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Quadrilatero Romano

The oldest core of Turin, laid out on the grid of the Augustan colony: from a working-class, run-down area to a residential district known for its nightlife.

Image from the publication of the MAO Museum of Oriental Art
From the publication of MAO Museo d'Arte Orientale

The Quadrilatero Romano ("Roman Quadrilateral") is the part of the historic centre of Turin that still preserves, in the orthogonal grid of its streets, the layout of the Roman colony of Augusta Taurinorum. The name refers mainly to the narrow streets north of via Garibaldi, around via Sant'Agostino, via Corte d'Appello, via della Consolata and piazza Emanuele Filiberto, a short walk from Porta Palazzo.[1][2] A working-class area, largely run-down until the 1970s, it was the first part of Turin's historic centre to be redeveloped, and today it is one of the busiest spots of the city's nightlife.[1][3]

The Roman city

The colony was founded between 25 and 15 BC, during Augustus's pacification of the Alps, in a position that controlled access to the mountain passes.[4][5] Its layout was a rectangle of about 700 by 750 metres, just over 50 hectares, with the north-eastern corner cut off diagonally; the city never exceeded a few thousand inhabitants.[4] The inhabitants were probably mostly natives of the area, and for some time local cults and customs coexisted with Roman ones.[5] The perimeter corresponded to today's via della Consolata, via Santa Chiara, piazza Castello and via Santa Teresa.[5]

Via Garibaldi follows the course of the decumanus maximus, and the axis of via San Tommaso and via Porta Palatina that of the cardo; the grid of "square Turin" survives to this day, albeit altered by eighteenth-century rectifications and nineteenth-century restorations.[4] Of the four main gates, two survive: Porta Palatina and the one incorporated into Palazzo Madama.[4] The Palatina, dating from the 1st century, with two sixteen-sided towers over thirty metres high, was a fortress in the 11th century and, after Vittorio Amedeo II ceded it to the City, a prison from 1724 to 1872; the restorations by Carlo Promis (1861–1873) and later by Alfredo d'Andrade from 1904 freed it from the buildings attached to it.[6] Today's piazza Palazzo di Città, the former piazza delle Erbe, is considered the probable site of the forum.[7]

From the Middle Ages to the 19th century

Churches, convents and noble palaces were layered onto the Roman grid over the centuries. The Santuario della Consolata stands on the remains of the 10th-century church of Sant'Andrea, of which the Romanesque bell tower survives; Guarino Guarini redesigned it in 1678, and Filippo Juvarra added the oval presbytery in 1729.[8] Via Garibaldi was called contrada di Dora Grossa until 1882; the historic buildings of the area include the fourteenth-century Casa del Senato and the seventeenth-century Palazzo Falletti di Barolo, where Silvio Pellico worked.[7]

Beneath piazza Emanuele Filiberto, at least since 1753, three large underground chambers served as ice houses for storing food; in 1887, having deteriorated, they were replaced by new cells at the end of via delle Orfane, on four levels reaching a depth of 14.5 metres, further enlarged in 1952.[9] Porta Palatina was hit by the bombing of 13 July 1943, and the Consolata by the RAF raid of 13 August the same year.[6][8]

The redevelopment

As late as the 1970s the district was a working-class, run-down area.[1] In the late 1970s, on a proposal from the Collegio costruttori (the builders' guild), the City reached an agreement with 36 firms grouped in the company Centro Storico Torinese, which began restoring the first four blocks.[3][1] The name itself is recent: the 2009 Rota Report speaks of four blocks "included in what would later be recognised in the collective imagination as 'the Roman quadrilateral'".[3]

The best-known intervention is the block between via Santa Chiara, via Sant'Agostino and via Bonelli, designed in 1978 by Roberto Gabetti and Aimaro Isola with Guido Drocco and Vittorio Neirotti and completed in 1984: it raises a postwar textile warehouse built on a bombed-out lot and opens onto an inner courtyard shaped like an inverted pyramid, with stepped loggias.[10] In the 1990s shops, restaurants and wine bars arrived, and the district became a centre of evening leisure as well as a residence sought after by the Turin middle class.[1] MuseoTorino describes it as "the radical transformation of a once run-down part of the city, now marked by real-estate success and civic promotion".[1] In September 2017 the district celebrated the twentieth anniversary of its revival.[11]

An important piece of this history is Palazzo Mazzonis, at via San Domenico 11: a residence of the Solaro della Chiusa and later of the Solaro della Margarita, it was bought by the textile manufacturer Paolo Mazzonis (in 1870 according to MuseoTorino, in 1879 according to the museum itself) and housed his manufacturing business until it closed in the 1960s.[12][13] Purchased by the City of Turin in 1980 and restored between 2004 and 2008 to design guidelines commissioned by the Compagnia di San Paolo, since December 2008 it has housed the MAO Museum of Oriental Art.[13][12]

Today

The success of its nightlife has brought with it a difficult coexistence between venues and residents. In July 2021 around 450 residents (about 500 according to Torino Oggi) submitted a petition to the City Council about the lack of parking, in an area with some fifty recorded spaces: their spokespeople noted that the issue had been resurfacing at regular intervals for about fifteen years.[14][2] It was decided to reserve half of the blue parking lines for residents, repainted yellow-and-blue from September, between via della Consolata, via Corte d'Appello, via Sant'Agostino and piazza Emanuele Filiberto.[2] Alongside the venues, historic shops survive, such as the Massia trimmings workshop, founded in 1843 as a supplier to the royal court.[7]

Pages linking here

Related articles: Augusta Taurinorum, Palazzo Madama, Porta Palatina, Taurini, Torino

Sources

  1. MuseoTorino
  2. Torino Oggi — 14 July 2021
  3. Comitato Giorgio Rota – Centro Einaudi —
  4. MuseoTorino
  5. MuseoTorino
  6. MuseoTorino
  7. Città di Torino – Torino Compra Vicino
  8. MuseoTorino
  9. MuseoTorino
  10. Ministero della Cultura – Censimento delle architetture italiane dal 1945 ad oggi
  11. Torino Oggi — 21 September 2017
  12. MuseoTorino
  13. MAO Museo d'Arte Orientale
  14. CittAgorà – Consiglio comunale di Torino — 14 July 2021

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