Villaggio Olimpico

A suggestive and highly accomplished example of architectural and urban planning, the Villaggio Olimpico residential complex was built close to the city centre, between the Parioli and Flaminio districts and the slopes of the Villa Glori park.

Unique in its kind, the settlement, which traces the typical structure of the Roman legions' camp, the castra, was built between 1958 and 1959 to accommodate the approximately 8,000 athletes, organisers, coaches and press officers involved in the 1960 Olympic Games.

The most authoritative architects of the time worked on its creation: Vittorio Cafiero, Adalberto Libera, Amedeo Luccichenti, Vincenzo Monaco and Luigi Moretti, who chose an area of about 35 hectares for the construction of the 1348 flats.

At the time, however, on the chosen area, located between the Villa Glori hill and the Tiber, stood a cluster of barracks of World War II evacuees from all over the peninsula in search of shelter and work, the so-called Parioli camp, which was razed to the ground and reclaimed, after its inhabitants were found other accommodation.

Initially, the building of a temporary structure was hypothesised, but the idea was soon discarded in favour of a permanent structure that would provide accommodation for approximately 1,500 families after the Olympic Games.

A complex of small buildings was therefore conceived which, although heterogeneous in form, due above all to the poetic vision of this or that architect, gave the eye a structural homogeneity and uniformity derived from the choice of common stylistic elements such as the pilotis, ribbon windows, cement stringcourses, and the golden yellow brick curtain walling, but also to the distribution of the vegetal landscape which saw the planting of 800 tall trees, including pines, holm oaks and laurels.

After INCIS, Istituto Nazionale per le Case degli Impiegati dello Stato (National Institute for the Housing of State Employees), assigned the task of building the Village to the technicians, the design followed the urban planning principles of the Modern Architecture, a collective of professionals who were studying new and innovative architectural solutions, on a human scale, to be adapted to changing social needs. This type of building, which was based on the predominance of functionality over aesthetics, had its inspiring masters in Le Corbusier, Walter Gropius, Frank Lloyd Wright and Alvar Aalto.

The result was a series of small two-storey buildings, the characteristic ‘crocette’, four- or five-storey buildings, the large linear buildings or those shaped like round brackets overlooking Jan Palach square, surrounded by vegetation and raised from the ground by reinforced concrete pillars - the famous pilotis - which left the urban space free and accessible without interfering with the continuity of the view on the street level plane, intended for various social activities and greenery.

For this same reason, to connect the city centre on the Parioli side with the Cassia and the Flaminia streets, a one-kilometre elevated viaduct was created - designed by Pier Luigi and Antonio Nervi - the Corso di Francia, which, on 112 pylons, crossed the Tiber on the Flaminio Bridge.

At the end of the Roman Olympic Games, the INCIS assigned the flats in the Villaggio to state employees through a contest. In 1972, the institution was dissolved and the management passed to the IACP, Istituto Autonomo Case Popolari (Institute for the Autonomous Housing of the People), which in 1985 put the real estate up for sale which became almost entirely private property.

The most important architectural and artistic works in the district include the Palazzetto dello Sport, conceived and designed by architect Annibale Vitellozzi and engineer Pier Luigi Nervi, the Stadio Flaminio, by architect Antonio Nervi with the engineering-structural collaboration of his father Pier Luigi, the church of San Valentino, built in the mid-1980s on the burial place of the martyred saint, designed by architect Francesco Berarducci, the Auditorium Parco della Musica Ennio Morricone by archistar Renzo Piano (2002), and the Centro Sportivo Villaggio Olimpico, built around the year 2000 to complete the offer of services to Roman citizens in the area with the highest rate of contemporary architecture in Rome.

Photo: Turismoroma