Hiroshima mon amour: l’icona di Jan Letzel

The blackened skeleton of the former Hiroshima Prefectural Commercial Exhibition Hall, represents one of the most powerful and dramatic pictures associated to the war and the atomic tragedy. Designed by Bohemian architect Jan Letzel in 1913, the building, that was an elaborate synthesis between the European and the Japanese stylistic ele- ments, can be considered as the apical moment in the peculiar work of its creator. The long debate about its preservation has been concluded in 1966, when a resolution of the City Council, saw the victory of those who considered it as an icon of rebirth more than a symbol of destruction.