A Paradox of Roman Eclecticism: the Villino Ojetti-Borruso
In the early years of the 20th century, against the urban backdrop of Rome’s new Piazzale Flaminio, the
last flowering of that erudite Roman eclecticism took the stage, ever aware of the need for the proper
“setting” for new architecture in the ancient city. The architect Raffaele Ojetti designed a townhouse
for one of the lots being developed outside of the city gate called the Porta del Popolo. Ojetti, also an
architectural historian, looked to the Renaissance tradition embodied by Raphael, Della Porta, and
Fontana, borrowing their exquisite use of illusionistic perspective, a tool for governing the perception
of architecture in its own urban context. Ojetti, however, went well beyond this initial historicist
approach to the project and put an eclectic stamp on the façade, coming up with a hybrid, modernist
architecture and creating an artistic paradox that would be reprised decades later, in the 1970s, in
the design for a building by Luigi Moretti erected next to Ojetti’s ‘villino’. The two buildings would
engage in a dialogue that underscored their role as a bridge between the ancient city and modern
Rome.
