• Photographic images of the Eternal City taken during the months of lockdown present a city to rediscover

• Webuild Chief Executive Pietro Salini: Public spaces and infrastructure must be rethought by taking into account urban and suburban community needs in terms of sustainability

• VIVE Institute General Manager Edith Gabrielli: Project Upholds Dignity of Public Institutions and Spirit of Private Enterprise via art and culture

• Photographic images of the city to be shown at “Roma. Silenziosa Bellezza” exhibit curated by Roberto Koch at the Vittoriano between January 20 and February 28, 2023

ROME, December 12, 2022 – Rome as it has never been seen before, suspended in an undefined time, enveloped in the aura of a sleeping beauty comes from the past to present to us a new vision of the future. A project entitled “ROME. SILENT BEAUTY” that reveals the Eternal City during the months of lockdown. It offers a new perspective on the city’s public spaces, rich in history and beauty, as well as its urban grid that appears free, ripe for new interpretation.

The project, with the patronage of the Municipality of Rome, includes a photographic album published by Rizzoli on behalf of Webuild and an exhibit organised by the VIVE Institute - Vittoriano and Palazzo Venezia will be presented on Thursday, December 15 at a news conference at the Sala del Refettorio at Palazzo Venezia at 11:30 a.m. The press conference will see the intervention of Rome Mayor Roberto Gualtieri, Webuild CEO Pietro Salini, VIVE Institute Director Edith Gabrielli and art historian Claudio Strinati.

The album and the exhibit, which will be open to the public from January 20 to February 28, present the work of Moreno Maggi, an Italian photographer who specialises in architecture and industrial imagery. He presents the city in a new perspective, as if it were in suspended animation.

From Piazza Venezia in the heart of the city to Castel Sant’Angelo, a bastion of the military defense of the Catholic Church; from Piazza del Popolo, an urban and architectural masterpiece, to ancient Rome and then onwards to EUR, the district built to host the 1942 Universal Exposition, the album reveals all the eras of Rome in an uninhabited state during the months of lockdown in the spring of 2020.

“The absence of people and the void generated by the lockdown rekindled the debate on themes related to the concept of the livable city, urban design, and mobility,” writes Salini in the preface to the album. “We need to exploit the opportunity for this sweeping change to completely rethink spaces and infrastructures, starting from the needs of communities and a new way of looking at sustainability, from the cities to the outskirts. This book was born out of the desire to size a unique moment in the life of a sleeping city and exalt the very soul of Rome, to document and describe the experience of the void created by the Covid-19 pandemic, and to start thinking about the future that awaits us.”

“The exhibit and the project follow the purpose we have set our for ourselves,” explains Gabrielli. “Since its foundation in November 2020, the institute has pursued through research in the fields of museology and art history a strategy that unites and makes the most of the ‘Made in Italy’ and the identity of our country. “ROME. SILENT BEAUTY”, the result of a collaboration between VIVE and Webuild, is a concrete example of how it is possible to maintain a balance between art and culture in the dignity of the institutions and the spirit of private enterprise.” 

In addition to the photographs that reveal a different Rome that not even Romans themselves have ever seen, in which lines and geometric shapes of public works re-emerge in all of their beauty, the album also has a contribution by philosopher Massimo Recalcati, who speaks of a spring that created “the unimaginable experience of an emptying out and desertification of the city”. Historian Claudio Strinati documents the journey taken by the photos through the piazzas and the iconic monuments of the city. “The ability to see everything without anyone being there allows the reader to perceive the breadth of history, the great beauty of the spaces and the monuments, the sense of decorum and profound spirituality that are expressed by even the remotest of corners, but lovingly rediscovered by this poignant series of photographs.”