13 Jun 2024 06:00
In the context of the ‘urban connection’ project – the resources are those of the Suburbs Plan – between Piazza Dante and Via Mazzini, a project that the Municipality of Terni is bringing to fruition, the urban redevelopment of Piazza Tre Monumenti stands out. In particular, the installation of a work in the center of the roundabout, represented by three blocks of travertine with the tallest measuring six meters and the others graduated. That work, in terms of structure, can be considered completed: now the marble roofs will have to be installed and the greenery that will accompany the new roundabout will have to be created, the renewed and redeveloped nucleus of a neighborhood that has been waiting for a new impetus for some time. Momentum which, in this case, looks at the links between the territory and history.
Yes because the new design of Piazza Tre Monumenti is fruit of the ‘Franco Maroni’ award, its 2022 edition, which – won by the architect Manlio Valentino Maltese – led to the creation of a new future for Piazza Tre Monumenti, looking at his past. Succeeding not only in design terms but, thanks to the commitment of the municipal administration – a meeting dated July 2023 in which Mayor Bandecchi became aware of the project and the possibility of including it in the new ‘urban connection’ of the square was decisive -, also on the plan of concrete implementation. In all this, the direction is that of the Lions Club Terni Host, which organizes the award named in memory of the architect Franco Maroni and which has made the Maltese architect’s project available to the city.
But returning to the link between the new creation and history, it must be clarified how the three travertine artefacts in the center of the square – in the intentions of the Maltese architect – recall that only existing sketch, created by the artist Francesco Di Giorgio Martini after a visit between Terni and Spoleto dated 1400 and preserved in the Uffizi, which shows the three bases of the statues of the Roman emperors Marco Claudio Tacitus, Marco Cocceio Nerva and Annio Floriano, linked by birth to the Terni and Narno territories. Those bases were then destroyed around 1500 at the behest of Pope Pius V and the marble remains were used to fortify the city walls. Today, in the project idea donated by the Lions Club Terni Host – at the time of the competition the president was Paolo Alunni Pistoli and the continuity, the ‘push’, was guaranteed by the current president Alessandra Robatto – that ancient concept comes back to the surface in modern key, connected to the context and able to tell us ‘who we are’.
Terni, ‘Franco Maroni’ award: architect Manlio Valentino Maltese wins
Terni, Piazza Dante-Mazzini connection: the restyling begins
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