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# 63 • JUNE 28 , 2015
A very interesting initiative began in Padua this month: the
opening to the public of two
historical headquarters of the
University, two jewels of rationalist architecture and art
from the early twentieth Italian
century. The dean Giuseppe
Zaccaria continues to promote
activities to attract the public
of art and history lovers through expansions, renovations
and new solutions.
From this month, everyone can
visit the historical site of Palazzo del Bo’ in Padua, which
dates back to 1493 when the
owner of the Bo’ (ox) inn sold
the property to the dean of the
jurists of the city. Through the
following century the building
was remodeled and expanded
with peaks of pure avant-garde for its time, as the creation
of the famous Anatomy Theatre, the first permanent scientific meeting hall in the world,
opened in 1595 next to an assembly hall frequented in those years by Galileo Galilei.
The story then restarts in 1932,
when Carlo Anti, historical
dean of the time, following the
building from scratch of the
Sapienza University of Rome,
announced a competition for
the construction of Liviano,
the new headquarters of the
Faculty of Humanities, and
for the modernization of the
Palazzo del Bo'. The competition was won by Gio' Ponti, the
most eclectic and visionary architect of the time, the future
prophet of Italian architecture
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and design. Ponti promoted
the program of integration of
the arts that he was so fond of,
where everything is personally
created and interacts with the
extant Renaissance bringing it
into the twentieth century with
no error or smudge. Examples
of this vision are the wall decoration of Massimo Campigli
in Liviano and also of his own
personal version of the decoration of the “Scala del Sape-
re” (the Stairs of Knowledge)
in Palazzo del Bo', where even
the halls of the dean and of the
graduations and the reading
halls still have even the least
particular kept in the shape
and in the position desired by
Ponti.
This is a journey of cultural
tourism with a new perspective, that of the public building
which is actually a museum