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Coverage of Chromatius Hall, Aquileia
gtrf giovanni tortelli roBerto frassoni
architetti associati, with Gianni Naoni,
Michela De Munari
In 2003 the Aquileia town council, in collaboration with the Friuli
- Venezia Giulia regional authority and the Architectural and Archaeological
Heritage Superintendencies, announced an international
competition for the reorganization of the area surrounding
the Basilica complex and the public display of the mosaics in the
southern chamber of the baptistery, one of the most important cultural
initiatives in recent years.
Piazza Capitolo, to the north, had previously been partially repaved,
but with the use of decidedly inappropriate materials and in
a functionally inadequate fashion. To the south, the Archaeological
Heritage Superintendency had managed to halt a project which
would have seriously compromised the conservation of the portions
of mosaic brought to light by George Niemann and published in
1906 by Karl von Lanckoronski in Der Dom von Aquileia. Other
previous attempts to put in order the Basilica area went little beyond
the demolition of wings considered irrelevant with respect to the
original building.
Several proposals made by Max Fabiani in 1918 attest to a desire to
delimit the open area around the church with an arched portico centred
on the baptistery, thus giving the piazza an appearance similar
to that of various other well-known Italian historic town centres,
complete with a four-lobed fountain.
A different approach was taken by Guido Cirilli, who after the war
was given the job of designing a “Heroes’ Cemetery” and its surrounds.
He encircled the area with a ring of Cupressus sempervirens,
much of which still exists, thus emphasizing the huge size of the
Basilica and clearly demarcating the zone from the residential centre.
The piazza, however, remained merely an open space used for the
grand military ceremonies on 4th November and as a parking lot for
tourists’ coaches during the rest of the year.
The international competition, won by our studio, was the first
significant occasion in Aquileia in which comparison was made
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