5 churches of the 20th century in Rome: masterpieces of sacred architecture

From Marcello Piacentini to Richard Meier, through the graces of a "minor" architecture: an excursus on the ideas and forms of religious architecture of the Eternal City in the 20th Century.

In the vast and complex scenario of the 20th century architectural production, the case of sacred architecture is to be considered a separate chapter. In particular, with the end of the Fascism and the consequent abandonment of the celebratory dimension that had been typical of the Regime architecture, the interpretation of religious architecture, and the possibility of a new language for it, opened a season of debates of great intensity in Italy. Important voices of succesful architects, such as Saverio Muratori and Luigi Moretti, found space among the pages of magazines born in the 1950s, such as “Chiesa e Quartiere” and “Fede e Arte,” and specifically focused on the topics of sacred art and architecture.

In Rome more than elsewhere does the sacred building probably constitute one of the most characteristic typologies in the urban fabric.

From north to south, there are notable proposals by Gio Ponti, Figini and Pollini and Enrico Castiglioni in the Lombard context, Ludovico Quaroni's peculiar interpretations for the church in La Martella (1951), as well as for the later Chiesa Madre in Gibellina (1970), or in the case of the church of San Giovanni Battista located along the Autostrada del Sole and designed by Giovanni Michelucci in Campi Bisenzio, Florence, between 1960 and 1964.

Meier's "vele" under construction. Photo from Wikicommons

A further consideration concerns the Roman context, where the building practice for new churches nevertheless marks the best attitude - such the worst - of the Eternal City; the formal research of more or less careful architects to liturgical needs, stands next to the work of more or less committed colleagues to represent the oldest version of certain historicisms (first among other a reinterpreted brutalism, or the exaggeration of a structural technicism), to finally land to the prolific work carried out by the technical offices of the Capital. Going on, it is fair to point out that in Rome more than elsewhere does the sacred building probably constitute one of the most characteristic typologies in the urban fabric, noticing that the grandeur of the historical examples is often contrasted by a modern and contemporary production easily ascribable to a minor architecture, but not for this reason devoid of quality.

The present selection of five churches, designed and built in Rome during the 20th century, tries to draw a synthetic but complete picture of how sacred architecture has sought in its multiple artistic and formal interpretations its deepest ontological dimension, from the Basilica del Sacro Cuore di Cristo Re designed by Marcello Piacentini and located in the neighborhood Della Vittoria (1920-34), to the Jubilee Church, built in Tor Tre Teste suburbs by the American Richard Meier.

1. Marcello Piacentini, Basilica del Sacro Cuore di Cristo Re, Quartiere Della Vittoria, Roma, 1920-34 Photo Anonymous from wikimedia commons.

The Basilica del Sacro Cuore di Cristo Re belongs to those works by Marcello Piacentini that could be defined as transitional architecture. For the architect representative of the Regime, who alongside the exaltation of the “Italic” character of his works recognized the material and structural honesty of German and Dutch rationalism, the design of the Cristo Re stands at the crossroads of these trends.
Drafted between 1920 and 1931, the project reaches its final configuration in the guise of a building emancipated from the stylistic traditions of religious architecture of past centuries.
The main innovation lies in the volumetric layout, defined by the clear, geometric forms of the main body and the two bell towers, such as in the general essentiality due to the lack of ornament, and to the treatment of the brick facades. Especially the main one, marked by three rough round arches, evokes the reasons of Giovanni Muzio Milanese work and the so-called “stile Novecento.”

2. Arnaldo Foschini, Basilica dei Santi Pietro e Paolo, EUR, Roma, 1939-1958 Photo Pufui PcPifpef from wikimedia commons.

Arnaldo Foschini's project for the Basilica dei Santi Pietro e Paolo is part of the broader design of the E42 urban plan, conceived to host the Universal Exposition of Rome in 1942, for the celebration of the twentieth anniversary of the March on Rome. The general plan called for the creation of a series of permanent exhibition structures designed to sublimate the “Italic” civilization.
Located at top of the staircase and overlooking the west end of the Viale Europa promenade, the basilica dialogues with the most representative buildings of the site, such as the Palazzo della Civiltà Italiana and the Palazzo dei Ricevimenti e dei Congressi, following their aesthetics and the use of travertine as a cladding. The Greek cross plan has four avant-corps with squared recesses decorated in bas-relief. 
The austere angularity of the elevations is contrasted by the imposing hemispherical dome, while the large circular interior shows the excavated spaces of the chapels in exact correspondence to the recesses outside.

3. Raffaello Fagnoni, Gesù Divin Lavoratore, Quartiere Portuense, Roma, 1957-61 Photo Croberto68 from wikimedia commons.

The Gesù Divin Lavoratore church, in the Portuense neighborhood is one of those surprising examples of “minor” architecture, because of its modest sobriety.
Raffaello Fagnoni moves between planimetric inventions and Gothic constructive suggestions, and designs an ovoid floor plan marked by 14 reinforced concrete partitions covered in stone, which support the gallery, along which runs a single continuous window, and then the ribbed ceiling with its frame of beams. The exterior treatment in red-stone with thin travertine string motives accentuates the cylindrical nature of the volume; the same features are echoed in the bell tower, cylindrical as well, whose top is distinguished by a ring of reinforced concrete pillars with bells behind.
Overall, the building presents a language more factory-like than liturgical, but it consistently establishes the relationships of space and light for a modern sacredness.

4. Saverio Busiri Vici, Santa Maria della Visitazione, via dei Crispolti 142-144, Quartiere Collatino, 1969-71 Courtesy Leonardo Busiri Vici

With the church of Santa Maria della Visitazione in the Collatino neighborhood, Saverio Busiri Vici achieves a discrete example of that structural brutalism current, which especially in the 1970s and 1980s, tried to answer to the theme of the sacred building. The church is essentially resolved in its weight-bearing structure.  Outside, the reference to the naval aesthetics of Lecorbusier brutalism is visible, in the display of the exposed reinforced concrete frame, with the diagonal and wide section columns, and the wall-beams that run along the perimeter of the building, creating a contrast between the concave main façade and its antithetic convex one at the back, where the presbytery area is located.  Also inside, the liturgical space is identified just by the weight-bearing structures. Light filters through the windows, cut out like slits in the concrete, while a column of polychrome stained-glass embellishes the altar backdrop. The latter is conceived as a fixed piece of furniture, and together with the concrete and river gravel flooring, it renders the image of a bare space, where the materials are displayed in their full essentiality.

5. Richard Meier, Dio Padre Misericordioso, Tor Tre Teste, Roma, 1998-2003 Photo Federico Di Iorio from wikimedia commons.

Richard Meier's project for the construction of a new church in Tor Tre Teste has behind it a procedure significantly typical of the 1990s, of a season of ambitious competitions, of good intentions for the suburbs, and not always happy endings. In fact, Meier won the first prize only after a second competition was announced in 1997, and further delays bring the construction of the church to become a characterizing event of the Jubilee 2000. The result is bold: three self-supporting panels of precast concrete stand out like white sails on the ground, and create an intimate shell for the community of believers, arranging three possible entrances to the hall, baptistery and chapel. Beams of light filter through the skylights in the roof - again, three - carved between one panel and another, strengthening the symbolic allusion to the Holy Trinity.
A project that, for better or worse, stands out in the lacking architectural identity of the Roman suburbs.