Urban transformations in “Roma Capitale”. The "Wrecks" of the Rione Ponte (1870-1970)

Abstract

All interventions made with the purpose of rendering Rome a modern city often revealed themselves as actual campaigns of destruction towards strengthened historical fabrics. In order to illustrate the dramatic extent that the regularly engineered tearing to pieces of the post-unification had, which in different ages, moreover, destructions due to tragical events are connected to, an extended range of tangible evidence on the urban and architectural level is still standing to date: the so-called “urban wreckages”, scattered throughout the major part of the neighbourhoods inside the “Città Storica”.

The essay synthetically analyzes the historical reasons, highlighting how, although different periodizations can be distinguished, the interventions perpetuated within the historical city of Rome, remained essentially unchanged up until the second post-war. From these premises then, a specific case has been analyzed: the urban wreckages of the area located between via dei Cimatori and piazzetta dell'Oro. Thanks to a collection of archive data and documentation, a historical-analytical study of the main transformation phases of this portion of the city has been elaborated, which is particularly significant to understand the upheavals suffered by the capital since 1870. This research also aims to serve as a methodological guideline for the study of the many other cases characterizing the capitoline Historical City.