Palazzo Montecitorio: backside view

After the unification of Italy and the annexation of the Papal States in 1870, the transfer of the capital to Rome meant that suitable locations had to be found for the governing bodies of the Kingdom. The choice fell upon Palazzo Montecitorio, and the work to adapt the old palace to the new requirements was rapidly undertaken.

The task of building the assembly hall was entrusted to a comparatively unknown public works engineer, Paolo Comotto (1824-1897), who did the job very quickly (the hall was inaugurated in July 1871). The new hall soon proved to be inadequate, and the government had assigned to the architect Ernesto Basile the task of making extensions to the Chamber at the back of the earlier one.

Basile, a leading representative of Italian Art Nouveau, retained only the front part of the ancient Bernini palace, squared the central courtyard, demolished the wings and the triangular-shaped rear section. The surrounding streets were demolished to make way for Parliament Square. In the square thus created, a large rectangular building was erected with four mediaeval-like towers, made of travertine and red brick.

Basile achieved significant results in the interior of the building. He displayed a designer’s rather than an architect’s tastes, obtaining an overall effect in which the solemnity of the rooms was in perfect harmony with the airiness of the decorations and the detailed work. This is confirmed by the Assembly Hall (Chamber of Deputies), the corridors and monumental rooms (particularly, the most famous, the “Transatlantic”), the committee rooms, the coloured marble paving, the ceilings, the decorations in the taste of the time that Basile concerned himself with down to the last details. The “Transatlantic”, the large lobby situated at one end of the Assembly Hall where MPs gather in the breaks between sessions, gets its name from the ceiling lighting typical of ocean liners.

Basile was assisted by other artists, leading representatives of the ceremonious (and somewhat rhetorical) tastes of the time: Leonardo Bistolfi (1859-1933) and Domenico Trentacoste (1859-1933), the authors of the marble groups and rear fa�ade. Aristide Sartorio (1860-1932) is the author of the large pictorial frieze on the history of the “Italian people” running around the upper section of the Assembly Hall, right below the delicate Art Nouveau stained-glass and iron velarium by Giovanni Beltrami (1860-1926).