Palazzo dell’Emiciclo: Regional Council Complex in L’Aquila
Site at a Glance
- Rating
- 4.8
- Popularity
- Very Low
- Country
- Italy
- Primary era
- Modern
- Eras represented
- Early Modern, Modern
- Civilizations
- Italian, Kingdom of Naples, Spanish
- Site type
- Civic
- Remains
- Palace
On this page8 sections
History
Palazzo dell’Emiciclo is a monumental complex in L’Aquila, Italy, whose construction began in the seventeenth century and whose principal façade was transformed in a nineteenth-century neoclassical style. Also known as the Emiciclo and Palazzo dell’Esposizione, it now serves as the seat of the elected Regional Council of Abruzzo.
A Capuchin foundation
The area inside L’Aquila’s walls south of present-day Viale Luigi Rendina remained almost entirely undeveloped for several centuries after the city’s foundation. Earlier buildings in the area were limited to the churches of Sant’Andrea, Santa Maria a Graiano, and Santa Maria ai Quattro Coronati, whose history is only weakly documented and whose structures no longer survive.
In 1606, Francesco Vastarini, a Capuchin friar, scholar, and preacher, proposed creating a Capuchin friary inside the walls. Capuchins are a branch of the Franciscan religious family associated with communal religious life, preaching, and simplicity. Vastarini’s proposal opposed the San Giuseppe friary outside the walls, founded in 1540 by Matteo di Leonessa. After acquiring a large plot at the northern edge of the Monticchio district, Vastarini oversaw the beginning of construction in 1610 under a design by Father Bernardo Romano.
Dedicated to the archangel Michael, the original complex consisted of the church of San Michele and an adjoining convent. The friars also managed orchards and cultivated fields behind the buildings, extending toward the city walls.
From convent to exhibition complex
Italy’s unification brought the suppression of the religious residence in 1866. The Capuchins later moved to the Santa Chiara complex at Borgo Rivera. The former San Michele convent first became the seat of the Guardia di Finanza, Italy’s financial and customs police force, and then passed to the municipal administration in 1885.
The municipality chose the former religious complex as the venue for a Regional Exhibition. During a wider redevelopment of southern L’Aquila, Carlo Waldis converted the buildings in 1888 and created the porticoed semicircular structure facing the gardens of the Villa Comunale. This exedra, a semicircular architectural feature formed here by a curved colonnade, gave the complex the name Emiciclo. The site hosted the 1903 Exhibition and became the setting for the city’s principal exhibitions in later decades.
Between 1929 and 1932, the Casa del Balilla was built beside the palace. This Fascist-era youth facility was associated with physical education and organized youth activities. The addition followed a monumental design by Luigi Cardilli and Vincenzo Di Nanna.
Regional administrative use and reconstruction
After Italy established its regional system, the complex was selected as a permanent administrative seat. The Regional Council moved its headquarters there in 1972 after restoration initiated by superintendent Mario Moretti and architect Renzo Mancini. The council chamber was first arranged in the former church nave, the principal longitudinal space of a church, and was later transferred to the Regional Exhibition hall.
New facilities designed by architect Giuseppe Santoro enlarged the complex toward the east in 1984. The 2009 L’Aquila earthquake then severely damaged the entire group of buildings, with especially serious effects on the ends of the portico and the former church nave. A comprehensive reconstruction and seismic-upgrading project was approved in 2012, and work began on 11 January 2016.
The intervention introduced a new foundation beneath the complex and sixty-one seismic isolators, structural devices placed between a building and its foundation to reduce the transmission of earthquake movement. Palazzo dell’Emiciclo became the first public building in Italy, and one of the first in Europe, to adopt this particular seismic-protection solution. The complex remains owned by the Abruzzo Region and continues to serve as the Regional Council’s headquarters. Restoration of the former convent’s underground spaces was completed in 2018, allowing them to accommodate the Giuseppe Bolino Regional Library.
Remains
The complex occupies the Santa Giusta quarter on Via Michele Iacobucci beside the gardens of the Villa Comunale. Its surviving fabric combines the former church and Capuchin convent with the nineteenth-century exhibition façade, the later Casa del Balilla, the eastern extension, and spaces created during reconstruction. The buildings are therefore layered rather than the product of a single period of construction.
The semicircular façade
The principal façade is a west-facing semicircular colonnade that forms the eastern termination of the public gardens. Its twelve Ionic columns, recognizable by their scroll-shaped capitals, support a simply framed ceiling and a broad terrace. A central block resting on four square-based pillars divides the portico into two sections, while two small architectural frames, or aedicules, close its ends. Each aedicule carries an eagle in its pediment.
Two stone columns stand before the portico. During the nineteenth century, they supported public-lighting lamps. Between the two sections of the colonnade are bas-reliefs, one showing Italy distributing crowns to victors and the other depicting History writing the deeds celebrated by a trumpet. The central string course, a projecting horizontal band on the façade, bears the inscription “Consiglio Regionale.”
Sixteen busts line the inner route of the colonnade. They represent Anton Ludovico Antinori, Andrea Argoli, Bernardino Cirillo, Cola dell’Amatrice, Pietro Antonio Corsignani, Giacinto De Vecchi, Leonardo Dorotea, Giacinto Dragonetti, Muzio Febonio, Carlo Franchi, Giovanni da Capestrano, Niccolò dell’Isola, Venanzio Lupacchini, Luigi Marchesani, Giulio Mazzarino, and Lucio Silla. Fourteen face the square, while those of Leonardo Dorotea and Giacinto Dragonetti face the entrance to the complex.
The former church and convent
The main entrance opens into the large quadrangular hall known as the Navata, which occupies the surviving space of the original church of San Michele. At its eastern end is I giorni e le opere, a large historiated stained-glass window by Franco Summa. The work won an international competition. Architect Franco Purini associated it with implicit elements operating at a subliminal level, including the rose window of the Basilica of Santa Maria di Collemaggio.
To the right of the Navata, the cloister stands at the center of the former Capuchin convent. A cloister is a covered walkway enclosing or bordering an open courtyard. Here it has a glass roof and provides circulation for the rooms around it, with connections to the modern wing, representative offices on the upper floor, and service rooms and the Library Room below. The space became accessible again in 2018 after the Sala Michetti was removed from the cloister.
The convent has two levels. Service rooms occupied the ground floor, while the first floor contained forty-five rooms for the religious community. Below, the former convent’s underground rooms now house the Giuseppe Bolino Regional Library.
Assembly and modern facilities
A semicircular underground hall lies beneath the colonnade square. Constructed during the 2016 to 2018 reconstruction, it replaced the former Sala Michetti and covers 590 square metres. The hall accommodates 186 seats when arranged for the Regional Council assembly, or 250 seats for a public event. It can be reached from the cloister and directly from outside.
The complex also incorporates the Casa del Balilla beside the palace and the eastern facilities added in 1984. Together with the church, convent, exhibition spaces, and reconstructed underground hall, these buildings preserve the successive institutional uses that shaped Palazzo dell’Emiciclo from Capuchin foundation to regional government center.
