The Via dei Fori Imperiali, connecting Piazza Venezia with the Colosseum might well be one of the Italian capital’s most-used tourist routes. In order to make the experience more enjoyable for everyone, the city of Rome has launched an international competition in October 2023, the winner of which would be able to design the New Archaeological Promenade of the Imperial Forums.
After analysing 23 international proposals, it is the project by Rome-based architecture and urban planning studio Labics, lead by Francesco Isidori and Maria Claudia Clemente, which was chosen as the winning candidate. The company was already in charge of revamping the Palazzo dei Diamanti in Ferrara and will now be able to add another impressing feature to its resumé. The project was presented to the public during an event where Italy’s Minister of Culture Gennaro Sangiuliano, Rome’s Mayor Roberto Gualtieri and Capitoline Superintendent Claudio Parisi Presicce were present.
“We are very happy”, Francesco Isidori told Agenzia Dire. “This is a very important occasion for Rome, we have been waiting for it for 50 years. We hope it is the right time to rethink the layout of such a complex area and reappropriate these places invaded by tourists. Instead, our project is based on an idea of civitas of the city of Rome. The red thread has been to make these places better understood for the understanding of a palimpsest that in two thousand years has seen different epochs overlapping. We wanted to hold all these signs together and give this place back to the city.”
While choosing a winning project, the jury took into account five major criteria: compatibility with the strategic objectives of the public administration, quality between the space subject of the competition and the surrounding urban fabric, creativity and originality of the proposal, innovative quality of the choice of materials and technological solutions, and consistency with the guidelines established by the competition.
“The winning project of the international competition succeeds in restoring comprehensibility without distorting, but enhancing this stratification”, explained Gualtieri. “It is a complex challenge and this project succeeds in this feat. I think it succeeds in enhancing both the street and the Forums, which are the two aspects. The street becomes not only a beautiful perspective, but a place where it will be pleasant to be. A street not to go from one place to another, but a place where one can stay at and from which one can see the Forums.”
The proposal of studio Labics includes footbridges spanning over the archaeological area, wide sidewalks, green spaces, cycling lanes and more. The whole area will become pedestrian and will become the main artery connecting the Forums, Colosseum, Caelian, Palatine, Baths of Caracalla, Circus Maximus and Capitoline Hill. Works for the project will start in September if everything goes to plan and will cost approximately 20 millions euros.
