Esposizione Universale di Roma

Esposizione Universale di Roma 1942 E42
EUR, Piazza Guglielmo Marconi
motto	"Olympiad of Cultures"
General
Exhibition space	400 ha
BIE recognition	called off
Place of issue
place	Rome
terrain	Quarters Europe Coordinates: 41 ° 50 ′ 1 ″  N , 12 ° 28 ′ 15 ″  E
Chronological order
predecessor	New York 1939
successor	Port-au-Prince 1949

Esposizione Universale di Roma (Italian, "World Exhibition Rome") is the name of a new district built from 1938 in the south of Rome , which is usually only used in its short form EUR , commonly known in Rome as Eur (pronunciation: [ɛ: ur] ). According to Mussolini's will, the 1942 World Exhibition was to take place in EUR under the motto of an Olimpiade delle Civiltà (Olympiad of Cultures). The project name was E42 (Esposizione 1942) and, in addition to the world exhibition, also included the 20th anniversary of the fascist seizure of power ; the regular date of the world exhibition in 1941 had been postponed for a year at Mussolini's request. The quarter now forms Quartiere XXXII. Europe in the city district IX. EUR.

history

After an intensive planning phase, Marcello Piacentini was able to present the definitive project in 1938. In terms of urban planning, it connects the historic center of Rome via Via Cristoforo Colombo with the sea near Ostia and thus complied with the fascist directive “Rome to the sea”. The floor plan is shaped by the classic Roman town planning with Cardo and Decumanus and arranges central monumental buildings at the intersection of the main and secondary axes, some of which were awarded to other architects through competitions. In contrast to earlier world exhibition areas, the central buildings of the E42 should not be demolished after the end of the exhibition, but rather form the core of a new urban complex. They were therefore built with high architectural standards and effort from representative materials such as marble and travertine . The architecture of E42 is shaped by the tension between the dominant neoclassical style of the Scuola Romana around Marcello Piacentini and the razionalismo of, for example, Adalberto Libera , which sometimes draw heavily on the Roman architecture of antiquity , but also have elements of the Pittura metafisica .

EUR was built until 1942, Italy's entry into the war and the end of the fascist government in 1943 led to the end of the project and construction activity. After 1951, the completion took place with changed urban planning objectives. In the south of the main axis for the 1960 Olympics, the Palazzo dello Sport , today PalaLottomatica , was built by Pier Luigi Nervi and Piacentini, while the Grattacielo Italia rises on the foundations of the great theater in Piazza Imperiale . EUR received a metro connection to Termini as early as 1955 and became an administrative center and expensive residential area.

Important buildings

Palazzo dell ' INA in EUR

The most famous building in EUR is the Palazzo della Civiltà Italiana (Palace of Italian Civilization, also Palazzo della Civiltà del Lavoro or Colosseo quadrato in allusion to the Colosseum ), which was originally intended to house an exhibition on the history of Italian civilization up to fascism.

Further central structures of the first construction phase:

• Palazzo dei Ricevimenti e Congressi (Congress Palace ) by Adalberto Libera
• Archivio Centrale dello Stato (State Archives) by Mario De Renzi and Gino Pollini
• Museo della Civiltà Romana by Pietro Aschieri
• Chiesa dei Santi Pietro e Paolo by Arnaldo Foschini
• Stele for Guglielmo Marconi by Arturo Dazzi

• 

  Viale della Civiltà del Lavoro with a view of the Palazzo dei Ricevimenti e dei Congressi

• 

  Palazzo della Civiltà Italiana

• 

  Palazzo dei Ricevimenti e Congressi

• 

  Museo della Civiltà Romana

See also

• Foro Italico , Rome (formerly Foro Mussolini), 1928–1938
• the plans for the world capital Germania in Berlin, 1937–1943

literature

• Franz Bauer : Rome in the 19th and 20th centuries. Constructing a Myth. Regensburg 2009, ISBN 978-3-7917-2171-2 , pp. 266–298.
• Christine Beese: Marcello Piacentini. Modern urban development in Italy. Berlin 2016, pp. 300–329.
• Luigi Monzo: Review of Christine Beese: Marcello Piacentini. Modern urban development in Italy, Berlin 2016. In: architectura. Journal for the history of architecture. Vol. 45, 2015 (published in October 2016), pp. 88–92.
• Luigi Monzo: Croci e fasci - Italian church building in the time of fascism, 1919–1945. Dissertation, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (2017), 2 vols. Karlsruhe 2017, pp. 146–153 and 912–928.

Web links

Commons : EUR  - album with pictures

Commons : Quartiere XXXII - Europa (Rome)  - Collection of images

• EUR 2000, il quartiere Europa , official portal (Italian, English)