Livorno, controversy over new paving of Via Grande. Postwar Palladian removed.

Controversy rages in Livorno around the resurfacing of the porticoes of Via Grande, the main street in the city center. The Pd municipal administration, led by Mayor Luca Salvetti, has in fact begun work on replacing the current Palladian pavement, dating back to postwar reconstruction, with a modern industrial product. A 5-million-euro project, entrusted to a consortium of companies (Frangerini, Edinfra and Lumar), to completely resurface the street’s pavement, according to the design drawn up by Ipostudio of Florence. Only citizens do not like the mayor’s choice. The new pavement will consist of large slabs with earth-colored elements that “swim” in a kind of blue sea: the choice was made to recall the colors of the city, related to the sky, the sea, the sand, and the buildings. “The designers,” said the first citizen, “reasoned on a gradation of colors that changes from sea to earth with progression of light blue, light blue, gray. And then, yellow, ochre and brick color.”

Expressing the concerns of those opposed to the project is surveyor Marcello Paffetti of the Cultural Association Il Pentagono, according to whom “what we have seen recently is a paving of concrete slabs and resin that is not a true Palladian. Palladian is a historical evidence of post-war reconstruction and should be preserved [...] At the very least, the paving would need a new traditional Palladian, when it was built at the time, the company that built it also put the name on the tiling and the telephone number. Those were other times and people worked differently.”

The debate over the resurfacing of Via Grande is a long-standing one: it has been debated for years because the postwar Palladian has suffered, not least because of the wrong restorations and interventions that have taken place over time, with resurfacing made with different materials, if not even with patches made with bitumen. Even in the past, there has been no shortage of those who have proposed remakes, such as Claudio Filippelli, a city surveyor who, during the city’s Pentastate administration, oversaw the portico restoration project, which later failed to materialize: according to Filippelli, the postwar choices were dictated solely by economic reasons (scraps from marble processing and other stones were recovered and put together into a mosaic by skilled artisans who are, however, in short supply today). And the city administration, to justify its intervention, has in recent days waved dozens of photographs on social media of the problems of the Palladian in Via Grande. But one wonders if action could not indeed have been taken differently.

On theaving.

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“The proposed design for the new pavement of Via Grande,” says gallery owner Gianni Schiavon, longtime director of Galerie21, “is simply unacceptable. To replace with a mediocre industrial product (mediocre qualitatively and unworthy aesthetically) the original Palladian goes against all logical, aesthetic, historical and even economic principles. A unicum of different color gradations replacing the individual condominium pavements born in accordance with the respective buildings and columns would also and above all create an abominable contrast that even the less experienced eye I do not think will be able to share and accept. This administration, which has also done well on several occasions in the recent past (most recently the appreciable intervention on Via Marradi) is now blatantly falling into error by not a priori considering the only possible solution for Via Grande, which is simply that of a conservative intervention, to be extended as a guide and line of operation for the very few portions of the pavement in which, already at the time of postwar reconstruction, the Palladian motif was not used for mainly economic reasons.”

The administration, however, goes on its way. “The one on Via Grande,” the first citizen told Livorno Today, “is a project of great architectural quality, an important investment for the city. High-quality, practically handcrafted materials have been chosen to build it; these are unique pieces that will be created specifically for Livorno. Everything has been agreed with the designers. Maybe it may bother some people that we will be able to get the construction sites started before the end of the term, but our goal has always been to make Livorno better.” At the cost, however, of saying goodbye to the Palladian style of postwar reconstruction.

Livorno, controversy over new paving of Via Grande. Postwar Palladian removed.

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