Chiesa dei Santi Gioacchino e Anna

The parish complex of SS. Gioacchino and Anna, designed in 1979 by Sandro Benedetti, was erected as a parish on March 1, 1982 by decree of Cardinal Vicar Ugo Poletti and entrusted to the diocesan clergy of Rome.Construction work began in 1982 and was completed in 1984. The parish church was consecrated on April 12, 1984.The building complex, owned by the Pontifical Society for the Preservation of the Faith and the Provision of New Churches in Rome, was born as a religious center for the new neighborhood of Rome while this was in the almost final phase of construction.
In addition to fulfilling the role of center of religious life, it also acts as the only place of human encounter in the urban area, an opportunity for socialization in a dispersed and solitary reality, such as that of the outskirts of Rome in general.The territory, derived from that of the parishes of S. Raimondo Nonnato and S. Giovanni Leonardi, was determined within the following boundaries:Via di Torre Spaccata to the north, starting from 50 m. before via Tuscolana, up to the ideal continuation of the Rome-Naples motorway, which runs up to the height of via Libero Leonardi – said street (all of S. Giuseppe Moscati excluding the odd house numbers from 183 onwards) – via Giuseppe Albanese Ruffo (all of S. Giuseppe Moscati) and beyond up to via Pietro Marchisio (passing through the underpass all of S. Giuseppe Moscati) at the height of the house number 119 excluded – via Pietro Marchisio to the south and beyond, crossing via Stefano Oberto, up to 50 meters from via Tuscolana – ideal line parallel to said street – via di Torre Spaccata.
For this reason, by will of the client, the Marquis Alessandro Gerini, it was equipped with a series of open spaces (playgrounds, open-air theater, etc.) and closed spaces (rooms for catechesis, meetings, groups, etc.) useful for making manifest the religious experience as a founding moment of the multiple reality of social and human life.The inspiring principles of the project for this church are developed along two ideas: the first, visible on the outside of the building, which carries out the suggestion brought to sublime levels in the Middle Ages of the Church as a Sacred Mountain, and the second, which is realized in the structuring of the internal space of the organism, on the theme of Christ Center of the Cosmos and History.The first theme takes up a symbol, fundamental to medieval architecture, for which the religious building is placed as an object of mediation between the Earth and the Sky. To realize this image, the church is built on a progressively growing system of volumes, which, starting from the outside, increase towards the inside, polarizing in the complex of the large lanterns and the bell tower: the latter is an explicit sign of connection of the entire volume with the High.
The highly articulated plastic character also arises from the desire to create a presence rooted in the urban space, but formally different from the monotonous intensive volumes of the neighborhood buildings.This form tends to evoke suggestions of gigantic crystals, of chipped and strong rocks, thus conveying a thematic expansion of the symbol: that of the Church as a rock, cornerstone, fortress, placed by God on Earth: a lighthouse, stability in the tormented and restless contemporary world.
The second theme was created through the reference of the architectural image to two valences of the experience of Christ: that of the Crucified Christ and that of Christ Light of Life for every man.
The first recalls the typology of the entire organism that resumes and develops the Latin cross typology, renewing and reinterpreting it according to the TAU figure. The design of the floor that traces a cross over the entire sacred area centering on the altar also refers to the image of the Cross.The entire concept of space is based on the image of Christ the Light. The light rains down from above through specific light-spaces, real rooms of light, without the windows being visible. The space is alive, things are seen through this luminous rising that is present but in a veiled way, enters the rooms of light and through them animates the interior of the church.
The only place where the windows are visible is that of the lantern, where four large colored windows dominate: the design of which (work of the painter Guido Strazza) offers four interpretations of the figure of the Cross.In this area, the pole of space, the theme of the Crucified Christ and of Christ the Light merge substantially. The visible light of the four stained glass windows is light that is made through the colors of the cross, merging with them in the Heart area of ​​the space.
Then, to vitally and totally weld the space onto the hierophany of Christ, in the manner of the first Christian artists who wrote the monogram of Christ on sculptures or paintings, the entire design of the reinforced concrete beam structure in the roofs is derived