Rome's first Drive-in Theater: Casal Palocco

When we first saw this photograph, from the New York bureau of United Press International, we thought it might be of early construction on the Palazetto dello Sport, designed by Annibale Vitellozzi and engineered by Pier Luigi Nervi. It isn't, but it's likely not a coincidence--given the angled, concrete supports--that the Palazzetto and the structure in the photograph were completed in the same year: 1957. [Thanks to Dianne's cousin, Jim Bennett--an Italophile, for sending us this original UPI photo.] 

The concrete in the photo is there to support a 540 square meter screen for Italy's first drive-in movie theater, then--and perhaps still--the largest ever in Europe, with 60,000 square meters of parking for 700 cars.

Another view of the construction

The completed screen. 

The drive-in was built near Axa in Casal Palocco, a then-new Rome suburb (completed in 1961) on the north side of via Cristoforo Colombo, well beyond the GRA and not far from the coastal town of Ostia. 

The theater was very successful through the 1960s, then fell on hard times until, sometime in the 1980s, it closed. 

In the 1960s

It was briefly reopened in the late 1990s and again, briefly, in 2015, by the committee behind the Trastevere group, Cinema America Occupato (an "illegal" sit-in or squatter type arrangement). 

How it looks today--assuming it's still there. 

Designed to resemble the American suburbs of the 1950s, Casal Palocco was a planned community with design links to Adalberto Libera, whose vision produced Foro Mussolini (now Foro Italico) under the Fascist regime, and to Raffaele de Vico, Rome's most famous and prolific landscape designer. 

The plan for Casal Palocco

Because of its many parks and gardens and athletic fields, Casal Palocco--actually a part of Rome--was known was known as the "Quartiere Verde" ("Green Quarter"). Many of the homes were large and sumptuous. A central shopping plaza had, and has, a rationalist flair. 

Late '50s rationalism

Today, about 32,000 people live in the community. 

. 

Not sure of the date of this photo, but the cars are vintage, and that's Charlton Heston on the screen in the 1956 film, "The Ten Commandments." On the horizon, back left, the Alban Hills.  

Le Corbusier in Rome. Well, not exactly.

Le Corbusier's Cité radieuse, Marseilles, 1947-1952.  Balconies a feature.  

Le Corbusier (1887-1965), the French/Swiss pioneer of architectural modernism, built nothing in Rome.  Nor, apparently, was he influenced by the city, which he failed to visit on a wide-ranging tour as a young man.

Still, Rome came to mind while reading Rachel Donadio's story in a recent New York Times (July 13, 2015), based on several new books on the architect and an exhibition at the Pompidou Center.  Once again, the issue is the extent to which Le Corbusier's architectural values and ideals were modernist and democratic--housing for the masses could easily be understood as fulfilling an underlying democratic mission (meeting the needs of the people)--or essentially totalitarian (Le Corbusier was involved with right-wing parties in France in the interwar years, and he was an admirer of Mussolini).

Concrete supports for Cité radieuse

This is not the place to resolve or devote serious attention to the issue of Le Corbusier's politics and ideology.  What interested us at RST was the color photo that accompanied the essay.  The photo was of Cité radieuse (Radiant City), a complex of 337 apartments constructed in Marseilles between 1947 and 1952 and repeated in other European cities in 1955, 1957, 1963 and 1965.  It was constructed of rough-cast concrete (a material identified with the Brutalist movement to come) and partly for that reason is a considered a founding statement of Brutalism.  The Marseilles building is widely understood as one of Le Corbusier's most important works.

No, you can't see Le Corbusier in Rome.  But you can experience something of his vision in Rome's Flaminio district, where Italian architects Adalberto Libera and Luigi Moretti, among others, were working in a similar vein on, and around, the Olympic Village, built for the 1960 games.  The village is a bit over a mile north of Piazza del Popolo--a 10-minute tram ride will get you close--and well worth seeing.

Olympic Village, Rome

Supports for Corso Francia (Luigi Moretti)

The Olympic Village complex consists of dozens of buildings, some smaller and some larger--longer, that is--than Citeé radieuse, and of brick rather than concrete.  But the overall scale and look is similar, as is the use of color to lighten the weighty look of the structures. Both the Cité radieuse and the Olympic buildings are elevated, the former with massive concrete stanchions, the latter with smaller columns with more of a modernist flavor.  The Le Corbusier supports have their equivalent in Luigi Moretti's massive concrete supports for the Corso Francia, an elevated highway that bisects the Olympic Village and was built at about the same time.

Elegant rooftop, Cité radieuse

Like Le Corbusier, Libera, who headed the Village architectural team, employed a flat roof and used it to feature a rounded ventilation system that added to the complex's modernist appeal. 


Both Libera and Moretti worked for, and during, Mussolini's Fascist regime.  Libera was the lead architect on the Foro Mussolini (now Foro Italico), located northwest of the Olympic Village, just across the Tevere. 



So visit the Olympic Village.  It's the closest you'll come to Le Corbusier in Rome.

Bill

Olympic Village topped by round, modernist ventilation system.  Colors, too, and balconies.  

Olympic Village

Walking the (Aurelian) Wall II: Porta Metronia to Porta San Paolo

"City walls, to a properly constituted American, can never be an object of indifference; and it is emphatically 'no end of a sensation' to pace in the shadow of this massive cincture of Rome....even to idle eyes the prodigious, the continuous thing bristles with eloquent passages."  Henry James, 1873

The Aurelian Wall near Casa del Jazz.  Here, from the outside, a sloping giant, with doors and windows added
later, perhaps to serve "inside" residents

Thwarted. Inside of wall not accessible here

Each section of the 3rd-century Aurelian wall has its own pleasures and mysteries and delivers its own lessons.  RST blog readers may recall we are on a mission to walk the entire (once 19 km, or 12 mile) wall.  On this section, going (roughly) south and west from Porta Metronia, we discovered how much of the wall is inaccessible, especially from the inside. [Update:  a Google map includes this itinerary.]


That lesson was delivered immediately, when, exiting Porta Metronia, we found ourselves barred from the inside of the wall by a gate (and inside, a half dozen plastic dishes and cartons--someone is feeding the area's cats).

Seems like suburbia, except there's a wall

We returned to the outside, which here skirts one of Rome's newest and best kept urban parks: benches and fountains, joggers, walkers, thinkers.  How long, we wondered, could we sit on a park bench without a book, a newspaper, or a cell phone?

Old scaffolding inside the wall/no access

At Porta Latina, through which runs the ancient via Latina, we peek inside and hope for access, just a fence and yards of year-old scaffolding.  Outside, the wall is sometimes marred by a fence (presumably to protect passers-by from falling bricks) and marked by the Papal families who restored it at various times: here, the Barberini family, with their bees on the shield.

Remnant of an aqueduct

The next porta is a handsome one: Porta San Sebastiano, through which runs (well, not now, it's closed for repairs, to reopen in the next century), via Appia Antica.  Just inside (besides a guy taking a leak) is another arch, and a grand one.  Not part of the wall, it's one of few remnants of the Aquedotto Antoniniano, which once fed the baths of Caracalla.  On the porta itself, we found some chiseled crosses and the date 1622 - ancient graffiti?  This porta is the entrance to the one part of the wall where one can walk inside: the wall museum, an RST Top 40 site.

Maybe they own horses

The next opening in the wall is door-to-door automobiles, but it is, indeed, a porta: Porta Ardeatine.  EUR is a couple of miles to the left, connected by the multi-lane viale Cristoforo Colombo. The baths of Caracalla are a half mile downhill to the right.  We're still looking for access to the wall's inside, and we're still being denied: on this side, a fence guards a long, maintained field, someone's private estate we would guess, legal or "abusive" we can't say.

Homeless "shelter"/locked gate to inside of wall

And on the other side of viale Cristoforo Colombo, another locked gate, a cat, and a primitive plastic shelter used by the homeless.  On we go, still outside, past the Casa del Jazz (taken from the Mafia as part of a legal penalty, years ago).  The grounds on this section are better maintained, and the wall is designed differently, with wedge-shaped cutouts wedges at its top (see photo, top of this post).  We noticed several ground-level doors--certainly not part of the original defensive system, perhaps once used as exit/entrances by families living on the inside.

Florentine Pope advertising wall work

At a sharp right turn, more evidence of Papal interest, this time the Medici of Florence (all those fleurs-de-lys)  And further on, the brick façade removed to reveal the tufo--of different colors, perhaps different eras--beneath.

Stairway into upper San Saba

Finally, at the next porta, we can tuck ourselves inside.  Immediately, the wall shrinks--we're inside now, on higher ground.  As we follow the wall around the corner and down the hill, we enjoy peeks through the wall at soccer fields and, to our right, views of the little-known and curiously isolated community of San Saba, constructed in the early 20th century.

Porta San Paolo (and at left, the Piramid)

Ahead, the wall is simply gone, victim of Rome's automobiles, and then beyond, the magnificent Porta San Paolo, out of which runs via Ostiense (the road to Ostia); today this porta, too, houses a museum.  Historically, the piazza is well-known as the site of short-lived but furious resistance to the German occupation of the city in 1943.

Cafe' du Parc. Table service, but order inside.  

Even downhill, this wall-walking is hard work, and so we treat ourselves to a glass of wine at one of our favorite redoubts, the Café du Parc, with its long, now fenced-in outdoor space.  From our table, we enjoy a view of the Ostiense Post Office, one of four designed by noted architects during the Fascist era. This one--worth looking at from the front, and inside, too--is the work of Adalberto Libera and Mario De Renzi.  When it opened in 1935, Mussolini was there.

Bill

Inside the wall, San Saba just ahead; the wall seems short here, but it's because the ground is high.  The wall
is much higher on its "outside."

Riccardo Morandi's Metronio Market

Over the past century, Rome has produced two generations of great architects.  One, serving Mussolini’s Fascist regime, or simply practicing in that era, applied the techniques and vision of rationalism or, somewhat later, monumentalism, to the public and private buildings of the period.  Among the rationalists one would have to include Luigi Moretti, author of the 1933 Casa del gioventú, in Trastevere, and Adalberto Libera and Mario De Renzi,collaborators on the Aventino post office (1933) on via Marmorata.  The monumentalists had their heyday at EUR, the massive development south of the city, where the chief architect was Marcello Piacentini. 

The second generation of great architects is the current one, composed of “starchitects” from Italy and elsewhere, who build one big project and then go on to do the same in some other city.  They include Richard Meier, out of the rationalist tradition, and his controversial housing for the Ara Pacis; Renzo Piano, who combined fantasy and functionalism in his Parco della Musica; Zaha Hadid, something of a monumental rationalist in herMAXXI art museum in the quartiere of Flaminio; and Massimiliano Fuksas and Santiago Calatrava, though neither has finished his Rome masterwork, and Calatrava’s swimming pool languishes in the weeds of Tor Vergata. (For more links to RST posts on these architects, see links at the end of this post.)

In between these generations there isn’t much, at least not much that stands out.  Although many buildings were constructed in Rome in the postwar “boom,” most of them were apartment buildings on the city’s outskirts, many of them handsome and some outstanding in a simple, functional way, but too much a part of the suburban fabric to stand out, or for their architects to be recognized for outstanding achievement. (And, Dianne chimes in, some of them not handsome or outstanding.)

There are exceptions, and we were reminded of one of them, a curious-looking market with an attached parking garage, when we read of plans—controversial plans, in turns out—to tear the complex down.  The structure is on via Magna Grecia on the northeast edge of the San Giovanni neighborhood, due passi from San Giovanni in Laterano, which is on the other side of the wall.  We stopped to have a look. 

The building is roughly triangular in shape, with the two longest sides adorned by protruding, fan-like windows. 

The stunning part, though, is the parking garage, or rather the access to it, up a prominent circular ramp—not so different, really, from what Frank Lloyd Wright accomplished on the interior of his Guggenheim gallery in New York City.  The Guggenheim opened in 1959, the Rome market in 1957. 

Inside, light from the window baffles suffuses the interior but is insufficient to overcome the forlorn atmosphere of the place.  A good portion at one end is unoccupied, and the vendors that do exist—selling meats, fish, vegetables, and housewares—have few customers. 

Faced with the possibility of demolition, the 25 remaining vendors have organized with a group called the “Urban experience” (the name is in English) to propose that the Metronio market, as it’s called, be adapted to some new uses, including shops that feature organic products and working artisans.   Among those trying to save the market, there is a sense that the building, and particularly the parking ramp, is of architectural significance.  There is disagreement, however, on whether saving it would require significant and expensive structural work to bring the edifice up to safety and hygienic standards, or only “conservative” restoration.

The man behind the Metronio market was Riccardo Morandi (1902-1989), a civil engineer (rather than architect) with a deep scholarly and practical knowledge of reinforced concrete (cement armato), an inexpensive building material with important structural qualities widely used in the post-1945 Italian reconstruction.  Morandi’s best known work is the General Rafael Urdaneta Bridge (above), an 8 km structure with 70 cable-stayed spans crossing Lake Maracaibo in Venezuela. He also participated in the postwar reconstruction of Florence, where he built a bridge over the Arno in the mid-1950s. 

Morandi's Cinema Maestoso, dear to our
 hearts becauser we saw the Whitney Houston/
Kevin Costner film "Guardia del Corpo" ("The
Bodyguard") in Italian, with our 2 sons, here
in 1993.  Who needed to understand the plot?
Houston's singing was the heart of the film.

Aside from the Metronio market, Morandi’s Rome projects include a Tevere bridge (known as “Il Grillo”)[1949/50]; a small palazzo on via Martelli (1950); the Cinema Maestoso (and the building above it) on via Appia Nuova (1954-57; a viaduct over a bend in the Tevere in Magliana ((1963-1967); a portion of the Fiumicino airport (perhaps the Alitalia terminal); and the Hotel Ergife (with B.M. Cesarano), on the via Aurelia (1975-1978).   Morandi also taught bridge design at the University of Florence and the University of Rome. 

Bill

Additional links to RST's posts on the architects mentioned in this post:

On Rome's new "bridge to nowhere":

http://romethesecondtime.blogspot.it/2011/09/ponte-della-musica-romes-new-bridge-to.html

On Hadid winning the Sterling Prize:

http://romethesecondtime.blogspot.it/2010/10/news-flash-hadid-wins-sterling-prize.html

On EUR buildings:

http://romethesecondtime.blogspot.it/2009/11/rst-top-40-35-gino-severini-mural-at.html

On Foro Italico, nee' Foro Mussolini:

http://romethesecondtime.blogspot.it/2011/05/rst-top-40-5-foro-mussoliniforo-italico.html

On more of De Renzi's work: in the Trionfale quarter, and public housing in the Mussolini era.

Generally on 21st century architecture in Rome: 

http://romethesecondtime.blogspot.it/2010/07/planning-romes-future-modern-art-or.html

Piano's work is mentioned in the "Starchitects" post, as well as the one on the "bridge to nowhere."

For Meier's work, see also the post on the tunnel under the Ara Pacis and his magnificent Tor Tre Teste church in the suburbs of Rome.

RST Top 40. #34: a Fascist Era Post Office

Two of Rome's masterpieces of architectural geometry are located within a stone's throw, across the street from each other in via Marmorata, at the intersection of the Aventino and Testaccio districts. One is the ancient Piramide Cestia (the Cestia Piramid). The other is the neighborhood post office, a modernist gem designed by architects Adalberto Libera and Mario De Renzi and opened to acclaim in 1935, with Mussolini presiding (see photo above). Architectural scholars Mirella Duca and Filippo Muraia describe the building's elegant interior as "one of the most original spaces constructed in Rome in the 1930s." The via Marmorata post office is on Itinerary 4 in Rome the Second Time.

Libera was only 30 years old when he began working on the project, though he was already well known as a founder of the Movimento Italiano per L'Architettura Razionale (Italian Movement for Rationalist Architecture) and feted for his facade for the monumental Exhibition of the Fascist Revolution (photo at right), which opened in 1932 in the Palazzo delle Esposizioni, also a collaborative effort with De Renzi.

Though apparently not a zealous Fascist, Libera's close links with Fascist Party officials allowed him to compete for the regime's choice commissions, including the Palazzo dei Congressi, which he designed for the EUR complex. One of Libera's last works, accomplished with several other architects, was the Olympic Village (see photo at right), which housed athletes competing in the 1960 Rome games (including boxer Cassius Clay, who was seen taking photos of the complex). It is located in the Flaminio district, not far from Parco della Musica.

De Renzi's first commission, for the enormous 1931 Palazzo Federici apartment complex on via Aprile XXI, near Piazza Bologna, has also become one of his best known; it was the setting for Ettore Scola's 1977 film Una Giornata Particolare (A Special Day), starring Marcello Mastroianni and Sophia Loren in a drama set in Fascist Rome in 1938. The building is on Itinerary 8 in Rome the Second Time.

Bill

RST Top 40. #35: The Gino Severini Mural at the Palazzo dei Congressi (EUR)

One day a few years ago we went out to EUR and to the Palazzo dei Congressi (the translation, Palace of the Congresses, sounds dumb), eager to see Massimiliano Fuksas's massive, avant-garde new hall (we thought), "Cloud." Once inside, we looked everywhere but the basement, even going up some stairways that were obviously not intended for the general public and poking around on the floors above. We were disappointed in not finding "Cloud" (we learned later that it did not yet exist), but more than pleased at what we did find: an enormous, didactic mural by Gino Severini, completed in 1953 (the same year the building itself opened) for the International Exhibition of the Federation of Agricultural Enterprises. We have included a view from the side (above left), sufficiently unrevealing that it shouldn't spoil your encounter with it. The mural employs a seasonal motif that Severini had first explored in the painting "L'Estate" (1951) [below right], part of the collection at the Museo Carlo Bilotti (a newer museum in the Villa Borghese - we recommend it).

Note Severini's murals, as well as the other EUR sites mentioned in this post, are on the EUR walk in our latest book, Modern Rome: 4 Great Walks for the Curious Traveler.   See the end of this post for more information on the book.
 

Severini was no spring chicken when he did this mural (at 70, more like a winter chicken). He was born in Cortona, Italy and moved to Rome in 1899, at 16. As a young artist he was influenced by Futurism (he was a signer of the important 1910 Futurist Manifesto) and by Cubism, and, living in Paris, a good friend of Modigliani. The photo at left captures him on the scaffold, paintbrush in hand, working on the mural with artist Stefania Lotti. It was painted on Masonite (disclosure: my father was for a time Manager of Industrial Sales for the Masonite Corporation), often incorrectly referred to on Italian websites as Maronite.

Enjoy the mural. But don't miss having a good look at the splendid building in which it is housed. The Palazzo dei Congressi was one of many buildings planned for E42 (Exposition 1942), planned for the 20th anniversary of the March on Rome--the establishing moment of Italian Fascism. It has strong classical lines, as did many buildings of the Fascist era, but it also speaks to a modernist sensibility that was part of 20th-century culture all over the world, and which was deeply influential for many of the architects working under Fascism. Construction began in 1938, but the war intervened and delayed completion.

The building's architect was Adalberto Libera. In the late 1920s, Libera was one of the founders of the Italian Movement for Rational Architecture, based in Rome. He was influenced by both Futurism and Rationalism and maintained close ties with the Mussolini government--close enough, anyway, to get commissions and keep working. He also designed the superb post office on via Marmorata and was one of five architects who worked on designs for the Olympic Village (1960; a 5-minute walk from Parco della Musica in north Rome).

The Palazzo dei Congressi has many features, but none so obvious or original as that big cube in the middle, which houses the Salone dei Ricevimenti (Hall of Receptions, or Welcoming Hall). The cube is 38 meters on each side, big enough, as it is often said, to hold the Pantheon (though getting it there and inside would be daunting). The rounded top may have been necessary to bring the cube to Pantheon dimensions, but whatever its purpose, it's the Palazzo's signature feature.

To get there, take the Metro B line to the Fermi exit. When you walk out of the subway you'll be about 5 blocks south/southwest of the Palazzo. So walk north/northeast through EUR until you find the building.

Bill

 Modern Rome: 4 Great Walks for the Curious Traveler features tours of the "garden" suburb of Garbatella; the 20th-century suburb of EUR, designed by the Fascists; the 21st-century music and art center of Flaminio, along with Mussolini's Foro Italico, also the site of the 1960 summer Olympics; and a stairways walk in Trastevere.

This 4-walk book is available in all print and eBook formats The eBook is $1.99 through amazon.com and all other eBook sellers.  See the various formats at smashwords.com. 

Modern Rome: 4 Great Walks for the Curious Traveler now is also available in print, at amazon.com, Barnes and Noble, independent bookstores, and other retailers; retail price $5.99.