Urbana street

• Customer: N.I.M. Nuova Immobiliare Monti
• Year: Under Construction
• City: Roma

RESTORATION AND CONVERSION INTO RESIDENTIAL UNITS OF THE FORMER PRINTING WORKS OF IL MESSAGGERO NEWSPAPER
Prestigious apartments, built with innovative technologies and materials with low environmental impact, in keeping with the exceptional artistic and architectural level of the surroundings.

On occasion of the refurbishment of the old building of Il Messaggero newspaper, the salvage archaeological work conducted by the cityʼs Special Superintendence for Archaeological Heritage before the cark park was built opened a window onto the old city. This work made it possible to unearth the exceptional testimony that extends uninterruptedly from Giovanni Volpatoʼs neoclassical workshop back to the Roman era.
First of all, it is important to note that the modern Via Urbana overlays an ancient Roman road (the vicus Patricius) with patrician dwellings (domus) from the republican and imperial ages, alternated with insulae, i.e. high-density residential structures. The remains of an insula, with what may have been shops (tabernae on the ground floor, datable to the 2nd century AD), were discovered beneath the modern building. Most of these large rooms, conserved on two levels that overlooked the street and an interior courtyard and featuring black-and-white mosaic flooring (fig. mosaic), were still visible in the early 17th century, as demonstrated by Maggiʼs engraving (fig. engraving by G. Maggi, 1618). This portion of the rediscovered city is faithfully represented in the marble map reproducing the topography of Rome in the early 3rd century AD, the Forma Urbis Romae (fig. fragment of the Forma Urbis Romae overlaid on the modern building and archaeological remains). The cellar in the home of an important figure from the turn of the 19th century represents a fascinating and important discovery for our knowledge of the modern city. It was the home of Giovanni Trevisan, known as Volpato, a famous engraver who was a friend of Canova. He was close to emperors, tsars and popes, and was the “inventor” of the modern souvenir, the miniature reproduction of important ancient works of sculpture. These items circled the globe in the luggage of art enthusiasts on the Grand Tour. When these rooms, used as a storage area for “souvenirs” and raw materials, were excavated, plaster moulds for the reproductions were discovered along with several finished objects and biscuit vases, the earliest imitation of Chinese porcelain, of which Volpato was a pioneer (fig. biscuit vase).