Vittoriano
Rome, 25 July 2024 - Returning to citizens and tourists spaces of great architectural and artistic quality, capable of conveying the beauty and magnificence of the design by Giuseppe Sacconi, winner of the competition for the Vittoriano in 1884, as well as offering a spectacular sequence of views of the city of Rome, from the Forums to the Colosseum to the east, from the Theatre of Marcellus to St. Peter's to the west. Starting tomorrow, Friday 26 July 2024, the Main Colonnade and the Propylaea of the Vittoriano in Rome will reopen to the public.
This morning the Minister of Culture, Gennaro Sangiuliano, accompanied by the Director of the VIVE - Vittoriano and Palazzo Venezia, Edith Gabrielli, visited the site.
Thanks to a targeted intervention to restore safety conditions and the maintenance of the marbles, the Main Colonnade and its Propylaea are finally open again, after long years of closure.
This is an initiative of high cultural significance, aimed at the full appreciation of the most important monument dedicated to the first king of Italy Victor Emmanuel II and the entire Risorgimento, and the profound understanding of Giuseppe Sacconi's project that chose Donato Bramante's mature Renaissance, with the recovery of classicism and its values, as the artistic language of the new Italian State.
"After years of closure, these sites are once again accessible to the public, allowing citizens and tourists to rediscover and appreciate one of Italy's most significant monuments and a symbol of national identity. Visiting this site allows Italian citizens to rediscover the reasons for being a national people and a national community. For some time, the MiC has been committed to the care and enhancement of new spaces", says Minister Sangiuliano.
Placed almost at the top of the Vittoriano, the Main Colonnade, over seventy metres long and punctuated by sixteen, monumental columns, fifteen metres high, and the adjacent Propylaea allow visitors to grasp the ambition of Sacconi's project, its spatial qualities as well as the privileged relationship between the entire monument and the city of Rome: those who look out from here perceive, almost touch, the relationship between the architecture and the surrounding urban context.
"The reopening of the Main Colonnade and the Propylaea of the Vittoriano is an outcome of the valorisation policies of Italian museums, conducted under the banner of safety and conservation, but at the same time of maximum openness to public enjoyment. The opening up of these spaces, which at the same time allows us to appreciate and better understand the monument and enjoy splendid views of Rome from a variety of angles, is one of the objectives of the National Museum System, coordinated by the Directorate General for Museums, with a view to an increasingly broader and more integrated cultural offer in the urban fabric", says Director General for Museums Massimo Osanna.
At the same time, these spaces clearly portray the Vittoriano's role in the political debate of the late 19th and early 20th century. The Propylaea are named after the two guiding values of Victor Emmanuel II and the entire Risorgimento process, namely the Unity of the Fatherland and the Freedom of Citizens. The sixteen columns of the Main Colonnade recall the number of regions in Italy at the time, when many areas in the north-east had not yet become part of the national territory. Each column ends with a capital adorned in the centre by a female head with a turreted crown, an allegory of Italy. The personifications on the attic also refer to the sixteen regions: they were executed by as many sculptors by 1910.
"The opening of the Main Colonnade and the Propylaea represents a further and important result of a broader, deeper and more articulate operation of critical recovery. Carefully studied and planned, the operation had a pivotal moment last year with the restoration of the central area of the Vittoriano, where there is the long and in some ways extraordinary frieze by Angelo Zanelli that adorns the Altar of the Fatherland. This new phase aims to enhance architect Sacconi's project. When he won the competition in 1884, Sacconi was just 30 years old and proposed a very innovative language to the very young nation, rooted in classicism and even more so in the recovery of Donato Bramante's mature Renaissance in the Cortile del Belvedere. Sacconi's work was important, in some ways decisive, and it is precisely in the Sommoportico and the Propilei that its highest expression can be seen", says Director Gabrielli.
Visitors can now return to admire the rich and precious decorations of the Main Colonnade up close: the marble ceiling and floor designed in 1907 by Gaetano Koch - the architect of, among other things, the Bank of Italy and Piazza Esedra, today's Piazza della Repubblica - the 17 gilded stucco lacunars by Giuseppe Tonnini from the Marche region, nine with trophies of arms, eight with the New Sciences, and the paintings on the back wall - by Primo Panciroli, Silvio Galimberti and Carlo La Spina - with the most significant dates of the Risorgimento: from 1848 in memory of the revolutionary uprisings to 1870 when Rome became the capital city.
There are also the four triumphal columns placed on the access staircase, each surmounted by a winged Victory in gilded bronze, and the decorations of the Propylaea, i.e. on the outside the reliefs depicting Unity and Liberty, made between 1908 and 1910 by Enrico Butti and Emilio Gallori respectively, and on the inside the mosaic decorations on the vaults and lunettes. In particular, the lunettes, completed by Giulio Bargellini and Antonio Rizzi in 1921, attest, as does the decoration of the Altar of the Fatherland by Angelo Zanelli, to the sensitivity of the artists working in the Vittoriano towards international art trends, such as the Viennese Secession and Gustav Klimt.
The opening to the public of the Main Colonnade and the Propilei constitutes the starting point of a process of enhancement of these spaces that will continue in the months to come, without affecting fruition, in line with the ‘open building site’ modality that has become characteristic of VIVE.
The visit is included in the overall ticket for the VIVE - Vittoriano and Palazzo Venezia, which is valid for 7 days.
