THE DANTEUM

The Danteum

Giuseppe Terragni & Pietro Lingeri

Project Book IC Architectural Design and History Ahmed Rania I Goda Poula I Ram Vishnu I Zhang Han

The Danteum © Politecnico di Milano All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without permission in writing from the publisher.

IC PROJECT A.Y. 2022-2023

GROUP NO. 02

The Danteum

Table of Contents Abstract 1.1 The History

1.2 The Team 2.1 Theme 3.1 Place 4.1 Type 5.1 Construction 6.1 Decor 7.1 Drawings

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Abstract It is an example of semantization signification of space in consonance with cultural and ideological contents of propaganda Mussolini. It is a question of evaluating an action architectural, decorative, functional, formal, farreaching administrative and political organization.

The Danteum could be understood as a large and strong building representative, which at the same time explicit - in the design, in the conception, in the materials, in the color - the commitment of the Modern to make it resurface the myth in architecture and of a specific architecture voted, according to the magazine’s manifesto «Primordial Values», founded

by Franco Ciliberti in 1938 and signed by Giuseppe among others Terragni and Cesare Cattaneo, to the rediscovery and to the updating of primary contents, of “an absolute time and space”, “of atmospheres mythical and desert “, transcending customs and intellectual fashions, and that in its ambition it was supported by Mario Sironi

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The History The journey and the imagination in thought and in material reality, in literature and architecture, in the past and in the present, but always as an innate and ardent yearning for man of all times. In the convergence of what is metaphysical and what is physical, one of the protagonists is the Danteum designed by Giuseppe Terragni in 1938, with Pietro Lingeri: a hymn to the great poet and his eternal work, the Divine Comedy.

It was to be built at the intention of Rino Valdameri, a Milanese lawyer and director of the Royal Academy of Brera in Milan but also president of the Company Italian Dante The Danteum, designed in 1938, it was abandoned in 1939 and remained virtually unknown until later revival of interest in the work of Terragni. Luckily though, a set of watercolour renderings, a model and a comprehensive Relazione (‘report’) on the project survived the war and has reached us today. Both in the 1934 competition and in the 1938 project the problems connected to the inclusion of new elements onto the ancient remains called into question the chromatic issue as one which designers should take into far greater account. In this respect, the Danteum is the monument that more than others displays a quite interesting sequence of spatial structures which parallel Dante’s work while, at the same time, offering a peculiar chromatic synthesis in the ideal and material relationship with the various features of the historical period and the archaeological site.

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Magic realism. Bontempelli he explains that his “magical realism” tends to the unity of the arts, “to bring all the other arts closer together to architecture and music; to the arts, that is, in to which the dualism of the planes is abolished and the foundation magical “- Terragni will talk about ‘getting excited’ entering the Danteum - “it is not in the atmosphere in which the real world is immersed, but even in the invention of a whole new world ” in this the architecture that communicates a myth, in the imperialistic and pseudo-dantesco case, it is possible only in a non-place, «which is ou tòpos, utopia» If architecture is a tool strategy of the new imperialist identity, such as teaches the religion of monuments (in debates, in competitions, exhibitions), build the Danteum can only do that for Terragni and Lingeri tell the epic of fascism, recognizing and honoring the Duce and the poet he had marked a crucial moment in construction identity of Italy after its unification The myth gives an absolute interpretation of reality, it is a symbolic expression of truth, of order natural or moral. Here, the walls of the Danteum they appear in this light, like a permanent ‘Voltage field’ and ‘mobile semantic field’, in which an ideology is created and from which models are born social and reading models of the world The traces of the ancient, removed or gutted, they become protagonists together with new architectures populate the courtyards and gardens villas where new modern examples coexist with ruin, in a new Forma Urbis, dialogue locked between myth, nature, culture and propaganda.

The allegorical transfiguration of Dante’s poem becomes the bearer of political and ethical meanings, aimed at celebrating the Lord of time and to act as an internal conceptual elaboration of a couple of architects more sensitive to values primordial.

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The Team

by Pietro Lingeri and Giuseppe Terragni.

Pietro Lingeri was always on the sidelines despite the design assignment had been commissioned to Lingeri, which in turn will require the presence of the second. Yet recent analyzes and interventions help to trace strongly to Terragni the design paternity of this architectural idea.

This area had already been for Terragni and Lingeri a place of interest in 1934 on the occasion of the competition first degree for the Palazzo Littorio, al which participated together with the main exponents of the architectural culture of the moment.

A space that favors the abstract attitude of Como and its propensity for uprooting of his architectures from the physical context

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Giuseppe Terragni - Italian architect Born: April 18, 1904, Meda Died: July 19, 1943, Como The Designer of the Danteum

Pietro Lingeri - Italian architect Born: January 25, 1894, Tremezzo Died: May 15, 1968 The Designer of the Danteum

Dante Alighieri - Italian poet Born: 1265, Florence Died: September 14, 1321, Ravenna The writer of the Divine Comedy

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Theme

Dante and Terragni both gave life to an architectural space, one through words intended to sculpt places and characters, the other through formal structures designed to evoke Dante’s imagination.Both, however, through the language of poetry.

In this work the resulting mix of literary and architectural language was to serve as a tool to promote the ideology of the Fascist regime, while making of Dante Alighieri, through his work and thought of him, the interpreter of an autocratic view of political power.

As a building, it had to be a ‘temple’ to celebrate “the maximum Poet of the Italians ”- to be built in time useful for the 1942 Exposition - and as an institution had to coordinate and promote the study of Dante’s works (especially Comedy and Vita Nova) and “help all those initiatives that attest the imperial character of Fascist Italy “ to foresee as a whole within it a space depicting the dark forest, Hell, the Purgatory, the Paradise but also the hall of the empire and a library of Dante studies The white - in Danteum they have a double role: on the one hand they approach the theme of absolute value, eternal, and the other as a relative value inscribed in the integration problems of the modern project in a historicized place and layered.

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4

Forest, Area with a dense regular grid of columns.

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3. Purgatory.

3

1 0 2

0. an entrance court open to the sky “The life of Dante before his journey to the underworld”.

2. Inferno.

Image short description 13

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The Poem

The Divine Comedy provides a complete geography and spatialisation of the world of the dead; A simple box-like building whose plan is organised in four parts set in an ascending spatial hierarchy.

Particular design decisions are justified by analogy to aspects of the formal compositional structure of the poem, including numerical relationships.

The labyrinthine underworld or a rose-like celestial world is part of a long-lasting structure of meaning, which permeates architecture and poetry alike. The golden-section rectangle was chosen as the fundamental geometrical principle that operates through the entire project.

The Column

What the Danteum does above all else, as architecture, is stage the column; not the column as a structural element, but the column as a device that organises space, or as a figure that makes claims over space in its own right.

In staging the column as a means and also as an end of spatial organisation the Danteum sets itself up to face both the classical tradition for which the column is the main bearer of the definition of the orders of architecture, and the modern perception of the column as a minimal structural element that frees the organisation of space.

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VII The Numbers

The poem is strictly divided by mathematics especially the number three is prominent. It is divided into three canticles (parts), each consisting of 33 cantos, including an introduction canto, and bringing the total number of cantos to 100. Each canto is composed of three-line sercets; the first and third lines rhyme, the second line rhymes with the beginning of the next sercet, establishing a kind of overlap, (ABA, BCB, CDC ... ) The Inferno, Purgatory and Paradise is each defined by nine levels, stages, sins or spheres.

As an attempt to interpret the strictly mathematical division of the overlapping rhymes in each canto (ABA, BCB, CDC ... ) the plans of the Danteum consist of overlapping squares.

The symbolic numbers – 1, 3, 7, 10 – and their combinations – 1:3, 3:7, 1:3:7:10 – constitute a criterion of both division and interpretation.

The three realms (i.e. Inferno, Purgatory, Paradise) are respectively located at levels of 2.7 m, 5.4 m and 8.1 m, dimensions all multiples of three. These levels are projected onto the facade ‘by seven bands that interrupt the stone ashlar disposed at intervals of three’. This numerical value embodied in architecture prevents a too literal delineation of the Dantesque landscape that risks falling into rhetoricism.

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The sky and the sun fills the hall & is reflected through the glass. By reflection and refraction the columns would have transformed other visitors into shimmering spirits.

Ceiling is a grid of beams

4 Paradise Three sides has a row of nine columns Nine columns is placed in the centre

3 Purgatory

Glass columns. Each column is placed upon a square.

5 Imperio The entrance to the hallway of ‘lmpero’ is placed at the far end of ‘Paradise’.

The hallway is blind, ending with an impressive Eagle at the rare end.

1 Forest

2 Inferno Small linear openings in the ceiling making Inferno a dark space

OUT

Library

IN

Wall is penetrated with identical openings with short flights of steps up leading into a blank wall.

Seven freestanding columns arranged according to the Golden Section.

Behind the tormented souls one faces the only door in the monument, the entrance to ‘Inferno’. In Dante’s poem the entrance to hell was lined with the words:

relationship between particular “The episodes and the overall setting

“Abandon all hope, you who enter’: Unwin, S., 2010

described in the poem resonates with the manner in which ‘the picturesque sculptures and decorations . . . were not independent, artistic wholes in themselves, but rather architectonic parts determined and inspired by the spirit of the edifice.

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IN

the visitor slips out of the public realm behind a screen wall, walking through a simple narrow labyrinth one enters a sunlit courtyard. The noise from the street disappears. Statues of tormented souls are placed on one side and on the other is a row of columns.

2 Inferno

3 Purgatory

5 Imperio

OUT

1 Forest Forest

4 Paradise

To exit the building one has to walk through a small opening leading to a long stair between two high walls leading to ‘Via dell lmpero’. Once back one the street one faces the ruins of ancient Rome and in the distance the Colosseum, and is finally ‘ ... back to the ordinary and everyday but with a transformed perception of the world.’

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Place

A prominent site was chosen in Via dell’Impero (now Via dei Fori Imperiali), opposite the then recently restored Basilica of Maxentius. Terragni aligned the Danteum with the ancient buildings flanking the Via dell’Impero by adopting the golden-rectangular form of ancient temples, fixing its dimensions to the Basilica of Maxentius, and adjusting its orientation to face the Colosseum [2]. 2 The project was planned for the World Expo of 1942, Terragni designed the Danteum project for the 1942 Exposition in Rome

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The danteum location on the ancient map and roads proposed by Terrani 19

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Context Placemarks 20

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The Danteum Layout 21

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Type Inferno

Forest

Dante is lost, wandering in a dark forest, unable to find the “straight way” to salvation. The spirit of the roman poet, Virgil, finds him and together they start the journey to the underworld.

Dante and Virgil passes through Inferno (Hell), a Contrapasso’ a place where your sins are punish by a ‘counter-action’ or poetic justice, for instances.

Pu

The purgator mountain h correspon deadly sins, an were excomm curve and th rece

0 2 2

2 1 1

3

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Paradise

urgatory

ry is a mountain, The has seven terraces nding to the seven nd two for those who municated from the hose who died before eiving rites.

Imperio

Beatrice guides Dante through the nine celestial spheres of heaven.

While the Inferno and Purgatory were based upon different classifications of sin, heaven is structured upon the four cardinal virtues and the three theological virtues; faith, hope and love

Terragni combined the narrative spaces with a political addition ‘the lmpero’ (The Empire), a dead end at the top floor of the building.

Considering the structure of the Divine Comedy as the soul’s journey towards God, this addi­tion (after Heaven) is a strong political statement, an attempt to equalize or determine the universal power of the empire and of fascism.

5

3

5 4 4 3

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Entering the building from the bottom left corner seeing the huge sculpture on the facade hiding the journey

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The journey starts with a corridor that separates you from the world of the living and the noise outside

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Going forward to take the first 7 steps of the journey to reach the first chapter

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Turning left to see narrow corridor and the very wide one like moving from the life to the death

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Moving through all those layers signifies the start of Dante’s journey to the realms of the dead

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Coming out from narrow dark corridor to a wide court with no ceiling as an alert for starting the journey to the heaven

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Seeing the Forest from outside lifting the Paradise and seeing how the light and shadows come through the columns

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In search of a passage through the Forest, feeling lost till he is able to see the way

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Through the stairs leading from the Forest to the Inferno

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One faces the only door in the building where in the Devine comedy was market with “abandon all hope, you who enter”

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Facing 7 columns with detached floor and ceiling gives a feeling of instability

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The exist is not clear a wall with openings, which is the right path?

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All the openings lead to a dead end, a wall that blocks the way and force you to move right skipping the Inferno to the Purgatory

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Only the last opening leads to the stairs to Purgatory, you see the light coming through

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Those stairs lead up to the Purgatory

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From them you can still see the wall that separates the two realms and it’s like a waiting area between the Inferno and the Purgatory

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Entering the Purgatory light is coming from the openings above and you take your path stepping on the different levels of the floor signifies the mountain of Purgatory

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This leads you to the Paradise

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You enter a space where the sunlight is refracted and reflected through the glass columns wich reflects the pure souls of the people entered the Paradise

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You are able to see the sky above where is no ceiling just a grid of beams

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And then you enter the last part of the journey, the Empire

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You leave returning to the realm of the living, to the noise of the world

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This back side entrance leads to the only functional space at the building and this entrance for skipping all the journey

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Entering the building from the bottom left corner seeing the huge sculpture on the facade

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This corridor with the natural light leads you to the library and 2 rooms for library’ utilities

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The first utility room

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The second utility room

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This corridor connect the rooms with the library but from the internal side of the building

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The only functional space in the Danteum which is the library

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The light illuminates the space from the openings in the wall

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Construction

The golden-section rectangle was chosen as the fundamental geometrical principle that operates through the entire project.

The choice of this form is questionable since it has no direct connection with The Divine Comedy. In point 6 of the Relazione he writes: ‘there is only one rectangle that clearly expresses the harmonic law of unity in the Trinity, and this is the rectangle known historically as the “golden”; the rectangle, that is, whose sides are in the golden ratio (the short side is to the long side as the long side is to the sum of the two sides). One is the rectangle, three are the segments that determine the golden ratio.’ In applying the golden-section rectangle Terragni imagines that he brings the concept of the infinite into the design: the rectangle can be decomposed successively into a square and a smaller golden rectangle. ‘the long side of the Danteum was equal to the short side of Basilica.’

Thus the Basilica Maxentius helped him determine the form, dimension, and the orientation of the Danteum. Once resolved, the numerical law of one and three that he perceived in The Divine Comedy was integrated by the ‘superimposition of] two rules, one geometric, the other numerical . . . to achieve equilibrium and logic in the selection of dimensions, spaces, heights, and thicknesses for the purpose of establishing a plastic [artifact of absolute values, spiritually chained to Dantesque compositional criteria.

The Divine Comedy is organised in three parts, Inferno, Purgatory and Paradise, set in an ascending spatial hierarchy.

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Prudence Justice Restraint/Temperance Courage/Fortitude

Faith Hope Love

Those who lived purely

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The universal circle that houses the angels, creatures never poisoned by original sin

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O Diameter of columns O Wall Thickness

O Plan divided in 3 parts

O Floor parts in the Inferno O Columns in the Inferno O Floor steps in Purgatory O Skylights in Purgatory

O 3 Rows of 9 columns in Paradise O 9 columns in the middle of Paradise

O Columns in Paradise

O Columns in Forest O Grid of Paradise Floor

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Definition of a golden rectangle starting from a square

Bring the corners back to the front side

Division of the rectangle in the two axes of symmetry A and B. Bring the point of intersection of the diagonal of the initial square with the A axis, on the left side

Divide the rectangle into four areas and move B with X length downwards.

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Subdivision of the rectangle into three areas

Move the starting square downwards by X

Translate the widths of Y inwards.

Proceed to a symmetry according to the B axis. Divide the two right areas thus obtained according to the golden spiral.

Define the diagonals of the square areas obtained from the golden spiral.

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Decor

The symbolic numbers – 1, 3, 7, 10 – and their combinations – 1:3, 3:7, 1:3:7:10 – constitute a criterion of both division and interpretation. For example, the three realms (i.e. Inferno, Purgatory, Paradise) are respectively located at levels of 2.7 m, 5.4 m and 8.1 m, dimensions all multiples of three. These levels are projected onto the facade ‘by seven bands that interrupt the stone ashlar disposed at intervals of three’. This numerical value embodied in architecture prevents a too literal delineation of the Dantesque landscape that risks falling into rhetoricism.

The relationship between particular episodes and the overall setting described in the poem resonates with the manner in which ‘the picturesque sculptures and decorations . . . were not independent, artistic holes in themselves, but rather architectonic parts determined and inspired by the spirit of the edifice.

VII The Poem

The Numbers The Ceiling

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The Column The Flooring

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1 Forest Forest light enters the hall through the open back wall, through slits in the walls and through narrow gaps in the ceiling “the floor of Paradise above”, divided into squares each supported by one of the ‘canto’ columns.

Dante is lost, wandering in a dark forest, unable to find the “straight way” to salvation. The spirit of the roman poet, Virgil, finds him and together they start the journey to the underworld.

VII

‘the forest of one 100 columns’ = 100 cantos

One hundred travertine columns placed on a 10X10 grid on the deep side of the courtyard Represent the forest in which the poet is lost at the beginning of the poem.

or

Represent a human multitude, a society, if we allow the column to stand for the human body.

The dense spacing of the columns would result in groups of visitors coming to be separated as they traverse the area.

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2 Inferno Each column supports a corresponding and detached portion of the ceiling, at variable heights, in proportion to column radii.

Dante and Virgil passes through Inferno (Hell), a Contrapasso’ a place where your sins are punish by a ‘counter-action’ or poetic justice, for instances.

VII

7 Columns = 7 Sins

Light comes in through the gaps thus created, as if to emphasise the fracture of the overall structure.

Columns of decreasing radius are centered on an arrangement of squares successively inserted within golden section rectangles, so as to suggest a spiral.

The first and largest column is facing the entrance, while the smallest is further back.

The dislocation of floor and ceiling sections creates a sense of shear distortion under the effects of weight.

A secondary effect of the disposition of the columns is strongly to differentiate the surrounding space, much as the Inferno is a strongly differentiated landscape.

The floor sections are also sunk by proportional increments, creating horizontal discontinuity.

The play of light, scale and materials creates a crushing atmosphere of heaviness and darkness.

Represent a human multitude, a society, if we allow the column to stand for the human body.

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3 Purgatory The hall of Purgatory is lit from above by seven square wholes, both size and position determined by the Golden Section. The sky is visible through the wholes, and the shadows on the floor and the walls slowly follow the rhythm of the sun.

The purgatory is a mountain, The mountain has seven terraces corresponding to the seven deadly sins, and two for those who were excommunicated from the curve and those who died before receiving rites.

VII

7 Square wholes in the ceiling, 7 Steps in flooring

The room is open to the sky; there are only small zones covered by slabs and a pattern of beams that resonates with the arrangement of the floor.

Columns are entirely absent The floor steps up in proportional intervals, over square sections arranged according to principles similar to those applied in the Inferno. the absent columns could be provisionally replaced by the transient bodies of visitors and distributed over this stratified environment as if in the landscapes of Purgatory The floor consists of eight planes (nine including the whole of the hall) slowly rising, representing the mountain of purgatory.

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4 Paradise

Beatrice guides Dante through the nine celestial spheres of heaven. While the Inferno and Purgatory were based upon different classifications of sin, heaven is structured upon the four cardinal virtues and the three theological virtues; faith, hope and love

VII

33 Columns = 33 Cantos per part

Glass beams would mark the grid lines on the ceiling.

The glass columns representing Paradise.

Transparency and light would create an ethereal feel. As the columns become transparent and dematerialised, so the views of other visitors would become blurred, refracted and reflected, potentially to create a pattern of copresence at undecipherable intervals of distance.

The floor separating these columns from the forest of columns below would itself be made of glass blocks.

The columns themselves could represent the pure souls of angels described in the Comedy.

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5 Imperio Emerges as the most enigmatic space in the building.

Terragni combined the narrative spaces with a political addition ‘the lmpero’ (The Empire), a dead end at the top floor of the building.

Considering the structure of the Divine Comedy as the soul’s journey towards God, this addi­tion (after Heaven) is a strong political statement, an attempt to equalize or determine the universal power of the empire and of fascism.

It is the only space that a visitor could miss if, having explored Paradise, they chose to take the stairs leading back to the entrance.

At the same time, it is the only space that mediates between all three realms. Directly connected to Paradise, it affords views into both Inferno and Purgatory positioned as it is over their shared boundary.

From the Empyrean, the architectural journey is suddenly revealed in overview and the conceptually simple organisation of the building can be fully understood.

The rigorous experiential sequence from Inferno to Paradise is now complemented by a more holistic glimpse from the point of view of heaven. Intellectually, the understanding of Heaven is the key to the understanding of Hell According to many Dante scholars, this is evidenced in the Vita Nuova, which they consider as an antechamber to The Divine Comedy

Should one take an alternative route, and ascend from the entrance way directly up to Paradise and through to the Empyrean, as if entering The Divine Comedy from Vita Nuova, a unique experience would be generated.

The flight of steps leads to a space seemingly suspended in air, due to the translucent floor and glass roof, a space leading to a floating axial extension, the Empyrean. There would be views through the slits in the wall enclosing the Empyrean, down towards the enigmatic spaces of Purgatory and Inferno. Still visible, the solid floor of the courtyard would offer a contrast to the elevated floor of Paradise. The Empyrean would thus appear as a representation of the congregation of believers, a space that can be shared with God and that could be entered directly from the profane world, avoiding the horrors of the long journey of redemption.

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SECTION 01

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SECTION 02

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SECTION 03

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SECTION 04

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ELEVATION 01

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ELEVATION 02

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ELEVATION 03

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ELEVATION 04

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The Danteum © Politecnico di Milano All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without permission in writing from the publisher.