Main Event Palazzo Brancaccio
(Thursday, Saturday and Sunday)
Since 1922
The palace was financed by the American Mary Elizabeth Bradhurst Field, a wealthy lady of New York high society, whose daughter, also named Elizabeth, married Prince Salvatore Brancaccio bringing him a dowry of one million dollars, equivalent to approximately twenty-two million dollars today. Mary Elizabeth had purchased in 1879 from the municipality of Rome the church, convent, orchard and garden of Santa Maria della Purificazione ai Monti, assets confiscated by the municipal state following the subversion of the ecclesiastical axis . The property was located at the end of the Oppian Hill , on the site of the Baths of Trajan ; it included a large park that grew on the ruins of the Baths, including a tower, called Maecenas, from which Suetonius claimed that Nero had witnessed the great fire of Rome in 64 AD. The park was then largely expropriated in 1935-36 to be used as an archaeological park. The project was entrusted to Gaetano Koch from 1879 to 1883, but the size of the residence soon proved insufficient for the Field and Brancaccio families. Luca Carimini was charged from 1886 to 1890 with continuing the construction on Via Merulana in the direction of San Giovanni in Laterano and with harmonizing the new building with the previous palace. The architects Rodolfo Buti and Giuseppe Sacconi intervened to complete the work from 1893 to 1922. At the lower corner of the block, on land owned by Brancaccio, the Teatro Morgana (later Teatro Brancaccio ) was built in 1916 based on a design by the engineer Giuseppe Sacconi .
Palazzo delle Esposizioni
(Friday Venue)
Since 1883
The Palazzo delle Esposizioni is a neoclassical building located in Rome, on Via Nazionale. Designed by Pio Piacentini in 1877, it was inaugurated on 21 January 1883. The building is owned by the municipality of Rome, which manages it through the Azienda Speciale Palaexpo. The building hosts exhibitions and cultural events. Inside there is also a 136-seat cinema, an 88-seat auditorium and a multifunctional forum, a café, a restaurant and a bookshop. Since 1927 it has been the seat of the Quadriennale d’Arte exhibitions . Until 2004 the building was also the seat of the offices of the Rome Quadriennale. During the fascist era , its facade was temporarily modified on the occasion of some exhibitions ( Mostra della Rivoluzione Fascista , Mostra Augustea della Romanità ) to adapt it to the architectural style of the time. Over time, the Palazzo delle Esposizioni has been restored several times and functionally adapted in its internal spaces. Among the main restorations, those of 1981-1989 designed by Costantino Dardi , and that of 2003-2007 by the ABDR studio , Maria Laura Arlotti , Michele Beccu , Paolo Desideri , Filippo Raimondo , should be mentioned, during which the original volume of the glass “greenhouse” was also reconstructed.
Both venues are in a walking distance of each other
