I Tabellari – The Roman mobility craftsmen

ATAC is the main public transport company in Rome. The origins date back to 1845, when one bus line connected Piazza Venezia and Basilica di San Paolo started working, becoming the city’s first public transport route. In the following years, other routes were introduced contributing to urban mobility development.

Over about 160 years of public transport operation in Rome, not only did the vehicles evolve, but so did the communication systems designed for passengers. Early vehicles displayed rectangular destination boards indicating their terminals, often produced without any coordinated design guidelines. These were later replaced by systems introduced by Società Romana Tramway e Omnibus (SRTO), which adopted recognisable signs featuring white backgrounds and dark lettering, positioned on the front and sides of vehicles to indicate routes.

Within this context of progressive service development, ATAG (Azienda Tranvie e Autobus del Governatorato) was established in 1909. Following the fall of Fascism, it became ATAC (first Azienda Tranviaria Autofiloviaria Comunale and later Azienda Tramvie e Autobus del Comune di Roma). Throughout the 20th century, ATAC became the main operator of Roman mobility, managing most of the urban transportation.

It was also in 1909 that the first tabellari emerged. Employees whose task was to hand-paint destination boards and bus stop signs. Their work marked the beginning of a professional tradition that would span almost a century of Roman mobility, evolving from a practical necessity into a form of urban typographic craftsmanship.

To start this job, people were selected from among municipal transport workers for their attitude in handwriting and drawing. They then undertook an apprenticeship based on manual practice and the repetition of the same letterforms—much like ancient scribes. Many learned from older colleagues, repeatedly copying words and numbers until they achieved complete mastery of the gesture.

During this period of urban expansion, routes changed frequently. As a result, signs required constant production and regular updating. 

Initially, signs were made from wood or untreated metal. From the 1930s to the 1980s, production became consolidated within the company workshops on Via Prenestina, where they adopted a standardised system. The signs consisted of removable rectangular steel plates, supported by two lateral pins and topped with a cast-iron frame.

The process required specialised tools and precision. The plates were first painted white by hand and then ruled in pencil, marking only the baseline; the height and proportions of the letters depended entirely on the artisan’s experience. The plate was placed on an inclined surface, while the painter’s hand was supported by a wooden or metal rod, allowing lettering without touching the painted surface.

The tabellari used flat-tipped brushes, often modified or handmade from commercially available ones that were compressed, trimmed and reshaped to achieve the desired stroke. Each artisan knew exactly how much paint to load and how to distribute it along a line, maintaining consistent thickness, inclination and proportions. Their experience allowed them to compose balanced and precise lettering directly by hand while the paints were commonly diluted with acetone to accelerate drying.

Service information, such as route numbers and terminal destinations, was often produced using stencil masks and sans-serif lettering frequently through screen-printing techniques to ensure consistency. 

Intermediate stops, however, were written entirely freehand. The calligraphic technique was highly disciplined and transmitted from “master” to “apprentice.”The calligraphic technique was strict and passed down from master to apprentice. The style developed internally within the company recalled the uncial and gothic script used in manuscripts produced by Latin and Byzantine scribes between the 3rd and 8th centuries AD.

Once a sign had fulfilled its function, it was sanded down and repainted for reuse. Oral testimonies from the 1970s report that only three artisans were responsible for the production and maintenance of approximately 12,000 signs, sometimes painting as many as sixty or seventy in a single day.

During the 1990s, before the profession disappeared completely, these signs were still occasionally produced for service notices, emergency announcements, and temporary routes associated with conferences, exhibitions, sporting events and cultural manifestations, for which industrial production would not have been economically viable. This visual heritage survived until the gradual introduction of industrial printing techniques and computerised signage systems.

This profession ultimately vanished with the arrival of the new millennium. The artisans who preserved this specialised knowledge gradually retired and were not replaced, bringing to a close an era in which urban signage was also the expression of a distinctive manual and visual culture.

Bibliography / Sources:

Calligrafia 1991-1995 - A cura di Lucia Cesarone

Andrea Frasca, L'identificazione delle linee urbane; le tabelle di linea, tramroma.com, 10-09-2021, link articolo.

Marco Valerio, Un salto nel passato dei trasporti grazie al modellismo. Una mostra a Torre Maura, diarioromano.it, 03-02-2023, link articolo.