Roma Termini. Continuity and Discontinuity in Postwar Italian Architecture

Abstract

This text aims at analyzing the different proposals submitted for the architectural competition for the new Roma Termini building, organized in 1946 as one of the first competition of Postwar time. The project, originally started in 1937 under Mussolini under a design by Angiolo Mazzoni and soon interrupted due to the outbreak of war, was finally completed only in 1950. If the original project was, together with the operation of E42, central part of a monumental vision for a “Terza Roma”, it became for Postwar architectural community the first institutional occasion where to directly deal with Fascist architectural legacy. In this context, the project clearly incorporates the hovering between continuity or discontinuity that will become a central condition for Italian culture, as Ernesto Nathan Rogers will write in 1957 in «Casabella-continuità». In this paper, I intend to analyze the specific episode of the competition in 1946 as paradigmatic example of the conditions of Postwar architectural debate.