The Pro Loco Faenza guided tours for the 2024 “Summer Tuesdays” begin on Tuesday 2 July at 8.30pm.
The first appointment will be a pleasant walk “From Molinella to Fontanone” with a story “on the uses of water in the city”, in collaboration with Fatti d’Arte and Fototeca Manfrediana:
The Fontanone, a monument much loved by the people of Faenza, is exactly 200 years old. It was in fact built in 1824 following a public competition – in which several local and foreign architects and artists participated – to create a worthy perspective backdrop to the already existing Viale Stradone. The latter was created as “Public Passeggio” in 1816 to fix the old country road called “via Erbosa” but also to provide work for the numerous unemployed labourers; the original trees, made up of nine different species, mainly exotic, were different and, having deteriorated, were replaced in 1859-60 with the current one of plane trees.
But returning to the Fontanone competition, the winner was Pietro Tomba from Faenza, a former teacher at the local Municipal School of Drawing and a very successful architect: he presented a project in which neoclassical balance, rigor and symbolic meanings blended perfectly; his design was also the simplest, most linear and consequently economical. The judging commission chose him also for this last reason, discarding other projects that included arches, frills, small temples and expensive superstructures.
The “Prospettiva” was thus built with a central body enclosing an imposing niche framed by pilasters and surmounted by a celebratory inscription which recalls how the work was also financed with a public collection (which however proved insufficient); on the sides two smaller niches incorporate the basins of a pre-existing fountain used for the Forum Boarium which was held in the area of today’s Tondo park since 1527: there was in fact here, in the body of the current Fontanone, the XII Conserva or Cistern of the Aqueduct of the Fountain of the square, aqueduct built way back in 1617.
The “Fontanone” was magnificently restored by the Municipality of Faenza in 1996 with the complete restoration of the exterior, interior and small rear garden. In particular, the very fine plaster-stucco of the internal environment was restored, small but very elegant, conceived by Tomba as a café according to the transalpine fashion of the time and a destination for nobles and bourgeois on a Sunday stroll. For two years it has been entrusted to the Faenza association “Fatti d’Arte” which in recent weeks is holding an exhibition with vintage photos from the Manfrediama Photo Library. In some of these you can also glimpse the “dei” channel
Cappuccini” which passed in front of here and which was “covered up” in the second half of the 1960s.
Other evocations of the Faenza waterways will be the subject of the guided tour.
Meeting point: Pro Loco, Voltone Molinella. Reservations required, limited places.
A contribution for cultural purposes of 3 euros is required.
The visits are conducted by qualified and authorized tourist guides
from the Emilia-Romagna Region.
