Fashionable Passion and Patriotic Pleasure: piazza Venezia, Theatre of a United Italy

SERIES: One square, so many stories series - Under the aegis of Edith Gabrielli, director of VIVE
SPEAKER: Claudia Conforti
DATE: Thursday 21 September, 6pm
PLACE: Palazzo Venezia, Sala del Refettorio

It is not space that endows a place with an identity by translating it into a piazza. It is the character of the buildings that form its perimeter that defines the architectural appearance and above all the urban function of a square. Piazza Venezia, hemmed in between the northern slopes of the Campidoglio and the entrance set off axis to Via del Corso, from the open space in front of the palazzo of the Cardinal of the Serenissima, becomes a superb theatre of the Italian Risorgimento epic. It polarises the urban dynamics together with the powerful civic imagery of Rome elevated to the Capital of Italy. This metamorphosis takes place through the refiguration of the perimeter of the spatial void, expanded and dramatised in the ways and times that are the subject of the lecture.

Biography

Claudia Conforti, born in Fidenza, Emilia, was professor of History of Architecture in the Department of Business Engineering of the Università di Roma Tor Vergata. She has taught at the Università di Firenze, Paris-La Villette and L’Aquila. She is a member of the Accademia Nazionale di San Luca and an honorary academician of the Accademia di Belle Arti in Perugia; she is a member of the scholarly committees of the magazines “Casabella”, “Rassegna di Architettura e Urbanistica”, “ArtItalies” (Paris), “Abaton” (Madrid), “Città e Storia”. Her studies are devoted to modern and contemporary architecture, construction, the city and society, on which she has produced numerous publications, articles, monographs, exhibitions, conferences and conventions.

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