Sartogo's Santo Volto Church - a Top Ten Visit

Put the 2006 church of Santo Volto di Gesù ("the Holy Face of Jesus") on your top 10 list for modern Rome architecture.  Less heralded than US architect Richard Meier's 2003 Dives in Miseracordia (known as the "Jubilee Church"), Santo Volto is equal to Meier's work and in some ways surpasses it. It's also closer to the center of Rome and easier to get to.

It's hard to overstate the dramatic impact of Santo Volto in this somewhat run-down neighborhood of Magliana.  Rome architect Piero Sartogo inserted the church into the fabric of the community on a small plot of land, totally unlike Meier's church, which has been heavily criticized for not being "of the neighborhood."  Perhaps for these reasons, too, the church is so heavily packed for Sunday mass that one must get there early to get a seat.  Sartogo's collaborator and wife, Nathalie Grenon, confirms the people in the community are proud of the church.

The 'half dome' looming among the nearby apartment buildings.

Sartogo used the concept of negative volume to present in reality a half-dome, an echo of the Pantheon, but modernized.  Quoting Grenon in a 2013 interview with us:
     The site of the church is critical. It's the idea of a city; it's urban. The language of the architecture here is the mass and the void. The void becomes a dynamic element, the void is inserted by creating a mass; and so there's that tension, as there is tension between the urban environment and the sacred.

But Grenon won't call the building "post modern."  In her words:

Entrance, with rectangular shapes contrasting with the round 'cupola.'
We would say shades of Fascism's rationalist period, but Grenon wouldn't buy it.
She would say only that the materials are Roman.

      The Santo Volto cupola is a reference to the Pantheon, and its idea of the sacred. In the Pantheon the sphere is inside, while in our church, the two halves of the dome are separate: one represents the sacred and the other the profane. All of Rome is constructed with shapes that come from somewhere else.

Let's just say the effect is awe-inspiring.  As social critic Alain de Botton says of some churches, they're designed to make you feel the power of God--and this one does, perhaps even for nonbelievers.

Mimmo Palladino's 4th Station of the Cross (Jesus meets his
afflicted mother).

Santo Volto is a showcase for contemporary Italian artists. Sartogo and Grenon commissioned several of them to provide the liturgical furnishings.  There was no budget for this purpose, and they had to work almost for free.  Some were famous; some were young and not.  Noted artist Mimmo Palladino's stations of the cross are impressive and of this century.  Young artist Pietro Ruffo's  "face of Jesus" painting is hauntingly gorgeous.

Pietro Ruffo's face of Jesus, above the confessionals.

And then there's the crucifix.  It was originally designed by noted Italian artist Jannis Kounnelis, but the Diocese rejected his design.  Sartogo and Grenon had to come up with something quickly, before the Pope's visit.  She sketched out the crucifix, which was supposed to be temporary but has become iconic.  It's now for sale at the Vatican.

Grenon holding a replica of the crucifix she
designed.

Grenon's interview contains more fascinating comments.  It's here in TheAmerican/inItaly online magazine.

The church is open as most churches are; with a break in the middle of the day.  To be safe, we suggest going before noon or from 4-7 pm.  Impressive as it is outside, you will want to see the inside too.  Via della Magliana 166.  The church is about 3/4 mile (1.3 km) from Piazza Meucci at the southern end of the Marconi district.

As some of our loyal readers know, we have made the modern churches of Rome a project.  For posts on churches, put 'modern church' in the search engine.

Additional photos below of, first, Meier's Jubilee Church and then several more of Santo Volto.

Dianne

Richard Meier's Jubilee Church.  The exception that proves the rule:  this day
we saw people enjoying the somewhat isolated church piazza.

Entrance doors to Santo Volto - echoing Renaissance church bronze doors.

Outside the half-cupola, in the open volume.

Play and contemplative space in back, nestled in the community.

From inside the church - through the back 'wall' and crucifix-
 one can see the neighborhood apartments.

Nathalie Grenon with the crucifix she designed--
now on sale at the Vatican.

Schematic of church and list of artists.

Casal Bertone: Tantalizingly close, yet nearly Unreachable

Casal Bertone.  A stone's throw from bustling San Lorenzo. Closer to Stazione Termini than the Vatican or the tourist mecca of Trastevere.  But no one goes there, and hardly anyone (even Romans born and raised) knows about this quartiere, which is sometimes referred to as Portonaccio, after the wide street that spans the area's western flank.

Always start with coffee

So close to the heart of Rome, yet so isolated. Ringed on the west and south sides by multiple rail lines, the Verano cemetery, and an old freeway, the Tangenziale, from which the Autostrada plunges east/southeast, right under Casal Bertone.

So it's hard to get to, and had to get out of. You can access the place from via Prenestina, but it's a long walk.  Or--as we did one morning on the scooter--from via Tiburtina: south (right) on via di Portonaccio, right at the big fork onto via De Dominicis, where we found a fine coffee bar, equal to any in the more upscale neighborhood of Monteverde Vecchio, where we've living for the month of May.

Underneath, the Autostrada

Turning right (south) out of the bar, the first sight is a large roundabout--almost a piazza. Moving counterclockwise, a massive metal screen hiding the Autostrada entrance as it passes beneath the town.

The building in the distance is a prize - and has a "legend" to go with it.

The centerpiece of the piazza is a housing project on its south side, graced by two striking bronze deer on pedestals to each side of the main entrance. After some 70 years, it's a wonder they're still there. Glorious. The story goes that the deer once had horns, and that the people who live in the building, so the story goes, had been called "cornuti"--meaning you're being cheated on, by your spouse.  So, one day, one of the residents sawed the large horns off the deer.  And now, no one can call them - or the residents - cornuti.


Inside the project a young man was weeding the stones (an uncommon sight) around a fountain, guarded by two eye-catching, snarling wolves.  Down a ways, a large fir tree on one side, and, on the other, a Madonella giving thanks for the survival of the building's inhabitants during the allied bombing of 1944 that took over a thousand lives in nearby San Lorenzo--and the rest of the war (below).  Note, too, that the stairways to sections of the buildings are differentiated, marked with letters, creating interior communities.


We also should mention that the intellectual filmmaker Pier Paolo Pasolini set the most iconic of Rome films, Mamma Roma (1962) with Anna Magnani, in this housing project.

The Madonella

A bit further to the south, there was a lot going on along via Casal Bertone: a very old building, holding out against the future; the construction of a new public market (or so we thought); some interesting urban graffiti; a leftist poster (Se Non Ora Quando, left) enjoining youth to take action, as right-wing thugs toss a person off a building balcony--an event that actually happened many years ago, in another part of Rome.  YouTube has several videos on the confrontation between right- (Casa Pound) and left-wing groups in Casal Bertone.

Shades of Hadid!

And, near the eastern end of the street (above), a stunning modern housing development in the latter phases of construction, elements of it reminiscent of Zaha Hadid's MAXXI.  We were surprised to see it here, in Casal Bertone.

Baptismal by Ugolino da Belluno, 1995

East on via Casal Bertone is the Piazza Santa Maria Consolatrice.  A public park with large play areas for children fills the square, and across from it, a church, vintage 1940s.  The column-work inside is
worth seeing, as is a side chapel in mosaics accomplished in 1995 by church artist Ugolino da Belluno.  The apse mosaics, of 1960s vintage, are also interesting, as are the columns on each side, decorated with repeating phrases. In the left side aisle there's a bronze statue of Padre Pio, both his outstretched hands revealing stigmata.














Casal Bertone has some tree-lined shopping streets, on which we found clear signs that the community's soccer team is AS Roma, as well as evidence of the poster presence of the right-wing organization, Casa Pound (photo right).  Ghoulish stuff.  Makes one wonder what they have in mind.

On the southeast side of the quartiere, an industrial building--above, center--has been re-used as artists' studios.  You can go inside and poke around--even talk to the artists.

Just one morning in the "real" Rome--Rome the Second Time.

Bill