Regina Coeli, with cells on upper floors opening onto walkways that overlook an open atrium below, is steeped in local folklore – it’s said you are not a real Roman until you have been a “guest” there. It sits directly below Janiculum Hill where at dusk on Sunday you could almost see into the cells where lights were switched on.
It was at this makeshift lookout where until recently, prisoners were given a couple of 10-minute phone calls a week and access to emails. Relatives and loved ones also used to regularly gather to announce births, deaths and give moral support to inmates.
A guard walks down a corridor of Regina Coeli prison in Rome.Credit: AFP
Inside, many religious artworks and monuments remain from its time as a monastery. One wing has hosted so many famous prisoners that it even has a preservation order.
Behind the high walls covered in cracks and flaking plaster, Italian communist Antonio Gramsci was jailed by Benito Mussolini in the 1920s. In 1943, the Nazis – led by SS commander Erich Priebke – rounded up and imprisoned more than 1000 Roman Jews. Many met a horrific death in the notorious Ardeatine massacre.
Sandro Pertini, then a relatively unknown partisan but later a president of Italy, was also sent here in 1944 by the Germans occupying Rome.
Under pressure to address the growing number of murders, rapes and drug trafficking operations behind the prison walls, the Italian parliament in August passed a law to improve conditions for 61,000 people incarcerated in the country’s prisons – some 10,000 more than the official capacity.
A view from the above of the Regina Coeli prison.Credit: AP
Chronic overcrowding and understaffing have combined with stifling summer heat to create prison conditions in which 65 inmates have taken their own lives so far this year, with two recent suicides on Wednesday, compared with 70 in the whole of 2023. It is estimated up to 10 officers also took their own lives this year.
The government has vowed to hire more prison personnel, allow inmates to make more phone calls, simplify procedures for them to obtain early release, and boost community care facilities once they are outside.
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Patrizio Gonnella, the president of the prisoner aid organisation, says the situation is a “time of tension, suffering and death”.
“A prison where the number of inmates is higher than the number of regular places is a prison where life is bad,” she says.
If you or anyone you know needs help, call Lifeline on 13 11 14 or Beyond Blue on 1300 22 4636.
