Upon his ascension to the throne, Hadrian, the 13th ruler of the Roman Empire, inaugurated something of a public relations campaign. As was traditional, he forgave certain debts and provided elaborate and generally gruesome entertainments at the Colosseum, but he also wanted to create something for which he would be remembered. (more…)

The architectural styling of a mail office may not immediately seem obvious as an antiauthoritarian gesture. But Rome’s recently restored Ufficio Postale on the Via Marmorata was designed by Italian architect Adalberto Libera, who was one of the leading Italian Rationalist architects of the 1930s and 1940s. Libera played a vanguard role in the development of Italian Modernist architecture, and helped spearhead the Italian Rationalist movement that emerged from the shadow of Benito Mussolini. (more…)

Although Vitellozzi, a mid-ranking Italian Modernist, was officially the architect for this superb stadium, there is so little architecture and so much engineering in its construction that it can only really be seen as the work of its engineer and contractor, Pier Luigi Nervi. Nervi’s genius for the design of large vaults had been allowed to develop unfettered, because he ran his own construction company: he would be the one to lose if his experiments failed, and as a result his courage and imagination were his only limits. (more…)

These chemical laboratories are in Venafro, a township in the south of Italy located in a long valley surrounded by hills, fields of crops, and traditional buildings. Right from the initial sketches, the idea was to create a roof which would form a single volume, of an awning type, oval in shape, with dimensions of about 85 x 32 metres and a height of 15 metres, supported by transverse arches and longitudinal cables. (more…)

Niccolo Paganini Auditorium was built inside the old Eridania sugar factory, an industrial complex made up of several buildings in a variety of styles. Theses manufacturing premises are located near Parma’s historic centre, in a park studded with indigenous trees and shrubs. The factory’s conversion into a auditorium was made possible by the original layout as well as its privileged position in the middle of the park, which made it easier to soundproof the auditorium. (more…)

For decades now, thousands of pilgrims have been travelling to San Giovanni Rotondo from all over Italy and the world to pay homage to Padre Pio. The charismatic Capuchin friar, his body marked by the mystery of the stigmata, was declared a saint in 2002. In 1991, the architect Renzo Piano was commissioned to build a new church. It would have to be capable of providing adequate prayer, meditation and reception space for the multitude of pilgrims. (more…)