Exhibition: “The Town Hall of Trieste. Genesis of a building, birth of a square. 1875-2025”

Description

The Technical Drawing Archive of the Municipality of Trieste – Territorial Planning Service is proposing a new and ambitious project dedicated to a building particularly dear to the citizens: the Town Hall of the Municipality of Trieste, which this year celebrates 150 years since its construction. As per tradition, the protagonists will be the documents preserved in the Technical Drawing Archive, which, accompanied by documents and photographs from municipal and private archives, recount the conceptual and urbanistic development of the square in relation to the construction of the new Town Hall.
The time period chosen by curator Gianfranco Paliaga (Technical Drawing Archive) is well defined and spans from the first proposals for the layout of the square in the early 19th century, the result of meticulous research involving the selection of various unpublished or little-known material on the subject, to the complete renovation of the Town Hall by Trieste architect Giuseppe Bruni (1875-76). Particular attention is paid to the last few years, which saw a decisive change in the spatial layout of the area with the burial of the Mandracchio (1863), the demolition of the 15th-century church of San Pietro (1871), the construction of the Palazzo Modello (1872) and the painful demolition of the Locanda Grande with the creation of the Hotel Garni (1873). It was in this context that the final design of the Palazzo Municipale (Town Hall) took shape. At the time, it was the seat of the Civic Magistrate and, despite the irony typical of Trieste, which nicknamed it “palazzo cheba” (meaning “cage”), it represented the architectural key to the new Piazza Grande under construction. A true jewel, publicly inaugurated on 28 September 1875, it proved its designer right, who had conceived it as the crown of a unique, uninterrupted square overlooking the sea and as a veritable “curtain” at the entrance to the most historic part of the city.
At the entrance, visitors will find a brief abstract of the exhibition in Italian and English, as well as a commemorative postcard of the event with a special postmark.
Opening hours: from 10:00 to 13:00 and from 17:00 to 20:00.
Free admission

Organized by:

Comune di Trieste,