Committees are asking for the restoration of the ruin in Piazza XXVII Ottobre: “A piece of history useful for revitalization”
29 December 2019
By Mitia Chiarin
MESTRE. An appeal to President of the Republic Mattarella, Prime Minister Conte, the Minister of Cultural Heritage Franceschini and to Mayor Brugnaro. And more than 600 signatures gathered on Change.org.
They want to stop the demolition of the building in piazza Barche, at the corner of via Lazzari, which is a piece of Mestre’s history. We are talking about what is called the ruin of piazza Barche. Behind the tarps lie traces of the Antica Posta of Mestre, the symbol of piazza Barche, where for 500 years the waters of Canal Salso reached the heights of via Sarpi, with a vital piazza that was the main connection for people and merchandise with the city of Venice. From the opening of Canal Saslo in 1362, and until the opening of the train bridge in 1846, Mestre and Venice exchanged flourishing traffic on the Canal Salso. That Mestre has ended up in the paintings of Canaletto and Bellotto. In the 1700s there was the villa Durazzo close by, today a faded memory in the maps of the State Archives.
At the beginning of the 1900s the ex Posta, a route for dispatch to and from Venice, was changed in to the Reale garage belonging to CIGA. In 1947 it became the property of Umberto Ferrari, who managed FAP, the road transport toward eastern Veneto. Now the building has been in complete abandonment for decades, and the roof has collapsed. The appeal for the salvage of this historic property was sent on Christmas Eve by a group of associations from Mestre and Venice. These include Mestre Mia, Comitato ex Umberto I bene Comune, Gruppo 25 Aprile di Venezia, Ecoistituto del Veneto, and Istituto nazionale Castelli d’Italia e Centro studi storici.
Yesterday Arianna Secco, with historian Sergio Barizza, ex-Councilor Luca Rizzi, Fabio Bevilacqua and Marco Gasparinetti explained the motivations for the appeal. They spoke of avoiding the demolition and of launching a preservationist restoration of the Antica Posta which could host, at a suitable distance, the new construction being talked about recently. Plans include the design for a seven story building with a new parking deck on several levels, close to Piazzale Cialdini. The proposal is by New Parking company srl, which manages the parking lot on via Lazzari. The private firm has proposed building a parking lot on three levels, with over 250 spaces and 50 for motorcycles.
In exchange the company would give the Municipality 770 square meters of shore along the Marzenego. Architect Elvio Quaia is working on it, who in the past worked on the redevelopment plan for piazzale Cialdini with the famous interchange with the green roof and on a new palazzo between via Lazzari and piazza Barche. That was 2010. Nine years later there is once again talk of new palazzi. The committees are asking for dialog with the owners and the Municipality: beginning with stopping the demolition of the old palazzo and requesting that the Superintendent place a barrier. “We are not against the Administration. Rather we are looking for a dialog in order to realize an objective: to add value to Mestre with its history and make piazza Barche the fulcrum of a new economy”.
Source: La Nuova Venezia
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