Reggia di Caserta. A historical overview

Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, 2005

IAEME PUBLICATION, 2020

The paper deals with the in-situ surveys performed within an integrated knowledge plan aimed at the conservation design of the façades of the Royal Palace in Caserta (“Reggia di Caserta”) in Campania, Italy. Surface penetrating radar tests, covermeter testing, infrared thermography analyses, and endoscopic inspections were performed as complementary methods of surveys. The paper describes the equipment, the testing arrangement and the main outcomes. The falling of some large portions of facing slabs is identified to be due to the oxidation of the metal cramps. The position of the anchor cramps has then systematically identified, showing that they are not arranged according to specific alignment rules. This allows assessing the structural safety of the facing stones and drawing data for the restoration activity and the conservation management plan.

2011

European Architectural History Network Newsletter, 2012

Histories of Postwar Architecture, n. 9, 2021

The paper traces the political and design events that led the city of Florence and FIAT to involve numerous architects in 1985 for the construction of a new district on the area owned by the car manufacturer. In addition to various office and commercial buildings, the city's Palace of Justice would also be built here.

Art and Experience in Trecento Italy, 2018

This dissertation investigates the origin of the architectural typology of the Renaissance palace as it emerged in Florence between the end of the fourteenth and the beginning of the fifteenth centuries. This was a period characterized by a dramatic shift in domestic architecture, mirroring a parallel transformation of the Florentine society under the political regime of the Albizi oligarchy. This study fills a clear gap in existing scholarship, comprehensively addressing the private palatial architecture built in Florence in the sixty years before the construction of Palazzo Medici in 1446. Three palaces and their family archives have been studied for the first time: Palazzo Alessandri (built in the 1370s), Palazzo da Uzzano-Capponi (built circa 1411), and Palazzo Busini-Bardi (built before 1425). Their patrons, all pairs of brothers, used the size and urban prominence of their new residences to assess their political and social dominance on the city. They eliminated all commercial functions from their palaces and organized the space around a central courtyard with loggias, with a multiplication of dedicated rooms for the different public and private functions of the household. These palaces are representative of a period of transition in domestic architecture that inaugurated a new, successful domestic typology that was subjected to little change in—at least—the following three centuries. Built in a period of rising individuality, these private buildings, together with the ones that followed, helped set the modern concepts of the apartment and family privacy.

1999

ABSTRACT The Palazzo is one of the most notable monuments in the city of Padova: it was erected during the communal podestà government of Giovanni Rusconi (1218-1219), it underwent a radical restructuring by Frà Giovanni degli Eremitani in the first decade of 1300 and was almost entirely reconstructed after a devastating fire in 1420. It is still today the commercial and cultural heart of the city and so the importance of its maintenance and restoration seems an obvious point.

Römisches Jahrbuch der Bibliotheca Hertziana 42, 2018

This architectural and urban study revises the history of Rome’s Palazzo Medici (later Palazzo Madama) in the Campo Marzio, from the 1470s through 1521. Originating from a fine Renaissance house built up and improved by two different curial administrators amongst the medieval and ancient remains of the baths of Alexander Severus, the building and grounds of the future palace were rented in 1503 by Cardinal Giovanni de’ Medici (later Pope Leo X), and subsequently purchased and expanded by his family. Because even basic facts affecting this project have remained unclear, the neighborhood’s specifics are here re-examined. Utilizing archeological, legal and cultural materials, both written and drawn, this article provides a comprehensive history of relevant properties: a chronicle of owners and transactions – including previously unpublished 1509 Medici contracts – and maps of their precise topographic boundaries. Within this detailed context are set the famous drawings produced after the cardinal was elected pope in March 1513: the Medici palace designs by Giuliano da Sangallo (GDSU 7949 A) and Antonio da Sangallo the Younger (GDSU 1259 Ar,v). These Uffizi drawings, both made during the first two years of Leo’s papacy, have been repeatedly cited as important examples of High Renaissance palace design and urbanism, and of Medicean aspirations. Based on reconstructions and hypotheses created by Christoph Frommel and Manfredo Tafuri in the mid-1980s, current literature still accepts that these Sangallo sheets depict only two schemes, both appropriating a huge area between Piazza Navona and today’s via della Scrofa. This article demonstrates that the Uffizi sheets in fact depict three dif- ferent palace designs, each carefully planned to capitalize on previous structures and ancient monuments, and each dependent upon but smaller than the last. In particular, detailed analyses show that Antonio the Younger made two designs: a “twin” palace scheme, and a later, modified – and previously unrecognized – “shrunken” palace project. Antonio’s urban design sketch, which shows his shrunken palace within an extended grid of existing but beautified streets and piazzas, depicts a situation in early spring 1515 when Medici ambitions were being refocused. By then, their family palace had become a secondary ele- ment within an urban ensemble which emphasized the two adjacent, Medici-allied public institutions: the Studium Urbis and the French national church. The three Sangallo projects thus render a sequence on this site from euphoric overreaching in 1513 to pragmatic idealism in 1515, illus- trating and illuminating the shifting goals and strategies of Leo X, and his Medici relatives.

Handbook of Research on Emerging Technologies for Architectural and Archaeological Heritage, 2000

The study presents the very first results of research carried out on the Palazzo dei Tribunali in via Giulia, designed by Bramante but realised only in part. The only fragments that have survived are a few portions of a massive ashlar masonry structure, which characterized the base of the palace. The objective of the research was to carry out an analysis of the site but one that would combine the documentary biblio-iconographic aspect of the study -which would take full account of existing and published articles -with an enquiry based on a direct approach to the site within the metric and perspective-visual frame of reference. This type of analysis can be carried out through direct observation "in situ" and through an integrated digital survey campaign on various levels. This study can be considered an important contribution to the knowledge of the Palazzo and to the documentation of Cultural Heritage.

in Atas do ciclo de conferências do Palácio nacional de Mafra na comemoração do tricentenário do lançamento da primeira pedra da basílica de Mafra (1717-2017), Mafra, Municipio de Mafra – Camera Municipal de Mafra, pp. 384-391, 2019