“Old Cities New Architecture”: Notes on the Modern Rome Sharing the Italian Modern Culture of Architecture of the Cities Eastward
The history of modern Rome (1870-1950) is the history of Rome Capital of Italy. It is deeply rooted in the history of Rome of the previous centuries and is permeated by the problem of national identity. It is a history in which the aim to modernize the country, to build its symbolic Capital city, to provide a home to the inner migrants from the North and the South of the country, was managed through demolitions, reconstructions, new architecture, new foundation cities, land reclamation and infrastructural improvements.
The need to express representation of power involved talented architects and intellectuals as Margherita Sarfatti, a Venetian-born writer, art critic, patron whose personal and intellectual life had a significant impact on Modern Rome and on the artistic movement which sought to revive of academic classicism and neo-Reinassance called Novecento Italiano to which it was somehow opposite the position of razionalisti (Rationalists) “who were not only ‘modernists’ but for a time, the ‘young Turks’ of modern architecture”: for example Giuseppe Pagano, founder of Casabella and Giuseppe Terragni.
During the twenties of the last century, before the classicist, levelling and authoritarian mediation of Marcello Piacentini (1881-1960) took the upper hand, the will to meet architecture and archaeology was among the strategies to implement the representation of power and deliver the Fascist propaganda through the shape of the Capital city. “First, archaeology, in the form of ancient Roman house plans, is presented as evidence of civilization. […] One of the premises at work here is the equation, “civilization=archaeology”; the second premise is “civilization=architecture”. Recognizably Roman house floor plans, rectilinear and symmetrical, with atria (the conventional inner courtyards encountered upon entering from the street), link Caesar to Mussolini, and the Roman Empire to the Fascist Empire.” (Mia Fuller, 2007)
Then, the paper introduces Gustavo Giovannoni (1873-1947), an engineer, the other leading figure with Piacentini of the group identified in Rome as Accademici (straightforward historicist), acting promoter and founder of the architecture schools in Italy on 1919 – often collaborating with Piacentini in several architectural and urban projects as the Variant of the Master Plan of Rome of 1909 – elaborated and built in Rome between 1907 and 1911 Quartiere del Rinascimento which can be considered a methodological demonstrative example of urban conservation that Giovannoni called ambientismo (adaptive contextualism or harmonizing the new architecture with the pre-existing built environment). The paper considers the case of the demolition of Spina di Borgo replaced by Via della Conciliazione, the demolition of Quartiere Ale ssandrino to build Via dei Fori Imperiali (former Via dell’Impero) cutting and separating the Roman Fora and the Imperial Fora; the demolition of the Auditorium Correa S. Cecilia to make the tomb of August (Augusteo) re-emerge as a new urban scenery; the partial destruction of Scalinata di Ripetta, a masterpiece of the Baroque architecture, designed by Alessandro Specchi, the author of the Spanish Steps in order to realize the embankments of Lungotevere (Tiber Banks); the demolition of Villa Montalto a sumptuous Renaissance villa built on the site of the Termini Station. Moreover, the paper mentions influence of the ancient Ostia Antica housing constructions on the residential architecture built in Rome between the two world wars by architects as Pietro Aschieri, Innocenzo Sabbatini and Mario De Renzi.
In addition, this contribute demonstrates the interest of international and multidisciplinary scholars (architects, archaeologist, anthropologiest) on the issue of Modern Rome as it involves issue as identity, representation of power, the relationship with tradition and modernity in the discussion: Spiro Kostof, The Third Rome, 1970-1950 (1971), U