Running away from the madding crowds may be a terribly difficult thing to achieve in touristy places such as Rome. But if you want to do so while discovering at the same time a very intriguing set/background for a photoshoot or catwalk show, check out the Centrale Montemartini.
Situated on the Via Ostiense on the left bank of the Tiber, opposite the former General markets, the Centrale Montemartini is an example of an industrial building transformed into an exhibition space.
This was originally the first public electricity plant in Rome, named after Giovanni Montemartini.
The building is currently the second exhibition centre of the Musei Capitolini and features an outstanding collection of classical sculptures from the excavations carried out in Rome at the turn of the 19th century.
The Giovanni Montemartini Thermoelectric Power Plant was opened in June 1912, when the industrialisation process around the Ostiense district had just begun.
The area offered great advantages for the establishment of an industrial estate: its proximity to the river ensured constant water availability; it was out of the toll belt constituted by the Aurelian Walls and it was easily reachable by freight cars coming from the Termini-Trastevere railways.
The idea to set up a Council-owned utility for the production of power was first planned in 1906 and the model of a power plant working through steam turbines and boilers was then chosen.
The same model was agreed upon by the experts who redesigned the original project after Ernesto Nathan with his Blocco Popolare (People's Coalition) became mayor in 1908. Nathan appointed Giovanni Montemartini as City Councillor for Technology since he was one of the greatest advocates of Council-owned utilities.
It was Legnano-based Franco Tosi's company that convinced the engineers of the Technical Office for the Construction of the Council Electric Plant to change their mind about what production system was to be used in the plant.
Diesel technology offered clear benefits such as fiuel saving (diesel fuel in place of coal), no external plants (like boilers and their outbuilding) and a quick start. The proposal was therefore accepted and the project totally renewed.
The contracts for supplying machinery and reinforced concrete structures to the power plant were assigned to Franco Tosi's and to Milan-based Engineer H. Bollinger's companies.
Just before the power plant's opening, it was clear that Tosi's company would have not been able to provide any of the diesel engines and for this reason the company proposed to install a 3,000 kW-potency steam turbine, a prize winning model at the Turin Universal Exposition in 1911.
The technical office was forced to agree and the final project was therefore adjusted to fit the new situation: the plant had to be provided with structures more suitable to a mixed diesel-steam production system.
By 1915 Tosi's company completed its supply of 1,000 and 2,000 Hp diesel engines assembling two more steam turbines in the Engine Room over the following years: one 3,000-kW turbine in 1917 and a 6,000-kW one in 1924.
In 1997 many sculptures - among them also quite a few masterpieces of ancient sculpture discovered while carrying out works in urban areas of Rome - were transferred to the Giovanni Montemartini Thermoelectric Power Plant.
The current display reconstructs the monumental complexes of antiquity, tracing the development of the city from the Republic to the late Empire.
The vast rooms inside the building, in particular the majestic and magnificent Hall of the Machines, with its fine Liberty style furnishings, preserve turbines, diesel engines and colossal steam boilers from the power plant unaltered.
This striking backdrop accentuates the translucent delicate sculpting of the antique marble, the beauty of statues representing the Bearded Dyonisus, Aphrodite, Agrippina, Athena Parthenos or anonymous warriors, all displayed among the turbines and the engines.
Among the masterpieces on display here there the sculptural group from the temple of Apollo Sosianus, fragments of the colossal acrolithic statue of the Goddess of Fortune from the Sacred area in Largo Argentina (originally 8 metres high, according to the temple's proportions, and attributed to Skopas Minor, a Greek artist based in Rome; the fragments date back to 101 BC); the pensive figure of the muse Polimnia, the frieze from the college of the Fabri Tignarii, showing a scene in a carpenters' shop, and the frieze with the battle between Gods and Giants.
The Centrale also preserves works of great significance, often almost uknown to the general public, such as the huge mosaic of hunting scenes from Santa Bibiana housed in the Boiler Room, a huge hall dominated by a 15 metre-high boiler used as a sort of theatrical set made of bricks, pipes and metal gangways.
The Centrale Montemartini will be hosting from tomorrow 10th October 2012 (until 28th October) an exhibition entitled "60 anni di Made in Italy" (60 Years of Made in Italy), an event focusing on Italian art, design and style, another reason to go and visit this unique and absolutely fascinating museum.
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The steam turbine on a page about engines? Maybe you wondered about it. It is hardly used in means of transport, but the steam turbine has many things in common with the combustion engine.
Posted by: Steam turbine | December 21, 2012 at 12:42 PM