Modern Rome – Auditorium Parco della Musica

Auditorium Parco della Musica is a music complex designed by Renzo Piano and inaugurated in 2002. It was designed to host various type of events such as musical or cultural.

The Auditorium consists of 3 concert halls located in buildings in different sizes with a shape that recalls a scarab. The halls are: Sala Santa CeciliaSala Sinopoli, in memory of conductor Giuseppe Sinopoli, Italian conductor and composer and Sala Petrassi, in memory of Goffredo Petrassi, an Italian composer of modern classical music. These three halls are covered by an open theatre called a Cavea.

Between Sala Santa Cecilia and Sala Sinopoli, you can see the remains of the Roman Villa that came to light during the construction of the buildings, whose finds are exhibited in a small museum housed under the cavea. This discovery was the cause of an important modification to the original Piano’s plan.

In addition to the three concert halls, the structure also includes the Studio Theater, three different recording studios and the foyer that is actually the hall common to the halls.

The auditorium is home to the dense programming of the Musica per Roma Foundation, which includes multidisciplinary events, rock, pop, jazz, contemporary, lyrical, electronic and ethnic concerts, theater, dance, circus, literature and poetry exhibitions, meetings with the authors, and the seasons of the four resident orchestras dedicated to jazz, contemporary music and popular music. Since 2006, the auditorium has also hosted the Rome Film Festival every October.

MAXXI


The MAXXI is a national museum of contemporary art and architecture that was established in 2010 by Zaha Hadid, an Iraqi-British architect. The MAXXI consists of two museums: MAXXI art and MAXXI architecture. It also features an auditorium, a library and media library specialized in art and architecture, a bookshop, a cafeteria and a bar/restaurant. The large public square designed in front of the museum is planned to host art works and live events.

At the entrance of the museum there are two particular projects: the first is called Triple Igloo by Mario Merez. It consists of three igloos of different shapes, from the little one to the biggest into these igloos there are a particular number, 1:1 in the first igloo, 2:3 in the second and 5:8 in the last. This series is call Fibonacci’s sequence, where each sequence number is obtained by taking the sum of the two that precede it.

The other project seems like a normal black and white painting, however, if you approach it you can see a sequence of little circles made in pencil. This technique is called Word Drawing and was performed by some people who performed this circulatory movements for 8 consecutive hours.

Currently the museum holds an interesting exhibition of African Metropolis, an overview of the artistic and cultural scene of the African continent.


The most shocking of items was a particular painting of a simple African person. Apparently, it looks like a street vendor, in today’s society we are too busy to avoid them without thinking that this person has their own identity like everyone of us. The thing that made me think more is the fact that at first glance you think that he is a peddler, actually he is a famous Jamaican musician, so he’s known in his country and he’s an important celebrity.

At the end of the course there is a stair with a handrail in which are exposed some dolls with typical African clothes. The strangest thing is that all the dolls are have white skin, for the reason that there aren’t so many black skin dolls. Another thing to think about…