“Un cospicuo lavoro che di rado s’incontra fra gli architetti anche di grido”. Alessandro Antonelli e il progetto per il nuovo Foro di Torino capitale

On 17th September 1831, Alessandro Antonelli, sent the Turin Accademia Albertina di Belle Arti the final project for his specialization in architecture. He had been studying in Rome for five years, at the Pontifical School of Engineers and the San Luca Accademia. His design was for a creative and ambitious neoclassical forum for the city of Turin which brought together town planning designs developed during Napoleon’s occupation and lessons at the San Luca school. The design for a new monumental cathedral became a pretext to rethink the whole “zona di comando” and propose a new architecture for Piazza Castello, the fulcrum of the city. A solid background in architecture and the boldness of his youth as well as his desire to astonish and call attention to his work is evident in the peremptory nature of the changes Antonelli envisaged for the historical structure of the urban fabric.Antonelli provided two different possibilities for the volume of the church, at the centre of the project. The first was in the form of a basilica, and the second was a centralized plan in the style of Sainte Génevieve of Soufflot. In Antonelli’s design a long chain of rooms and buildings had a number of functions; the new cathedral at the centre of the square lent importance both to the city and its architecture. The portico brought continuity and unity to the new buildings and linked them to the existing porticos. The desire to give a dignified, monumental configuration to the city’s main square was linked with the plan for a new cathedral. At the time it was unusual to give a real context to a final academic project. Antonelli’s work recalled the giant order projects from the years of the French Revolution which had spread throughout Italy during the Napoleonic occupation, which used insistent repetition of architectural elements to achieve a monumental effect. His designs were also reminiscent of Antolini, Pistocchi and Canonica in Milan.