Journal articles on the topic 'Rome (Italy). Palazzo Piombino'

The “Palazzo della Civiltà Italiana” is a monumental building characterized by a reinforced concrete structure composed of parallel (cast in situ) portal frames and composite (reinforced concrete + hollow bricks floors which spans between adjacent portals: a common construction technique in Italy. The floors being characterised by a large span of about 10.0 meters. The construction took place between 1939 and 1943, most likely according to the Italian building code published in 1939. The authors have coordinated a comprehensive experimental campaign aimed at (a) the identification of the characteristics of the structural materials and members, and (b) the identification of eventual damages. Based upon the experimental results a number of analytical and numerical investigations have been developed in order to assess the structural reliability of the “Palazzo” which up to date still is remains in its “original” configuration, as no substantial intervention of structural retrofit or rehabilitation have been implemented so far. These analysis allowed to identify two major reliability issues: (i) the load bearing capacities of the floors do not allow the intended use, and (ii) the seismic vulnerability of the building does not satisfy the reliability standards required by current codes. On the basis of all data acquired and investigations performed, a simple (non invasive) structural retrofit solution capable of bringing the “Palazzo” to the level of structural safety required by current codes is identified.

The proposal introduces the theme of the communicative resilience of exhibitions during the Pandemic Era. On March 7, 2020, Italy and its museums, as well as the countless exhibitions housed in their rooms, were closed leaving hundreds, perhaps thousands, of works without the public: from the paintings of Raphael (Rome, Scuderie del Quirinale), to the tables of the Griffoni Polyptych assembled after three hundred years (Bologna, Palazzo Fava), to the statues of Canova (Rome, Palazzo Braschi), to the Sant'Antonio by Antonio Vivarini and to the San Felice in the chair by Lorenzo Lotto chased by Bernard Berenson in his Apulian 'pilgrimages' (Bari, Palazzo Ateneo). Indeed, the latter is the exhibition to which particular attention is paid here. The spaces of the ancient Museum have come back to life with the exhibition “Il Museo che non c’è. Arte, collezionismo, gusto antiquario nel Palazzo degli Studi di Bari 1875-1928”. The exhibition involved lenders institutions such as Villa I Tatti - The Harvard University Center for Italian Renaissance Studies, the Central State Archive in Rome, the Pinacoteca of Bari 'Corrado Giaquinto' and several others. The exhibition in Bari was inaugurated on February 28th. After the first five days only the exhibition was closed for the advance of COVID 19 virus. In the 'great hall' - as the main space of the ancient Provincial Museum was called - everything remained suspended and perfectly finished: showcases, exhibitors, paintings, statues, clay and stone art objects. However, there was no longer the possibility of letting people, visitors enter. We said that it would have been wonderful to be said that it would have been wonderful to be able to reopen it at least 'virtually'. And so we did, with an immersive and advanced teaching perspective.

“Digital heritage”, as defined in this paper, is the integration of cultural heritage with digitization technology (“cultural heritage + digitization”), and of digital knowledge with research. It includes not only the three conventional aspects of cultural heritage digitization—digital collection and documentation, digital research and information management, digital presentation and interpretation—but also the creation and innovative use/application of the digital content (cultural heritage intellectual property/IP, experiential education, cultural tourism, film and media). Through analysis of two case studies, the Palazzo Valentini in Rome, Italy, and the Old Summer Palace (Yuanmingyuan) in Beijing, China, the paper assesses the concept of “digital heritage” and proposes a conceptual framework to capture recent developments and future prospects with regard to the industry.

Zofia Branicka (1821-1886) was a Polish wealthy noblewoman who married Italian Prince Livio III Erba Odescalchi (1805-1885) in 1841. From then on until her death she lived in Rome. Thanks to her opulent dowry, Odescalchi family could buy back among others, the Bracciano castle (near Rome) from the Torlonia family. Zofia was very well educated and a polyglot. From the very first years of her stay in Rome, she started to organise famous soirees at her salon in Palazzo Odescalchi. In this way Princess Zofi gathered the elite of aristocracy, diplomacy and the clergy, from diff European countries. Soon she had a possibility to get to know the pope Pius IX, with whom she would maintain a real and close friendship. Zofia had informed the pope about the complex situation of Poland, partitioned by her neighbours. From the beginning of her stay in Italy she was involved in charity work. The princess was very involved in financial and organisational help to Polish people in Italy (emigrees, insurgents, priests, artists as Cyprian Kamil Norwid, Leopold Nowotny, Roman Postempski etc.). She closely co-operated with The Congregation of the Resurrection of Our Lord Jesus Christ in organising the Polish Seminar in Rome in 1866. That was an event of a great importance for Polish people who at that time had no country of their own. Thanks to her deep religiosity and patriotic activity Princess Zofi was known among her contemporaries as “the Polish pope”. Nobody at that time could have imagine that after one hundred years Karol Wojtyła would become the first actual Polish pope.

Satellite interferometry has recently developed as a powerful tool for monitoring displacements on structures for structural health monitoring (SHM), as it allows obtaining information on past deformation and performing back analysis on structural behavior. Despite the increasing literature on this subject, the lack of protocols for applying and interpreting interferometric data for structural assessment prevents these techniques from being employed alongside conventional SHM. This paper proposes a methodology for exploiting satellite interferometric data aiming at remotely detecting displacements and buildings’ criticalities at different levels of analysis, i.e., urban scale and single-building scale. Moreover, this research exploits the capability of satellite monitoring for damage diagnosis, comparing the millimeter scale displacements to information derived from on-site inspections. Different data-driven algorithms were applied to detect seasonal and irreversible components of displacements, such as statistical models for damage identification derived from traditional on-site monitoring. Thus, the proposed methodology was applied to a XVI-century case study located in the city center of Rome (Italy), Palazzo Primoli, and two stocks of COSMO-SkyMed (CSK) images processed through the Small BAseline Subset Differential Interferometry (SBAS-DInSAR) technique were used to assess displacements for an eight-year-long (between 2011 and 2019) monitoring period.

The growing interest in the enhancement, management, and sale of public building stock has increased the importance of their valuation and, as a result, the need to identify suitable methods for estimating value that take into account their peculiarities. They often boast architectural features (interfloor distance, layout, finishings, types of wiring/heating systems, etc.) that make them ‘extraordinary’ assets; in some cases, these features also endow them with monumental and/or historical importance. Thus, when valuating, it is necessary to adopt suitable methods. Where comparable examples or income-based parameters specifically concerning buildings with special features are lacking, the Depreciated Replacement Cost (DRC) method is the only system that can be used to estimate their market value. This paper aims to show how the DRC method can be applied in this specific market. The theoretical part will be coupled with a practical section where the DRC method will be used to estimate the market value of an extraordinary landmark building in Rome (Italy), the Palazzo degli Archivi di Stato (the State Archives building), in the EUR district, sold by EUR S.p.A. group (formerly known as Ente EUR) in 2015.

Built heritage energy and environmental improvement is increasingly being recognised as a key driver in the fight against climate change. This effort necessitates a thorough understanding of the building to guide the selection of technologies and design solutions. To have a picture of the buildings’ characteristics and behaviour that is as complete as possible, in situ studies are essential, although the complexities and heterogeneities of historical buildings make these analyses still challenging, especially in professional practice. To address these issues, the paper describes an integrated approach including the field application of Non-Destructive Techniques (namely, Heat Flow Meter measurements, Infrared thermographies and indoor environmental monitoring) within a Heritage Building Information Modelling process. This interdisciplinary/integrated approach fostered the use of each type of analysis’s results to guide the subsequent analyses and incrementally deepen the knowledge of the building. The methodology was applied to a case study in the historical city centre of Rome in Italy. The analyses will be of service in developing dynamic building performance simulations to support the design of the interventions.

Ulf G. Haxen: Rome – Cradle of the Hebrew Book The Royal Library in Copenhagen has, throughout the twentieth century, received two substantial collections of Hebraica and Judaica. In 1933 the library acquired the private library of chief rabbi and professor David Simonsen, which amounted to an impressive 40,000 manuscripts, books and correspondence of scholarly importance. Dr. Lazarus Goldschmidt escaped Nazi Germany in 1938 and managed to bring his 2,500 volumes of Hebraica and Judaica, including 43 immaculate and well preserved incunables, safely to London. His entire collection of rare Hebrew books was purchased by the Royal Library for a moderate sum in 1949 because Goldschmidt was “honoured to have his books incorporated in Bibliotheca Simonseniana.”Both scholars were recognised authorities in their own right, Simonsen as philologist in Semitics and specialist in Jewish booklore, and Goldschmidt as a renowned bibliophile and connoisseur of 15th century Hebraic incunables. His 46 rare incunables were eventually listed in Victor Madsen’s catalogue of incunables (1935–1963).The art of printing was born c.1455 in Mainz (Germany) with Johan Gutenberg’s printed edition of the bible. Among scholars it was generally believed that migrating Christian and Jewish apprentices carried the revolutionising “black art” of printing from Mainz to Spain and Italy. Coincidentally enough, the first two dated Hebrew works appeared in print thirty years after Gutenberg in the exact same year in southern and northern Italy respectively: these being the Rashi commentary on the Jewish bible issued 17th February 1475 in Reggia di Calabria and printed by Abraham Garton ben Isaac, and the Arba’ah turim in Piove di Sacco near Venezia published by Meshullam Cusi on 3rd July 1475.These two books were for a long time considered to be the first books printed with Hebrew types. The famous Christian scholar of Hebraica, Giambernardo de Rossi, who was the fortunate owner of the allegedly “first” cradle book from Reggia, subsequently published the first census of Hebrew incunables in Annales hebraica-typographica saeculi XV (1795). The scene was thus set for the future scholarly research of the undated incunables labelled “Roma, ante 1480” (Rome, before 1480) by de Rossi. The present essay discusses five of these incunables, all of which are described in Victor Madsen’s catalogue as printed in “Roma, ante 1480”; an approximated date which needs correcting. David Simonsen refers in passing to “the three printers of Rome” viz. Obadiah, Menasseh and Benjamin, as supposedly having been active in a printing press in Rome. The incunable with Salomon ben Abraham ibn Aderet (Raschba) Teschubot sche’elot. (“Answers to Questions”) dated “before 1980” is a case in point (#4332 in Victor Madsen’s catalogue), furnished with an earlier approximate publishing date c.1469–1472 no. 55 in the Offenberg census (1990) and eventually with REX online catalogue Inc. Haun in 2015.The best known printing press in Rome was created by the two German printers Conrad Sweynheym & Arnold Pannartz who established their first workshop at Santa Scolastica at Subiaco in the Sabine Mountains outside Rome in 1464, where they published several unique Latin works and introduced a Greek typeface. In 1467 they moved the press to the city of Rome in order to get closer to the reading and profitable public. In 1467 they moved the press to Rome in order to get closer to their reading public – and their profits. Here they were privileged to be housed in Palazzo Massimo by the proprietors Pietro and Francesco Massimo. What is more, they began working under the patronage of the respected humanist Giovanni Andrea Bussi, who was editor in charge.It is safe to conjecture that the Hebrew press was born in this milieu, as indeed suggested by Edwin Hall: “… a casual remark of Bussi in the preface to the Latin Bible hints at a possible connection between Sweynheym and Pannartz and what are thought to be the earliest printed books in Hebrew. These books, which contain no indication of date or place of printing, are the work of obscure printers named Obadiah, Manasseh, and Benjamin de Roma and constitute the most primitive surviving examples of printing in Italy.”I thank Dr. Ann Brener, Specialist in the Hebraic Section at the Library of Congress for supplying additional bibliographic references.

While choosing the theme of reliefs which were to decorate his house, Johann Speymann, the mayor of Gdańsk, educated in Italy, drew inspiration from such works as De veri precetti della pittura by Giovanni Battista Armenini (1587) and Trattato dell’arte della pittura by Gian Paolo Lomazzo (1584). Speymannhaus, also known as Steffenshaus, was built in the years 1609–1618 and designed by Abraham van den Blocke and Hans Voigt. In the façade Speymann presented a gallery of Roman consuls and other viri illustres whose lives abounded in Republican exempla virtutis. As the first patron in the history of art in Poland, he made a virtue of his foundation, magnificence, which directly evokes the image of Lorenzo the Magnificent and makes the house of a Protestant patrician bear a resemblance to an Italian palazzo. The façade was treated as an ideal museum (facciata come museo ideale) and decorated in antique style with pseudospolia (paraphrase of reliefs on Roman sarcophagi and imagines clipeatae ) which related in an iconographic manner to the general outline of Gdańsk as the New Rome. In accordance with the will of Johann Speymann dated January 27th 1625, his home at Długi Targ ceased to serve its primary function and was transformed into a communally accessible collectors’ cabinet and library. Along with the owner’s wish, it became a public building having the function of a pioneer protomuseum. Moreover, an Italian‑trained curator was to show visitors around the premises.

Summary In the Greek world, the celebrations of Dionysus were different: the Rural Dionysia and the City Dionysia, the Lenee, the Antestèrie, the Oscofòrie, the Ascalia and the Bacchanalia. During the Bacchanalia, women ran, danced and screamed in the woods, and fell prey to Dionysian inebriation. In 186 BC, the Roman Senate issued a decree that limited the cult of Bacchus Dionysus in Rome and in Italy, because of sexual abuses (see Livy, Ab Urbe condita 39. 8 – 39. 18). The diffusion of Bacchanalia was a risk for people and for the dignitas of Rome. In 1640 in Tiriolo, Calabria, during the excavation for the foundations of the so-called Palazzo Cicala, a bronze inscription and fragments of columns were found; the inscription had the original text of Senatus Consultum de Bacchanalibus with which, in 186 BC, the Roman Senate forbade the Bacchanalia. In Latium, during the excavation of the so-called Domus delle Pitture in Bolsena, directed by the École Française de Rome, between 1964 and 1982, a fragment of a throne's base and a cherub's leg were found in a layer of ashes in an underground room. Another 150 pieces of the throne, including ribbons and fragments of a panther head, were recovered in a specific spot of the room. Fragments, carefully restored and reassembled, compose an object called Trono delle Pantere of Bolsena, datable between the end of the 3rd century BC and the early years of the 2nd century BC. The left and rear sides are better preserved. The first represents a panther sitting on a throne with a cherub on his knees while it grabs at the ears of beast; the rear side represents a pattern with wings blocked by ribbons. The front side is completely destroyed. The throne has different sets of problems on its religious meaning and its decoration, where the Dionysiac theme is clear. The panther, the cherubs and the ribbons recall the Dionysus sphere, during which he was hidden inside a cave. Indeed, the underground room of Bolsena was appropriated to Bacchanalia. This paper intends to link Tiriolo and Bolsena, through the specific cases of two cities; in the first we have a proof of the enforcement of the law in 186 BC, and in the second we have an evidence of its application, with the destruction of a throne and of a Bacchic shrine.

The Augustan Exhibition ofRomanità, held in Rome's Palazzo delle Esposizioni between 1937 and 1938, exemplifies the aestheticisation, ritualisation and sacralisation of politics during the Fascist era in Italy. This article conducts a multi-layered spatial analysis of the exhibition that considers space as passively experienced, as an agent to re-map memory, as a mediator between intention and reception and as having both physical and mental characteristics. The relative sizes of the spaces, their sequence and their axial placement within the Palazzo's plan were the most powerful forces that conveyed the exhibition's overall political and social aims. TheMostra Augustea della Romanità(MAR) is here analysed as a form of historical representation with a specific narrative which is played out within an orchestrated space in order to create and reinforce a (Fascist) political identity. The idea of Rome took on material aspects through a kind of ‘recognition effect’ for the visitor by presentingRomanitàas a collective mirror in which to view an image of their own social visage. Thus an active connection would, according to the organisers, be forged between a Roman past and a Fascist present, and its two leaders and creators, Augustus and Mussolini, as well as between the individual and society. TheMARalso demonstrates the prevalence of the cult of Il Duce in Fascist society and its importance for maintaining high levels of consent. With its focus on a particular view of the ancient world, theMARwas an ephemeral event that acted as teleological justification for the advent and supposed permanence of Fascism, which at the same time presented itself as a unique archaeological, scientific and educational document of the Roman world.

The historical research of the illustrated Nuremberg Chronicle [Schedelsche Weltchronik (English: Schedel’s World Chronicle)] of Hartmann Schedel com­prises the complex historical knowledge about numerous woodcuts which pre­sent views of various cities important in the world’s history, e.g. Jerusalem, Constantinople, or the European ones such as: Rome, some Italian, German or Polish cities e.g. Wrocław and Cracow; some Hungarian and some Czech Republic cities. Researchers have made a serious study to recognize certain constructions in the woodcuts; they indicated the conservative and contractual architecture, the existing places and the unrealistic (non-existent) places. The results show that there is a common detail in all the views – the defensive wall round each of the described cities. However, in reality, it may not have existed in some cities during the lifetime of the authors of the woodcuts. As for some further details: behind the walls we can see feudal castles on the hills shown as strongholds. Within the defensive walls there are numerous buildings with many towers typical for the Middle Ages and true-to-life in certain ways of building the cities. Schematically drawn buildings surrounded by the ring of defensive walls indicate that the author used certain patterns based on the previously created panoramic views. This article is an attempt of making analogical comparisons of the cities in medieval painting. The Author of the article presents Roman mosaics and the miniature painting e.g. the ones created in the scriptorium in Reichenau. Since the beginning of 14th century Italian painters such as: Duccio di Buoninsegna, Giotto di Bondone, Simone Martini and Ambrogio Lorenzetti painted parts of the cities or the entire monumental panoramas in various compositions and with various meanings. One defining rule in this painting concerned the definitions of the cities given by Saint Isidore of Seville, based on the rules which he knew from the antique tradition. These are: urbs – the cities full of architecture and buildings but uninhabited or civita – the city, the living space of the human life, build-up space, engaged according to the law, kind of work and social hierarchy. The tra­dition of both ways of describing the city is rooted in Italy. This article indicates the particular meaning of Italian painting in distributing the image of the city – as the votive offering. The research conducted by Chiara Frugoni and others indica­ted the meaning of the city images in the painting of various forms of panegyrics created in high praise of cities, known as laude (Lat.). We can find the examples of them rooted in the Roman tradition of mosaics, e.g. in San Apollinare Nuovo in Ravenna. They present both palatium and civitas. The medieval Italian painting, especially the panel painting, presents the city structure models which are uninha­bited and deprived of any signs of everyday life. The models of cities – urbs, are presented as votive offerings devoted to their patron saints, especially to Virgin Mary. The city shaped as oval or sinusoidal rings surrounded by the defensive walls resembled a container filled with buildings. Only few of them reflected the existing cities and could mainly be identified thanks to the inscriptions. The most characteristic examples were: the fresco of Taddeo di Bartolo in Palazzo Publico in Siena, which presented the Dominican Order friar Ambrogio Sansedoni holding the model of his city – Siena, with its most recognizable building - the Cathedral dedicated to the Assumption of Mary. The same painter, referred to as the master painter of the views of the cities as the votive offerings, painted the Saint Antilla with the model of Montepulciano in the painting from 1401 for the Cathedral devoted to the Assumption of Mary in Montepulciano. In the painting made by T. di Bartolo, the bishop of the city of Gimignano, Saint Gimignano, presents the city in the shape of a round lens surrounded by defence walls with numerous church towers and the feudal headquarters characteristic for the city. His dummer of the city is pyramidally-structured, the hills are mounted on the steep slopes reflecting the analogy to the topography of the city. We can also find the texts of songs, laude (Lat.) and panegyrics created in honour of the cities and their rulers, e.g. the texts in honour of Milan, Bonvesin for La Riva, known in Europe at that time. The city – Arcadia (utopia) in the modern style. Hartman Schedel, as a bibliophile and a scholar, knew the texts of medieval writers and Italian art but, as an ambitious humanist, he could not disregard the latest, contemporary trends of Renaissance which were coming from Nuremberg and from Italian ci­ties. The views of Arcadia – the utopian city, were rapidly developing, as they were of great importance for the rich recipient in the beginning of the modern era overwhelmed by the early capitalism. It was then when the two opposites were combined – the shepherd and the knight, the Greek Arcadia with the medie­val city. The reception of Virgil’s Arcadia in the medieval literature and art was being developed again in the elite circles at the end of 15th century. The cultural meaning of the historical loci, the Greek places of the ancient history and the memory of Christianity constituted the essence of historicism in the Renaissance at the courts of the Comnenos and of the Palaiologos dynasty, which inspired the Renaissance of the Latin culture circle. The pastoral idleness concept came from Venice where Virgil’s books were published in print in 1470, the books of Ovid: Fasti and Metamorphoses were published in 1497 and Sannazaro’s Arcadia was published in 1502, previously distributed in his handwriting since 1480. Literature topics presented the historical works as memoria, both ancient and Christian, composed into the images. The city maps drawn by Hartmann Schedel, the doctor and humanist from Nurnberg, refer to the medieval images of urbs, the woodcuts with the cities, known to the author from the Italian painting of the greatest masters of the Trecenta period. As a humanist he knew the literature of the Renaissance of Florence and Venice with the Arcadian themes of both the Greek and the Roman tradition. The view of Constantinople in the context of the contemporary political situation, is presented in a series of monuments of architecture, with columns and defensive walls, which reminded of the history of the city from its greatest time of Constantine the Great, Justinian I and the Comnenus dynasty. Schedel’s work of art is the sum of the knowledge written down or painted. It is also the result of the experiments of new technology. It is possible that Schedel was inspired by the hymns, laude, written by Psellos in honour of Constantinople in his elaborate ecphrases as the panegyrics for the rulers of the Greek dynasty – the Macedonians. Already in that time, the Greek ideal of beauty was reborn, both in literature and in fine arts. The illustrated History of the World presented in Schedel’s woodcuts is given to the recipients who are educated and to those who are anonymous, in the spirit of the new anthropology. It results from the nature of the woodcut reproduc­tion, that is from the way of copying the same images. The artist must have strived to gain the recipients for his works as the woodcuts were created both in Latin and in German. The collected views were supposed to transfer historical, biblical and mythological knowledge in the new way of communication.

The ceiling decoration of the Great Hall of Brežice Castle was executed for the Attems family by the painter Franz Carl Remp in 1702–1703. Its form had most probably been inspired by an engraving, reproducing the fresco by Pietro da Cortona in the hall of the Palazzo Barberini in Rome. During the 17th century, many engravings of various motifs and types were used as models for monumental paintings in Central Europe. However, it was above all graphic reproductions of famous ceiling paintings in different artistic centres in Italy which inspired the qualitative turn of Central European ceiling painting around 1700.

To what extent does the narrative of Japan’s prehistorical origins matter to Italy? In the second half of the twentieth century, Palazzo delle Esposizioni in Rome hosted two significant exhibitions dedicated to Japanese archaeology and ancient art: Tesori dell’Arte Giapponese in 1958 and Il Giappone prima dell’Occidente in 1995. Both displays provided Italian visitors with an unparalleled framework to engage with early artistic manifestations of the archipelago known today as Japan. Built on a critical analysis of the prehistoric and protohistoric artefacts from the Jōmon to Kofun periods selected for the Italian audience, this paper examines the active application of narrative discourse on Japan’s identity by the Japanese government in Italy. Still, it also sheds light on the presence of Japanese archaeology and art in Italian public and private collections throughout the twentieth century. The analysis delves into the textual and visual presentation of exhibits, examining both the venue and catalogues. These sources offer insights into potential instances of orientalism or self-orientalism, revealing a narrative closely tied to stereotypical views. The investigation unravels aspects of Japan’s past emphasised in diplomatic shows, evolving alongside ground-breaking archaeological discoveries in post-war Japan.