RINASCITA DELLA GALLERIA DELLE VITTORIE: UN NUOVO MONUMENTO PER LA CITTA’ DI PALERMO

Alessandra Maniaci1, Caterina Gullo2, Gianfranco Salemi Scarcella3

Dipartimento PAU, Università degli Studi Mediterranea di Reggio Calabria, via Melissari, 89124 Reggio Calabria, Italia

1 alessandra.maniaci@unirc.it

2 caterina.gullo@unirc.it

3 g.salemiscarcella@gmail.com

ABSTRACT

The great innovation linked to the Industrial Revolution led to a significant technical development in architecture. The most spectacular results of the new technology are the enormous glassed buildings for Great Exhibitions, commercial galleries and passage. These buildings have many languages and meanings: majesty, lightness, democracy. However, the application of new techniques and materials did not produce a completely independent style from the nineteenth-century revivals. The first Italian commercial galleries in Milan, Turin and Naples, are examples of this trend; they inspired the “Galleria delle Vittorie” in Palermo, the object of our analysis, designed by Italian architect Paolo Bonci. Inaugurated in 1935, during the fascist period, it features simple and austere. It consists of a square block building, overlooking Via Maqueda, one of the two main axes of the historic city and has five levels, three entrances, a beautiful polychrome glassed roof, frescoes and mosaic floors. For forty years it was a place for socialization of the city, but it is abandoned from the Seventies. The building needs the restoration of coverage, foundations, floors and cornices. The restoration of the gallery is very important for the development of the historic city and could be a substantial piece, together with the opposite Quaroni area, recently restored but still closed to the public, for the formation of a culture, history and social center for people; a “new” monument for Palermo.

Key-words:

Palermo, Galleria delle Vittorie, restoration, development, metal.