Fraternity

Marcello Piacentini: Piazza della Vittoria, Brescia 1932

New Review of THE POLITICS OF THE PIAZZA

The following review by Henri Goverde of my 2008 book appears in the inaugural issue of
BULLETIN OF ITALIAN POLITICS
ISSN 1759 – 3077
www.gla.ac.uk/bip

A link to the book is in the sidebar

Study with 'Apollo' for Verona

Study with the 'Victory' of Brescia

Piazza Rovetta, Brescia

Bachelor of Architecture student projects from Manchester School of Architecture 1996-97

The City of False Memory: Piazza della Vittoria, Brescia

Published in Building as a Political Act 1998 (Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture Washington)

Carlo Scarpa: Built in Brescia

Carlo Scarpa's memorial to the victims of the 1974 neo-fascist bomb in Piazza della Loggia, Brescia

Colossal Fragments

Fragments of a statue of Jupiter Capitolinus, Brescia

Three pieces of Piacentini: Piazza della Vittoria, Brescia

Piazza della Vittoria, completed between 1929-32, was the final result of a large planning exercise to improve the functioning Brescia, a rationalisation which was abandoned due to expense in favour of the rhetorical monumentalization of an area of the historic centre, medieval in date and deemed an obstacle to progress. However, functional planning was suspended in favour of a more overtly representational scheme, though the immediate reason for the site of the new piazza was the demolition of an existing unhygienic quarter. The new public space thus created glorified Mussolini directly, being completed to celebrate his tenth anniversary in power, but the variety of its profile and materiality attempted to obscure the fact that it was entirely constructed within a few years.

Paradoxically, despite the attempt to portray an organic but deceptive history, each element is treated as an individual monument, with peripheral connections through ground floor arcades to form the enclosed civic realm that had been favoured by Sitte. The purpose of a public forum was signalled by the honorific position provided for the modern mean’s of communication, the post, telegraph and telephone office, but also by the placing of an orator’s podium or aregno decorated with scenes of Brescian progress up to fascism, and standing at the foot of a small tower (“of the revolution”) which was originally adorned with a portrait relief of Mussolini on horseback. Diagonally opposite the aregno, a 12-storey office tower, the torrione, provided the largest single element in the piazza.

The diagrammatic quality of this ornamentation and the simplicity of the overall planning strategy is ameliorated by the picturesque massing of the elements. The axial view towards the post office is varied by the asymmetrical pairing of the tower of the revolution in marble and the brick mass of the office tower. These three elements then frame and dominate the views of the square, the torrione suggesting a certain aggressive power, the tower of the revolution rather unsubtly in conflict with the dome of the baroque cathedral beyond in Piazza del Duomo, and the post office portico producing a dull echo of the Roman capitolium. It has also been suggested by Richard Etlin that the early version of Piacentini’s post office had referred to precedent in the three bayed form of the renaissance Palazzo della Loggia, whose barrel vaulted roof was visible in profile behind the post office in the neighbouring Piazza della Loggia

Carlo Scarpa: Unbuilt in Brescia

On 28 May 1974 eight people participating in a trade union demonstration were killed by a bomb in Piazza della Loggia in Brescia, with over 100 people wounded. A neo-fascist group claimed responsibility. In the aftermath of the terrorist outrage the city council, the Comune di Brescia, commissioned the architect Carlo Scarpa (1906-78) to produce a memorial.

An early sketch by Scarpa shows his most dramatic intention. While a vehicular route is retained on north, west and south sides, the rest of the piazza is to be repaved, with a central channel of water emphasising the axial disposition of the Palazzo della Loggia and the clock-face in the mercantile loggia. This channel was to meet an upright memorial, roughly aligned with the existing Risorgimento monument in the square, and poised at the outer limit of a newly defined precinct stretching to the site of the bomb itself against one of the piers of the loggia. The square was to be completed by a new podium to be created in front of the Palazzo della Loggia, a gesture to reinforce the use of the piazza for future public gatherings, and conversely to present a democratic platform as an alternative to the aregno in Piazza della Vittoria, decorated as it still is with scenes depicting the historical inevitability of fascism. However, this extensive project, resolving the geometrical misalignment of the bomb site by emphasising the general symmetry of the square through a line of water, was subseqently reduced in scope. Instead Scarpa concentrated on the form of the new precinct on the eastern side of the square sketching an asymmetrical labyrinth which connected the positions where the victims fell. Marble walls, roughly 1.40 metres high, were to bound the visitor's route with the channel of water retained from the earlier project. Scarpa's sensitivity to the location however was uncomfortable with the self-conscious asymmetry of this proposal, and he refined it further into a symmetrical precinct, placed eccentrically in relation to the axis of the space.

Scarpa’s technique was to reveal the process of construction of his own objects and spaces so that by extension the story of other constructions was revealed. This narrative intent, the conscious telling of the history of a place as well as the specifics of an individual project, helped Scarpa situate his project within the historical matrix of Piazza della Loggia. A provocative attitude to public space which Scarpa shared with the demonstrators and bombers, saw the piazza as an arena where the personal becomes political and the collective affects the individual. The labyrinth, at once both recognisable to the group and highly personal would therefore seem an appropriate choice for the public function which Scarpa had proposed but was not executed, and as the symbol with which his son Tobia chose to mark his father’s tomb.

Three Civic Arcades

The three sketches demonstrate the increasing elaboration of public arcades from the early renaissance to the baroque periods. The mercantile loggia in Piazza della Loggia, Brescia (top) contains a simple commercial and residential arrangement behind the new classical architecture. The arcades of Piazza della Madonna, Loreto (centre) provide an incomplete frame for the major pilgrimage centre, with two stories of arcades. In Piazza Palazzo di Citta, Turin (bottom) an alternating rhythm and an exaggerated proportion maintain the hybrid combination on a site which dates back to the Roman city.

Two piazze in Brescia

The lumpen character of Marcello Piacentini’s architecture forms subtle connections with the existing urban fabric and the spaces beyond, the new piazza attempting in its geometry and iconography to bring to summation Brescian urban development. Visual connections to medieval and renaissance spaces were allied to an orientation and formal typology having their explicit source in the remains of the Roman town of Brixia. In both cases a rectangular space running north-south was delineated, with the principal public structure aligned axially at the northern end.

Piazza della Vittoria, completed between 1929-32, was itself the final result of a large planning exercise to improve the functioning of the city, a rationalisation which was abandoned due to expense in favour of the rhetorical monumentalization of an area of the historic centre, medieval in date and deemed an obstacle to progress. However, functional planning was abandoned in favour of a more overtly representational scheme, though the immediate reason for the site of the new piazza was the demolition of an existing unhygienic quarter. The new public space thus created glorified Mussolini directly, being completed to celebrate his tenth anniversary in power, but the variety of its profile and materiality attempted to obscure the fact that it was entirely constructed within a few years. Paradoxically, despite the attempt to portray an organic but deceptive history, each element is treated as an individual monument, with peripheral connections through ground floor arcades to form the enclosed civic realm that had been favoured by Sitte. The purpose of a public forum was signalled by the honorific position provided for the modern mean’s of communication, the post, telegraph and telephone office, but also by the placing of an orator’s podium or aregno decorated with scenes of Brescian progress up to Fascism, and standing at the foot of a small tower (“of the revolution”) which was originally adorned with a portrait relief of Mussolini on horseback. Diagonally opposite the aregno, a 12-storey office tower, the torrione, provided the largest single element in the piazza while a figurative connection to this symbol of urban progress was established through the siting of a colossal naked male statue at its base, Arturo Dazzi’s The Fascist Age. The statue’s presence was intended to evoke the same form of heroism associated with Michelangelo’s David in Piazza della Signoria in Florence from four centuries earlier, although its sculptural quality was far below the level of that model.

All the major piazze in Brescia follow the pattern established by the Roman forum, but far from imitating that origin, the elements of Piazza dell Vittoria subvert their antique precedents. The portico of the capitolium can be seen to have its parallel in the facade of the post office. The Corinthian order, however, was too feminine for this robust example of state patronage, and instead Piacentini reduced the members to a blunt banded pier whose profile vaguely resembled a fasces. The bronze statue of the personification of Victory discovered in the early nineteenth century after whom the new square was named was herself too delicate in scale and form for the new environment. She was replaced as the presiding figure by the hulking form of Dazzi’s The Fascist Age with its clenched right fist echoing the architectural raised fist of the torrione.

Piacentini’s work enabled authoritarian power to be validated through the appeal to specific urban memories, resting on foundations which were archaeologically speculative, reconstructed for propagandistic purposes. Such memories were themselves simultaneously invalidated by the representation of this cultural excavation as itself progressive and advanced, when it systematically subsumed the future to a highly selective interpretation of the past. Genuine Roman archaeological remains, uncovered during the clearing of the densely built-up medieval quarter, and therefore an authentic urban memory, were not allowed to disturb Piacentini’s chill reinterpretation of an atrium for the tower of the revolution. Similarly the organic process of historical decay in Piazza del Foro could not be allowed to give witness to the true fate of empires. Instead history had to be reversed and a false memory constructed as a more theatrical ruin.