TERMINI TRAIN STATION

STAZIONE TERMINI
Piazza dei Cinquecento

FIRST STATION
1862/63 with the name Stazione Centrale delle Ferrovie Romane (Central Station of the Roman Railways)

In the sixteenth century in this area had been built the Villa Montalto-Peretti owned by Cardinal Felice Peretti, later Pope Sixtus V (1585/90)
The villa was later acquired by the Massimo family, who gave it to the Papal State just when the construction of the train station was being planned, and, as a result, the villa was demolished

The station was built in conjunction with the opening of the rail link from Rome first to Ceprano and later to Napoli

SECOND STATION
1868/74 by Salvatore Bianchi (1821/84) for a city of just 200,000 inhabitants

After switching to the Kingdom of Italy in 1870, the works suffered several interruptions and slowdowns

The decision was made to build a central station for Roma in this area, despite it would have had more sense to build a station for each line, such as Paris or London
The first two railway lines of the Papal States had in fact the last stops in the Porta Maggiore (the Rome-Frascati, 1856) and in Porta Portese (the Rome-Civitavecchia, 1859, later extended to Pisa). There were also existing projects for the Rome-Ceprano and Rome-Ancona

However, it was decisive the influence of the powerful Belgian Monsignor Francesco De Merode who had interests in the Termini area and in the current Via Nazionale, the street that him himself planned

The Master Plan of 1931 included two main stations in Rome: one in the north, on Campo Parioli where later the Olympic Village was built, and one in the south in the area of Casilino Mandrione. The two stations would have connected by a tunnel and Termini would have been a transit underground station
It was an idea that, with hindsight, was not so bad and would have avoided the huge wound of the railroad tracks that cuts the center of Rome
But then in 1936 it was decided to organize the Universal Exhibition and, with the new idea of developing Roma towards the sea, it was decided to have Termini as the only main station

THIRD STATION
Begun in 1938 with the sides longer than 2 km (1.2 miles) by Angiolo Mazzoni Del Grande (1894/1979)

“Angiolo Mazzoni Del Grande always tried new ways of expression, up to level of the heterogeneous language that defiled the rationalist lexicon with a rich materiality that Marinetti called futurist, but that demonstrates the need to meet the demands of the administration of which he was a dependent, in some circumstances, the result of mediation in situations of discord among its stakeholders, particularly complex and evident in the events related to the history of the important railway junctions of Florence, Rome and Venice” (Alessandra Capanna – Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani Treccani)

Front building
1947/50 designed by two groups of architects joint winners of the competition: the one of Leo Calini (1903/85) and Eugenio Montuori (1907/82) and that of Massimo Castellazzi (1901/77), Vasco Fadigati (1902/?), Achille Pintonello (1902/?) and Annibale Vitellozzi (1902/90)

The building is 53 m long (174 feet) and the huge CANTILEVER ROOF extends for 19 m (63 feet) to the outside with a bold technical solution. It is nicknamed the dinosaur
Bas-relief 1951 by the Hungarian artist Amerigo Tot (1909/84)

“The front building remains one of the most interesting works in the Italian post-war and it is a concrete testimony of the renewal effort that architectural culture had undertaken in those years” (Piero Ostilio Rossi)

Termini Station was renovated in 2000 and a huge shopping mall was opened in the basement

It is the first train station in Italy and the second in Europe after the Gare du Nord in Paris for number of passengers
It has been figured out that every day about 480.000 people enter this train station, as mentioned on the official Stazione Termini web site

ARCHAEOLOGICAL EXPLORATIONS
The building is located on the former site of a popular quarter of the second century AD

The frescoes found during construction are now exposed on the top floor of the nearby archaeological museum of Palazzo Massimo
At the side of the front building and inside the station itself are visible sections of the ancient Servian Walls

PALACE FOR OFFICES ON VIA TORINO

PALAZZO PER UFFICI IN VIA TORINO

Via Torino/Via C. Balbo

1956/58 Adalberto Libera (1903/63), Leo Calini (1903/85) and Eugenio Montuori (1907/82)

Extraordinary angular layout that maximizes the available area, rising to nine floors on Via Urbana and to six floors on Via Torino because of the elevation of the Viminal Hill

“The Palace for Offices interprets the modern 'palace', with uniform façades, serial systems, a new container of functions where the elements of composition arise from a geometry articulated and complex. A large support structure and the 'technology' walls with infill and glazed panels realize a synthesis of remarkable functional and technological innovation” (Catalog of the exhibition “ADALBERTO LIBERA. I disegni del Centre Pompidou e dell'Archivio Centrale dello Stato” - www.pabaac.beniculturali.it)

PALACE FOR OFFICES ON VIA PO

PALAZZO PER UFFICI IN VIA PO

Via Po 19

1962/63 Leo Calini (1903/85), Eugenio Montuori (1907/82) and Sergio Musmeci

It is amazing how the entire five-story building is exclusively supported by four columns made out of reinforced concrete

“It proposes as watermark the vertical scan of a Roman palace, transformed according to the language of the international architectural style” (Giorgio Muratore)

PALACE OF SCIENCES (first part)

PALAZZO DELLE SCIENZE

Piazza Marconi 1

1939/43 Luigi Brusa (1906/61), Gino Cancellotti (1890/1987), Eugenio Montuori (1907/82) e Alfredo Scalpelli (1898/1966)

Built in the same period of the other three buildings arranged symmetrically around the square

On either side of the portico of Piazza Marconi mosaics:

On the right “Guilds” by Enrico Prampolini (1894/1956)

On the left “The Professions and the Arts” by Fortunato Depero (1892/1960)

PALACE OF THE PRESS

PALAZZO DELLA STAMPA

Lungotevere de' Cenci 8

1959 Leo Calini (1903/85) and Eugenio Montuori (1907/82)

“An extraordinary example of integration of the new architecture in the consolidated fabric of the city center. The preexisting historical buildings represented by the ghetto, and the environmental requirements, determined by the presence of the Tiber, suggested the designers to adopt a different strategy to solve the two opposing fronts the building” (Giorgio Muratore)

AIRONE MOVIE THEATER

CINEMA AIRONE

Via Lidia 44 - Via Latina

1953/56 Adalberto Libera (1903/63) for ENPAIA (Ente Nazionale per la Previdenza dei Lavoratori Agricoli e Forestali - National Agency for the Welfare of Agricultural and Forestry Workers)

Spectacular architecture of the great Tyrolean architect among the greatest exponents of Rationalism

"I felt the interior of the hall as the interior of a mandolin, but I was not helped by a mathematical formula, so I went ahead for the best with elliptical sections connected by empirical relationships" (Adalberto Libera)

It was decorated with frescoes by the brilliant abstract artist Giuseppe Capogrossi (1900/72) unfortunately partially destroyed and partially degraded by those who ran the movie theater over the years

The cinema had 800 seats and was constructed about 5 m (16.4 feet) below street level, in a housing complex designed and executed in the same years 1953/56 by Leo Calini (1903/85) and Eugenio Montuori (1907/82)

During the years it was demeaned and brutally reconverted as a disco (Charleston, Stellarium) and as a pub (Makumba) before being left abandoned until 2011, when the Municipality of Rome promoted its restoration and its recovery as a cultural center

One hopes that this gem of the art of Rome may shine again one day

"Adalberto Libera, in developing the project, declined the theme dear to him of the collective room. (...) From the stage frame, with the shape of a television of the 1950s, departed rays of green and white silk accompanying the development of the ceiling and imitating, in the intentions of the architect, the rising of the sun. To embellish the interior of the building, Libera wanted a mural created by Giuseppe Capogrossi, illustrious exponent of Italian abstract art. Spectators, entering the cinema, used to admire the beautiful color flow of the Roman painter stretched in dynamic routes on the ceiling of the large entrance stairway" (Associazione di Promozione Sociale Cineairone - Association of Social Promotion Cineairone - www.cineairone.com)

"The basic idea was to create a unified hall, eliminating the gallery. (...) To build a space functionally and psychologically fit for the purpose, Libera had chosen a shape determined on one hand by the curves of visibility, on the other hand by the desire to define a void that would have its completed form, almost with an absolute value, possibly translated into a mathematical equation. The result (...) was an ovoid with the rear deeply lowered and a considerable expansion at the proscenium. A continuous space extremely enveloping because it has no vertical walls, with the character of an animal cavity, almost the pulsating interior of an organ" (Piero Ostilio Rossi)