Rome to present new plan for historic architecture

(ANSA) - Rome, January 17 - Rome's special superintendency for art and architecture will present a new plan for safeguarding and promoting the Eternal City's historical districts at a meeting on January 31 with representatives from the city and regional government.
    The objective is to propose a tool that can provide gradual protection and promotion for historic villas and buildings in the city, by respecting the characteristics of the various neighbourhoods and conserving not just individual buildings or decorations but rather entire urban areas.
    The operating constraint plan aims to work in harmony with already existing regulations and plans in order to incentivise urban transformation in terms of sustainability, renovation, and lower land consumption, while also maintaining the spirit of districts known particularly for the features of their buildings.
    "The regulation promoted by the regional government, aimed at transforming and densifying the city with the aim of reducing land consumption, actually opened up a new vision of profitability linked to increasing space volume within some buildings," said special superintendent Francesco Prosperetti.
    "Therefore, demolishing and rebuilding became advantageous.
    The embarrassment comes from the fact that single buildings recognised as single assets don't have the characteristics to become protected objects. Now, however, entire historic and traditional urban areas are at risk," Prosperetti said.
    He said this is an emergency that must be faced, especially due to the fact that after the meeting it will still take between six to eight months to enact the new operating constraints.
    The special superintendency has already chosen the city's 2nd district, which includes historic areas such as the Coppedè and Trieste neighbourhoods, as the pilot area for the new protections. The choice of the 2nd district was a natural one, following the outcry from neighbourhood associations after a historic villa on Via Ticino was knocked down in 2017, and Villa Paolina di Mallinckrodt on Largo XXI Aprile came under risk of demolition.
    Villa Paolina di Mallinckrodt was purchased by a company that plans to turn it into a modern building based on the possibility, granted by new national and regional regulations, of increasing the volume of space within the building.