Indice degli autori

Abstract: THE ROMAN CAPITAL UNDERGOING CONSTRUCTION WORKS: VIA ZANARDELLI AND THEPRIMOLI PALACE THE INTERVENTION OF RAFFAELLO OJETTI Today Palazzo Primoli in Rome houses the museo Napoleonico, the Fondazione Primoli and the museo Mario Praz. In the days following the newly adopted Capital, at the end of the XIX century, the palace hosted one of the most fashionable literary salons. Here, Count Giuseppe Primoli would photograph the élite of the time, would organize tea get-togethers and gatherings for artists and men of letters, as well as opening his library to the up-and-coming Italian journalists and writers. As a consequence of the upheaval due to the construction of the Tiber embankments and the opening of the new via Zanardelli, a radical transformation of the palazzo became necessary. The roman architect Raffaello Ojetti, father of the more famous Ugo, was commissioned the work. He adapted and transformed it into a typical Roman neo-Cinquecento palace, applying fin-de-siècle standards. Given his very own skill and his historical rigour, Ojetti created one of his best works. He included the original nucleus into the new building block, which was itself inserted onto the ancient façade, and thus reassembled the various elements in a coherent and elegant design. The construction works lasted for several years (from 1904 until 1911) intimately linked, amid dispossession orderd, bureaucratic delays and political ups and downs, to the development of the new street and to the intense debate centered around this crucial area in the lay-out of “Roma Capitale”.