Marcello Piacentini and the project for the Rome Auditorium in via dell’Impero
The essay deals with the vicissitudes of Marcello Piacentini’s projects for the Roman auditorium, analyzed in
light of unpublished documentation found in the archive of the Accademia di Santa Cecilia, in which a dense
network of contacts emerges between the architect and the count Enrico di San Martino Valperga, president
of the institution. The two proposals (1932 and 1938) provided for the construction of the new headquarter
in a symbolic area of Mussolini’s Rome, in direct contact with the Fori area, similarly to the competition projects for the Palazzo del Littorio (1934) and of the Danteum of Terragni (1938). In the second project,
illustrated in four tables, Piacentini’s triple will emerges, expressed also in his writings, of resolving the
grafting of the Via Cavour on via dell’Impero, of respecting the volume of the facing Basilica di Massenzio,
and finally of allowing with a retreat of the new building the view of the Colosseum from Piazza Venezia.
