Urban and Architectural Design of the Piazza del Governo in Enna

Abstract

The present essay deals with the urban space of Piazza del Governo in Enna, a town located in the center of Sicily. This square is a work projected and realized in 1935 by the palermitan architect Salvatore Caronia Roberti. This area is a wide space representative of the 1930s fascist regime: the square would worthily hold the public headquarters of the politic-institutional and economic-financial power. The planimetric compositive layout is assigned to geometric rigor. The wide urban empty space does not erase or destroy the memory of places, on the contrary the high tower of the Palazzo del Governo fits well in the historic skyline. The buildings overlooking the square, most realized ex-novo, show the temper of monumentality and representativeness that are called to accomplish. Our investigation started by analyzing the historical documents preserved at the Historic Archive of the city of Enna (project drawings, letters, historical images) to better understand why some decisions have been taken. The research used the tools of Survey and Representation to better understand the shape and the measure, the dimensional ratios both at the urban and at the architectural scale. To achieve that we have carried out an integrated survey (direct, photogrammetric, 3d laser scanning) in order to acquire a whole set of information essential to describe, document and appreciate all the features of these urban space and buildings. The final result represents the historical memory up to date of the whole urban space and it allows any academics to investigate more about the project: the initial decisions, the conservation state, the possible and more coherent interventions of maintenance and preservation.