Paolo Genovese will have to remove the pergolas installed on the terraces of his apartment in Coppedè, the neighborhood liberty of Rome. The Lazio Regional Administrative Court (TAR) decided, establishing that the structures were illegal and also determining the payment of a fine. The ruling with which the administrative court agreed with the municipality of Rome is from last May 8. The second municipality had issued a determination requiring the director to remove the pergolas, or retractable awnings supported by a structure, within 60 days, considering them to be irregular as they were installed on a building subject to a constraint. The municipality also requested the payment of a fine of 15 thousand euros. The director, who had the awnings placed on the fourth and sixth floors of the building, had challenged the determination and appealed to the TAR because in his opinion the intervention cannot be defined as “building renovation”. These are works, he wrote in his defense brief, that “would not involve the creation or modification of a building, nor would they lend themselves to changing the intended use of the places as they would essentially constitute elements of external furniture, shelter and protection, functional, among other things, to the best temporary use of an existing building to which they access”. Since it was not a building renovation, the municipality could not even have “imposed sanctions”. However, the TAR ruled against him: since the building was subject to a constraint, “the complaints of the appellant party are not positively appreciable in light of both the regulatory provision and the shared orientation of the court on the point”. The TAR thus confirmed the demolition order and also a sanction, but invited the municipality to impose a lower one.
