Every year, on the first weekend of spring, the map of Italy is dotted with hundreds of extraordinary openings. There are 780 accessible places for this edition, distributed in more than 400 cities: private houses, palaces, gardens, theaters, factories and infrastructures that become open to visitors for two days.
5 overlooked architectural masterpieces for the FAI Spring days
A Brutalist bank, a mansion inspired by the color of a shirt, and other little-known architecture to visit this weekend during FAI Spring Days.
Photo Davide Bruneri
Photo Vasari
Photo Liuzzi Fotografi
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- La redazione di Domus
- 19 March 2026
A widespread, often little-known heritage that for a weekend makes itself accessible and narrates, through architecture and landscapes, the stratified identity of territories. From large cities to smaller towns, the openings build a temporary geography made up of exceptions and possibilities.
Because the range of offerings is so wide, finding your way around is not easy. And while the focus is always on the same places, we have chosen five less obvious addresses, off the beaten track.
These are not necessarily the most iconic, nor the most photographed. They are modern buildings, public and private, often linked to specific local contexts, that tell a concrete modernity made up of adaptations, stratifications and everyday uses. Five episodes in which the project meets precise, sometimes unexpected stories.
A house painted in bright yellow, chosen not as a whim but as a tribute to the color of the jersey worn by Tazio Nuvolari in his victories. More than a residence, a narrative object: architecture as an extension of a public identity. A domestic interior that still preserves the rhythm and character of its inhabitant.
A brutalist building that asserts itself within the urban fabric through a severe, repetitive grid. Its massive presence now engages with contemporary interventions, including a mural that introduces a visual tension between institutional rigidity and more recent urban languages. An example of how modern heritage is reinterpreted and reactivated.
A layered interior where different periods and interventions overlap. Here, architectural reading takes time: it is not immediate, but unfolds through details, materials, and proportions. More than a first glance, it is a gradual experience that reveals the complexity of a building shaped by continuous transformations.
Closed for years, the theater is temporarily open to the public. More than just a cultural space, it is a suspended urban machine: an interior that preserves traces of its past life while holding the potential for future reactivation. The visit also invites reflection on the ever-relevant issue of the fate of abandoned cultural infrastructures.
A reinterpretation of the trullo that avoids nostalgic replication and works with the typology itself. The traditional form is reimagined through contemporary materials and solutions, maintaining a balance between continuity and transformation. A project that demonstrates how even the most codified architectural types can remain a field for experimentation.