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When I returned for a further spell of fieldwork in the summer of 2004, the situation had again changed dramatically. After a further series of attempts to evict the residents-each ending, as had its predecessors, with a further postponement-the bank evidently decided that there was no profit to be gained by clinging to the building and that it would be wiser to sell it. The real estate department of the internationally famous Pirelli tire company, acquired the property. At this point, the city administration stepped in and negotiated an arrangement whereby the residents would have the option of remaining in the building on the basis of gradated and gradually increasing rental payments, the terms to be fixed by mutual consent. It seemed that the residents had finally won by sheer persistence, forcing the bank to transfer ownership to an enterprise that was more open to direct negotiation.

Endgame

Sadly, however, their victory proved to be entirely Pyrrhic. The new owners unobtrusively resold the property to another company, which quicklyindeed, on the same day-sold it to a third, at a vastly higher price. This kind of insider trading is not in itself illegal, although the (entirely unsubstantiated~ suspicion remained that the second and third companies actually belonged to a single entity. Such practices are fairly common. One set of three properties in the historic center (one actually in Monti), for example, was sold at auction, but all the companies bidding were subunits of the same business group-"like Chinese boxes," remarked a man who nearly lost his right to live in one of the palazzi as a result of the sale. He was especially incensed because the building in which he lived had been inalienable under the terms of a bequest made to a confraternity some two hundred years earlier; an administrator in the regional government, however, had ruled in favor of the sale, and the ghost companies that were ostensibly competing to buy it quickly took advantage of the new disposition to arrange the sale at an impressive price that would also justify heavily increased rents. We should recall that apparently something of the kind, albeit in more complex fashion, had occurred over many decades in the case of the palazzo in Via degli Ibernesi.

The firm that had now acquired the Via degli Ibernesi property was directed by two members of Rome's Jewish community. They claimed ignorance of the previous agreement with Pirelli, which they had not the slightest intention of respecting. Various alarmed bodies-including the leadership of the Jewish community-tried to intervene. The new owners were adamant; they confirmed, and perhaps traded on, their reputation as ruthless entrepreneurs who had turned their backs on their own community. The elder of the two family heads who ran the business allegedly even snarled at the widely respected community head, "Mind your own business!" (fat[t]e gli affari tuoi!)-in fact, said one resident, he used a far ruder version of this expression, adding that the businessman had behaved arrogantly even to the mayor. The two businessmen then challenged the city administration to make a counteroffer for the property, but their asking price was far higher than the administration was prepared even to challenge. It became clear that nothing further could be done; this company soon thereafter sold the property to yet another firm, one that was developing extensive interests in the neighborhood, and the struggle finally came to an end.

The roots of this collapse were, in the final analysis, legal rather than political. To one of the women's impassioned demand that the city authorities intervene and demand a solution and an end to all the pressure tactics, Galloro pointed out that the city actually had quite limited powers. Over the long years of their struggle, which he had followed in person, "what used to be the relationship one had with, with one's house, has changed ... From a social right it has moved into the realm of economic goods." As a result, under the national constitution,