I started a posting on Rome and the Vatican several days ago but did not post it until today. Since I started it earlier, it was posted in my blog for the day on which I started it, not today when I posted it. If you scroll down you will find that posting. The next several posts will be additions to that original post. There will not be many pictures, if any, in these postings, but just a lot of observations, opinions and explanations. I hope you enjoy the information included in these posts.
Via della Conciliazione
Via della Conciliazione, or Road of the Conciliation, is a street in Rome that connects St. Peter's Square to Castel Sant' Angelo, originally built about 130 A.D. as Hadrian's mausoleum, to the western bank of the Tiber River. Walls were built from the Vatican fields--reportedly the site of the burning and crucification of St. Peter--to the mausoleum, and it was the area bounded by these walls that became known as the Borgo. Via della Conciliazione was built between 1936 and 1950. It is the main access to St. Peter's Square. It has many shops and residences on it, as well as many religious buildings. These include Palazzo Tolonia, the Palazzo dei Penitenzieri, the Palazzo dei Convertendi, the Church of Santa Maria in Traspontina and the Church of Santo Spirito. Even though this is one of the few major streets in Rome that can handle large volumes of traffic, it is also the subject of much controversy in the Roman community and among historical scholars due to the circumstances under which it was built.
Throughout history, the Basilica of St. Peter was rebuilt many times after various sackings of Rome. It was also allowed to deteriorate when the Papacy was relocated to Avignon, France during the 14th Century. Through all these reconstructions, the area in front of the courtyard of St. Peter's Basilica remained a maze of densly-packed structures overhanging the narrow side streets and alleyways.
There were several plans to construct a major link between Vatican City and the center of Rome, with an increase in submissions with the start of the Italian Renaissance. The first design was submitted by Leone Battista Alberti during the reign of Pope Nicholas V, and formed one of the two perennial designs proposed for the area. Alberti envisioned an open plan, consisting of a single huge V-shaped boulevard with the widest area at the Basilica itself and tapering as it approached the river. The other type of designs, submitted by other architects was a closed plan that consisted of two roads arching outwards in an ellipse, with the Tiber River and the Square at opposite ends. Those who recommended the closed plan would usually suggest that the space between the causeways be separated by a colonnade, or by a row of inhabited structures whose designs would be scrutinized and approved by architects employed by the Holy See. Those who recommended the open plan included such architects as Giovanni Battista Nolli and Cosimo Morelli. Architects such as Carlo Fontana and at least one Pope, Sixtus V, favored a closed design with a number of streets radiating from the central square, maintaining the "spina" (spine) of the structures of Borgo directly between the Square and the Tiber. Neither of the plans moved past the sketches and blueprints. Both open and closed designs were considered by the Vatican, but were finally discarded due to being too expensive. A thorough study of the costs of building a thoroughfare was made by the Vatican-approved St. Peter's Building Commission in 1651, and the conclusion was "the cardinals' proposal to demolish all the buildings between the Borgo Nuovo and the Borgo Vecchio for a greater and longer vista to the church" would not be feasible because of extremely high expropriation costs and vested property interests.
Even more interest was lost when Gian Lorenzo Bernini was commissioned to redesign the terrace on the front of St. Peter's Basilica in 1656. After looking at and rejecting several sketches, Bernini decised on a colossal open space in the shape of an ellipse. The potential expense of clearing Borgo caused Bernini to make use of the poorly-maintained medieval buildings to hide any view of the Vatican structures from any significant distance. Because of this, pilgrams emerged from the relative darkness of the city into the vast open space and grandeur of St. Peter's Square and its surrounding buildings. This was a sight calculated to inspire awe in first-time visitors to the Holy See's seat of power.Originally Bernini had planned to demolish a square to the side directly in front of the square and fill the space with a third colonnade ("terzo braccio") to match the two colonnades that are still standing today. This would have produced a longer vantage point to allow visitors a better viewing angle of the Basilica, but the death of Bernini's patron, Pope Alexander VII, put a halt ot Bernini's work and the third set of colomns was abandanoned and the piazza remained open ended and incomplete.
From teh final major reconstruction of Borgo in the 15th Century, the site which the Via della Conciliazione now covers remained occupied by residential, religious and historical building for about 500 years. The final impetus behind the road's construction was primarily political. Borgo, along with the rest of the Papal States outside the Vatican itself, was taken by the Kindom of Italy during the Italian unification in teh 19th Century, leading to Pope Pius IX's declaration that he had become a prisoner in the Vatcan and the formation of the Roman Question. For the next 59 years the Popes refused to leave the Vatican in order to avoid any appearance of accepting the aithority wielded by the Italian government over Rome as a whole. Originally some of the Italian government welcomed this, expecting the influence of the Papscy to fade to the point that enough political support could be gained to abolish it altogether. This failed to materialize and eventually a compromise that was acceptable to both sides was reached in the Lateran Treaty of 1929.
Prime Minister Benito Mussolini signed the Lateran Treay on behalf of the King, and he resurrected the idea of a grand thorouhgfare symbolically connecting the Vatican to the middle of the Italian capital. Mussolini turned to the Fascist architects Marcello Piacentini and Attilion Spaccarelli. Taking inspiration from a number of drawings submitted by Carlo Fontana, Piacentini produced a plan that would preserve the best aspects of bioth the open and closed designs. He devised a grand boulevard that would still obscure the majority of the Vatican's buildings just as Bernini had intended. The hige colonnaded street would require the entire "spina" to be cleared between the Basilica and the Castle. Since the fronts of the buildings linig this area were not perfectly aligned, to create the illusion of a perfectly straight street the traffic islands would be built along both sides, with rows of oblisks leading toward the Square and these would also double as lamp posts. They were also intended to reduce the effect that the funnel shaped design would have on perspective when facing the Basilica. The wings of the buildings closest to the square would be preserved to form a propylaea (gateway) which would block the greater portion of Vatican City from approaching visitors and framing the Square and Basilica at the head of the grand open space that wold allow for easy vehicular access.
The demolition of the spina of Borgo began with Musolini's symbolic strike of the first building with a pickaxe on October 29, 1936 and continued for one year. Even then the demolition was controversial with many of the Borga residnets displaced en masse to settlements ("borgate") outside the city. Among the buildings dismantled completely or partially and rebuilt in another place were the Palazzo dei Convertendi, the house of Giacomo and Bartolomeo da Brescia, the Church of the Nunziatina, the palaces Rusticucci-Accoramboni, CEsi and degli ALiconi. Other buildings, including the palace of the Governatore del Borgo and the Church of S. Giacomo a Scossacavalli were totally destroyed. Five other building faced into the cleared area--the Palazzo Giraud-Torlonia, the Church of Santa MAria in Traspontina, teh Palazzo dei Pentitenzieri, Palazzo Serristori and Palazzo Cesi. The construction of this road was only a small part in the reconstruction of Rome that had been ordered by Mussolini. His orders included the restoration of the Castel Sant' Angelo and the clearance of the Mausoleum of Augustus to the much more complicated site of teh Via dell'Impero through Rome's amcient imperial remains. His plan was to transform Rome into a monument to Italian fascism as is indicated by the following quote:
"In five years, Rome must appear marvellous to all the peoples of the world; vast, orderly, powerful, as it was in the time of the first empire of Augustus."--Benito Mussolini
Construction of the road continued long after Mussolini's death and the abolition of Italian Fascism. The last oblisk was installed in tome for the Jubilee of 1950. Since its completion the road has acted as the primary access point to St. Peter's Square, and by extension to the Vatican City itself. At times, such as during the funeral of Pope John PAul II, it has acted as an extension to the square itself, allowing a greater number of visitors to attend functions there.
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