A style between two centurie.The great hall of the faculty of architecture of Rome

The proclamation of Rome as the capital of Italy marked the starting point for an impressive urban development. The city, included within the Aurelian Walls, seemed to turn into a shipyard for the construction of several buildings linked to the function of a capital while neighborhoods for new social classes were being made to crown around the Old Town. It was, therefore, to create a dichotomy in the architecture of Rome for which public buildings, full of symbols, were represented by an eclecticism sometimes oversized, while private houses absorbed the traits of the modern architecture that already had spread across the Alps and into Italy took the name of Liberty. Hampered by the cultural climate, extremely closed towards European art, the architects gradually introduced the new style that, however, in Rome never reached the inspiring models. The fusion of the new trends with the constructive tradition gave rise to a particular architectural language recognizable in several buildings of the time. Among them deserves attention, the restructuring carried out in the first thirty years of the '900, in what is now the Great Hall of the building of the Faculty of Architecture in Piazza Borghese: an interesting solution that, even in its small size, contains the own characters of the architecture of the period bringing out the contrast between the linearity of Art Nouveau and the character of fortress attributed to specific architectural elements.