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Monumentalism defines the architectural tendencies that during the first half of the twentieth century had as their essential canon the inspiration and connection to classicism and neoclassicism. Critics divide this architecture into two streams: Neo-Baroque and Simplified Neoclassicism.
Neo-Baroque (Baroque Revival) shows a return to the eighteenth century with the proportion of orders becoming gigantic, enriched with ornamental friezes. It is the public architecture of the Soviet Union with the various buildings of the central party committees in Leningrad as in Kiev. The scenographic vision of the architectural space, which is to celebrate the regime, takes over on the planimetric composition of the buildings.
Simplified Neoclassicism, also called Novecento Italiano style, is linked to the classical architectural culture, but lightens its elements and architectural details, removing or simplifying the decoration. This is the architecture preferred by totalitarian regimes for its celebratory efficacy in the built environment, with the exaltation of the Roman age in the Italian case. Its major theorist will be in Italy the architect Marcello Piacentini who dominates the fascist twenty years with his canons, crowding out the rationalists, who attempted to reconcile the themes of the Modern Movement within an authoritarian regime. This style also affected new urbanistic projects (university city of Rome, E42) and the demolition and reconstruction of historic centers (Via della Conciliazione, historic centers of Brescia and Livorno).
Piacentini will develop two essential canons: the exterior modernization of the style and the classic structure of the architectural design, with:
Some scholars identify traits that of the Novecento Italiano in architects who straddle the nineteenth-century language and the Modern Movement, as in the last works of Auguste Perret, where the features are however much more sober and somehow refer to the classical French tradition, as in the Public Works Museum of 1937. Other examples are found in the so-called Scandinavian Classicism and with some constructions by the Swedish architect Gunnar Asplund, who for some in the Stockholm Crematorium 1935–40 achieves a balance between modern forms and monumentalism in an ideal of synthesis with the languages of the past classical tradition.
Some include in monumentalism, even if in part, the so-called metaphysical architecture of interwar Italy, typical of which some fascist-era cities of foundation such as Portolago (on the Greek island of Leros) or Sabaudia. This, however, seems more related to the themes of the Modern Movement in its specification and Italian characteristic (Italian Rationalism), defining the two cities described above as rare examples, although unknown as regards the first, of the International Style.
Some critics go even further, including in Monumentalism part of some architectural expressions of the Modern Movement, when they concerned a search for symmetry, perfect, repetitive and monumental rhythm, as in the works of Mies van der Rohe, of which the Seagram Building it is the most complete expression. Also in some works by Giuseppe Terragni the primordial forms of Monumentalism such as the cubic, monolithic and strongly symbolic volumes are found. Moreover, the Casa del Fascio of Como, one of the masterpieces of Italian Rationalism, is designed on the golden section and built on symmetrical balances. However, these buildings belonging to the Modern Movement have different articulations in plan in relation to the functional distribution, which is less found in decidedly monumental constructions; in them the architectural space is closely linked to the relationship between form and function, which is the first and essential characteristic of the rationalistic theme.
Neoclassicism, also spelled Neo-classicism, emerged as a Western cultural movement in the decorative and visual arts, literature, theatre, music, and architecture that drew inspiration from the art and culture of classical antiquity. Neoclassicism was born in Rome, largely due to the writings of Johann Joachim Winckelmann during the rediscovery of Pompeii and Herculaneum. Its popularity expanded throughout Europe as a generation of European art students finished their Grand Tour and returned from Italy to their home countries with newly rediscovered Greco-Roman ideals. The main Neoclassical movement coincided with the 18th-century Age of Enlightenment, and continued into the early 19th century, eventually competing with Romanticism. In architecture, the style endured throughout the 19th, 20th, and into the 21st century.
EUR is a residential and business district in Rome, Italy, part of the Municipio IX.
Giuseppe Terragni was an Italian architect who worked primarily under the fascist regime of Benito Mussolini and pioneered the Italian modern movement under the rubric of Rationalism. His most famous work is the Casa del Fascio built in Como, northern Italy, which was begun in 1932 and completed in 1936; it was built in accordance with the International Style of architecture and frescoed by abstract artist Mario Radice. In 1938, at the behest of Mussolini's fascist government, Terragni designed the Danteum, an unbuilt monument to the Italian poet Dante Alighieri structured around the formal divisions of his greatest work, the Divine Comedy.
Since ancient times, Greeks, Etruscans and Celts have inhabited the south, centre and north of the Italian peninsula respectively. The very numerous rock drawings in Valcamonica are as old as 8,000 BC, and there are rich remains of Etruscan art from thousands of tombs, as well as rich remains from the Greek colonies at Paestum, Agrigento and elsewhere. Ancient Rome finally emerged as the dominant Italian and European power. The Roman remains in Italy are of extraordinary richness, from the grand Imperial monuments of Rome itself to the survival of exceptionally preserved ordinary buildings in Pompeii and neighbouring sites. Following the fall of the Roman Empire, in the Middle Ages Italy remained an important centre, not only of the Carolingian art, Ottonian art of the Holy Roman Emperors, Norman art, but for the Byzantine art of Ravenna and other sites.
Colonial architecture is a hybrid architectural style that arose as colonists combined architectural styles from their country of origin with design characteristics of the settled country. Colonists frequently built houses and buildings in a style that was familiar to them but with local characteristics more suited to their new climate. Below are links to specific articles about colonial architecture, specifically the modern colonies:
Mario Sironi was an Italian Modernist artist who was active as a painter, sculptor, illustrator, and designer. His typically somber paintings are characterized by massive, immobile forms.
Adalberto Libera was one of the most representative architects of the Italian Modern movement.
Giuseppe Pagano was an Italian architect, notable for his involvement in the movement of rationalist architecture in Italy up to the end of the Second World War. He designed exhibitions, furniture and interiors and was an amateur photographer. He was also a long-time editor of the magazine Casabella.
Fascist architecture encompasses various stylistic trends in architecture developed by architects of fascist states, primarily in the early 20th century. Fascist architectural styles gained popularity in the late 1920s with the rise of modernism along with the ultranationalism associated with fascist governments in western Europe. Fascist styles often resemble that of ancient Rome, but can extend to modern aesthetics as well. Fascist-era buildings are frequently constructed with particular concern given to symmetry; simplicity; and monumental size, especially for public buildings.
Nordic Classicism was a style of architecture that briefly blossomed in the Nordic countries between 1910 and 1930.
Italy has a very broad and diverse architectural style, which cannot be simply classified by period or region, due to Italy's division into various small states until 1861. This has created a highly diverse and eclectic range in architectural designs. Italy is known for its considerable architectural achievements, such as the construction of aqueducts, temples and similar structures during ancient Rome, the founding of the Renaissance architectural movement in the late-14th to 16th century, and being the homeland of Palladianism, a style of construction which inspired movements such as that of Neoclassical architecture, and influenced the designs which noblemen built their country houses all over the world, notably in the United Kingdom, Australia and the United States of America during the late-17th to early 20th centuries.
The Palazzo della Civiltà Italiana, also known as the Palazzo della Civiltà del Lavoro, or in everyday speech as the Colosseo Quadrato, is a building in the EUR district in Rome. It was designed in 1938 by three Italian architects: Giovanni Guerrini, Ernesto La Padula, and Mario Romano. The building is an example of Italian Rationalism and fascist architecture with neoclassical design, representing romanità, a philosophy which encompasses the past, present, and future all in one. The enormity of the structure is meant to reflect the fascist regime's new course in Italian history. The design of the building draws inspiration from the Colosseum with rows of arches. According to legend, the structure's six vertical and nine horizontal arches are correlated to the number of letters in the Italian dictator Benito Mussolini's name.
In architecture, Rationalism is an architectural current which mostly developed from Italy in the 1920s and 1930s. Vitruvius had claimed in his work De architectura that architecture is a science that can be comprehended rationally. The formulation was taken up and further developed in the architectural treatises of the Renaissance. Eighteenth-century progressive art theory opposed the Baroque use of illusionism with the classic beauty of truth and reason.
Marcello Piacentini was an Italian urban theorist and one of the main proponents of Italian Fascist architecture.
Novecento Italiano was an Italian artistic movement founded in Milan in 1922 to create an art based on the rhetoric of the fascism of Mussolini.
The architecture of Rome over the centuries has greatly developed from Ancient Roman architecture to Italian modern and contemporary architecture. Rome was once the world's main epicentres of Classical architecture, developing new forms such as the arch, the dome and the vault. The Romanesque style in the 11th, 12th and 13th centuries was also widely used in Roman architecture, and later the city became one of the main centres of Renaissance and Baroque architecture. Rome's cityscape is also widely Neoclassical and Fascist in style.
Italian modern and contemporary architecture refers to architecture in Italy during the 20th and 21st centuries.
Stripped Classicism is primarily a 20th-century classicist architectural style stripped of most or all ornamentation, frequently employed by governments while designing official buildings. It was adopted by both totalitarian and democratic regimes. The style embraces a "simplified but recognizable" classicism in its overall massing and scale while eliminating traditional decorative detailing. The orders of architecture are only hinted at or are indirectly implicated in the form and structure.
Arnaldo Dell'Ira was an Italian architect.
Stile Littorio denotes an architectural language developed in Italy in the 1930s and featured in a large number of public buildings commissioned by the Fascist regime until its fall.