Basilica del Sacro Cuore di Cristo Re

The Basilica of the Sacred Heart of Christ the King, also known as the Temple of Christ the King, is a church in Rome, in the Della Vittoria district, on Viale Mazzini. It was built between the 1920s and 1930s based on a design by architect Marcello Piacentini, considered by some to be one of his most representative works, and was the first application of modern canons to the panorama of Roman sacred architecture. The impetus for a new church for the Della Vittoria district (formerly Piazza d'Armi) came from the Dehonian Father Ottavio Gasparri at the end of the First World War. Initially, the church was to be called the Temple of Peace in memory of the fallen of the Great War and as a wish for universal peace. The technical director was engineer Gualtiero Canali, who graduated in 1908 from the Polytechnic of Turin and immediately specialized in the calculation of reinforced concrete. Some of the solutions he devised for the construction of the Basilica were daring. The initial project, entrusted to Marcello Piacentini in 1919, envisaged a construction in Baroque style that followed the layout of sixteenth-century Roman churches.Work began in May 1920 with the laying of the first stone for the construction of the rectory. Only in 1924, after many changes to the project, did construction of the church itself begin. Work continued until 1929 and was interrupted by the death of Father Gasparri in 1929. At this time, the church had perimeter walls erected up to the projection of the dome. Meanwhile, the break in work continued until 1931, a period of time in which the trend of the debate on Italian architecture suffered a strong shock that ultimately led to the affirmation of the modern moment in the building production of the fascist regime. The general readjustment of the judgment on the architectural language, urged by Mussolini himself and by the progressive wing of the fascist movement, necessarily also induced Piacentini to adapt his own conception of architecture towards a moderate modernist inclination. He therefore took the opportunity to substantially modify the project by turning it through a reading of simplification and rationalization similar to that operated by his prodigy pupil Giuseppe Vaccaro in the project for the post office building in Naples, then also under construction.Starting from the same plan of the church that became a cross between a Latin cross and a Greek cross. The modification of the previous project entailed a real turning point in a modern key. While maintaining the classicizing layout of the facade in the form of a triumphal arch, typical of Piacentini's neo-monumentalism, he worked for simplification and stripping in the perspective of an Italian rationalism.The result, between the exterior with Roman materials, the hand-made curtain bricks and the travertine finishes, and the interior with exposed reinforced concrete, represented a synthesis of rupture in a twentieth-century key, of the classical revival style still prevailing at the time, exemplified by the neo-Renaissance church of the Gran Madre di Dio by Cesare Bazzani, built in the same years, 1931-1933, not far from the Piacentinian Temple. Inaugurated in 1934, the church had already been erected as a parish by Pope Pius XI on 31 October 1926 with the apostolic letter Regis pacifici. On 5 February 1965, with the apostolic constitution Sacrum Cardinalium Collegium, Pope Paul VI gave it the cardinal title of the same name. On 3 July of the same year, Paul VI, with the motu proprio Recentioris architecturae, awarded it the title of minor basilica. The church, with three naves, has a plan halfway between a Greek cross and a Latin cross, with the advanced transept, surmounted by a dome 20 meters in diameter, for a height of 36 meters. The central nave is 70 meters long. Characteristic of the church are the two twin bell towers slightly set back from the facade, characterized by the three portals, whose proportions were taken from those of the Roman triumphal arches. The main door is surmounted by a high relief depicting the Sacred Heart of Christ the King by Arturo Martini. Inside, a Via Crucis by Alfredo Biagini and frescoes by Achille Funi.The church has a concert of 5 bells in Bb2 mounted by swing, from the Bianchi foundry of Varese. The three small ones are in the left bell tower and play the notes: F3, Eb3 and D3. The two large ones are in the right bell tower and play the notes C3 and Bb2