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.
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