioned, nodding his head southward, the place the higher arches of the Colosseum emerged above a row of timber. “You’ve received this. It’s marvelous.”

The skatepark — perched on the Oppian Hill, as this space overlooking the first-century amphitheater has been recognized since historic instances — is openly praised by Rome metropolis officers because the skatepark with the most effective view on the planet.

“Speak about a photograph alternative,” mentioned Alessandro Onorato, the Rome Metropolis Council member liable for tourism and occasions.

The distinctive location, he mentioned, helped persuade World Skate, the governing physique of all sports activities on skating wheels, that it ought to maintain a road skateboarding competitors in Rome final summer time. The occasion drew a whole bunch of prime athletes from world wide, and the state-of-the-art park constructed for the competitors was left behind for Romans to get pleasure from.

“It reveals how a one-off occasion can have a long-lasting influence on a metropolis,” Mr. Onorato mentioned.

On a current afternoon, the regular “thump, thump” of skate boarders sticking their landings stuffed the air, together with an occasional, “Whoop!”

“It’s an enormous deal for us,” mentioned Papik Rossi, 49, a fixture on the Rome skateboarding circuit. “We by no means had a center-scene skatepark.”

He fell in love with skateboarding after watching the 1985 traditional movie “Again to the Future,” he mentioned, and, decreasing his voice, he added, “They’ll deny it, however half the individuals I do know began for a similar motive.”

The brand new park is “good for brand spanking new skaters,” he mentioned, however he nonetheless prefers the streets.

When Mr. Rossi started skateboarding within the Nineteen Eighties, virtually the entire metropolis’s skaters had been on a first-name foundation. Ugo Bertolucci, 49, was additionally part of that early scene. Then, Mr. Bertolucci mentioned, skate boarders had been thought-about “extraterrestrials,” freaks in a nation the place soccer was king. “Now, it’s an Olympic sport,” he shrugged.

Mr. Bertolucci recalled that, earlier than the web, it was tougher to be taught new tips. Again then, skate boarders like himself would watch VHS tapes of their counterparts in america — the birthplace of skateboarding — “again and again, till they had been worn by way of.”

Studying by doing, falls had been inevitable. Right this moment, a extra formal kind of training comes from the various skateboarding colleges which have sprung up amid the game’s rising recognition. These classes forestall many accidents, mentioned Mr. Bertolucci, who now builds skateparks in northern Italy, the place skateboarding is extra widespread.

“Again then,” he mentioned, “you needed to be robust.”

And it’s a must to be keen to threat fines as a result of skateboarding is banned on Rome’s streets. The popular haunts for the rebels: the Foro Italico, the positioning of the Olympic stadium, and the outlying EUR neighborhood. Each are Fascist-era areas dense with travertine stone of assorted geometric shapes and expanses — a skateboarder’s dream.

That dream has now shifted to an space that till just a few months in the past created nightmares for Mr. Onorato, town councilor.

When Rome’s center-left administration got here into energy in October 2021, the realm the place the skatepark now stands was plagued by syringes and run down, its benches defaced and damaged.

A extra modest skatepark that was there was repeatedly vandalized after which closed after a younger boy harm himself on a “deteriorated monitor,” a metropolis spokesman mentioned. Native newspapers chronicled the positioning’s deterioration, photographic indictments exhibiting piles of rubbish and damaged ramps.

“Are you aware what my greatest nightmare was?” Mr. Onorato requested in a phone interview. “That 9 months in the past, a overseas correspondent would have visited the realm as a result of they’d have written an exposé saying that 200 meters from the Colosseum was an space of drug offers and drug customers.”

“That is not the case,” he mentioned.

The brand new skatepark is an element of a bigger playground, and the undertaking, which price about 200,000 euros, or about $210,000, to construct, will embrace a small soccer pitch, a volleyball courtroom, a spot with health machines and an space going through the Colosseum with checker and chess boards. “Similar to Central Park,” Mr. Onorato mentioned.

And vandalism, Italian officers say, will probably be a factor of the previous. Earlier than, Mr. Onorato mentioned, surveillance was slipshod, and the realm had been left largely to itself. Now, upkeep and safety of the skatepark has been entrusted to Sport e Salute (Sport and Well being), an organization owned by the Ministry of Economic system that manages main sporting occasions and promotes sports activities and well-being.

“We’re used to taking care of sporting areas, and we’ll be capable to do the identical for the playground on the Oppian Hill,” mentioned Vito Cozzoli, the president and chief government of Sport e Salute. “We additionally spoke to the skaters, who’re the primary customers, they usually’re going to assist us take care of the realm, conscious additionally of privilege of getting at their disposal a park with a view of the Colosseum.”

“It’s in everybody’s curiosity that the park be cared for,” he mentioned.

It’s nonetheless early to inform how the undertaking will pan out, however officers are optimistic. They are saying that the skatepark is a strategy to mud off Rome’s musty picture, which carries the load of its historical past.

“We wish to communicate to younger individuals with a contemporary language,” Mr. Cozzoli mentioned, “and the park unites the message of the classical previous with the fashionable message of skateboarding.”

The skatepark can be assembly a rising demand within the metropolis, the place skateboarding’s recognition has risen because the sport was featured a couple of years in the past within the Tokyo Olympics, mentioned Marla Ascone, 44, who, along with her husband, Nicolò Mattia Cimini, 43, owns and manages a non-public skatepark in Rome. “These days, once we exit, we frequently come throughout skaters we don’t know,” she mentioned. “Earlier than, you knew all people.”

As nightfall fell, the skate boarders took their final rides. One in every of them, Fabio Spalvieri, bemoaned the shortage of buildings in his metropolis, Frosinone, about 46 miles southeast of Rome, forcing him to journey. “At the very least it’s enjoyable,” he mentioned.

Now that the skatepark is finished, Mr. Onorato mentioned he was sure that individuals would come from overseas, too, citing emails he had obtained from skaters world wide intrigued by the positioning.

“There’s a complete group of people that, because of that park, will come to Rome to not see the Sistine Chapel or St. Peter’s, however as a result of they wish to skate within the park,” he mentioned. “That is what we needed — to speak to the world a picture of a extra up to date metropolis.”

The spruced-up park has made locals comfortable, too. Largely.

“It had been deserted. At the very least now individuals are utilizing it,” mentioned Michele Cubino, the proprietor of a restaurant simply across the nook from the skatepark. “Or a minimum of they’ll use it till somebody hurts themselves as a result of it was unsupervised,” he added. “Then they’ll simply shut it down.”