Description
The Palazzo delle Poste of La Spezia is the Futurist post office building on Piazza Verdi, in the city center: red brick, travertine, a clock tower and, hidden inside the tower, a large Futurist mosaic. It was designed by Angiolo Mazzoni and inaugurated on November 12, 1933 by the Minister of Communications, Costanzo Ciano.
The surprise is the Futurist mosaic of Communications, which covers almost all the inner walls of the clock tower: about 200 square meters of tiles, reached from the lobby.
It was signed by two Futurist artists. Fillia made the panels on communication by land and by sea, Enrico Prampolini those on the telegraph, the telephone and flight. The tiles were produced by Ceramica Ligure Vaccari of Ponzano Magra.
The upper part of the walls and the vault were left in exposed brick. Light falls from twelve windows at the top of the tower and from two long vertical windows, and the color seems to rise upward.
Outside, the building stands on a wide travertine staircase, set back from the other buildings on the square. It has a U-shaped plan, and on the façade nine niches with tall arched openings, between the exposed brick and the white of the travertine.
Inside, the austerity gives way to the color of the marbles: Portoro from the island of Palmaria, Zebrino, Verona Red. Mazzoni designed everything, from the furnishings to the Murano glass lamps by the Venini glassworks.
On the left side, the Fillia staircase climbs toward Via XX Settembre. At its foot is the Futurist fountain in marble, brick and blue ceramic: during the war the basin was partly demolished to open the entrance to an air-raid shelter, and it was restored in 2022.
The building took the place of the houses of the old Torretto district, at the foot of the hill. A new theater was to be built on that site, to replace the demolished Politeama Duca di Genova, but in 1928 it was decided to build the post office instead.
The laws of the time required part of the cost of public buildings to be spent on works of art: that is how La Spezia's post office got its mosaic.
The square has changed too: the row of maritime pines planted to set off the building was removed in 2015 for the redevelopment project by the artist Daniel Buren.
The surprise is the Futurist mosaic of Communications, which covers almost all the inner walls of the clock tower: about 200 square meters of tiles, reached from the lobby.
It was signed by two Futurist artists. Fillia made the panels on communication by land and by sea, Enrico Prampolini those on the telegraph, the telephone and flight. The tiles were produced by Ceramica Ligure Vaccari of Ponzano Magra.
The upper part of the walls and the vault were left in exposed brick. Light falls from twelve windows at the top of the tower and from two long vertical windows, and the color seems to rise upward.
Outside, the building stands on a wide travertine staircase, set back from the other buildings on the square. It has a U-shaped plan, and on the façade nine niches with tall arched openings, between the exposed brick and the white of the travertine.
Inside, the austerity gives way to the color of the marbles: Portoro from the island of Palmaria, Zebrino, Verona Red. Mazzoni designed everything, from the furnishings to the Murano glass lamps by the Venini glassworks.
On the left side, the Fillia staircase climbs toward Via XX Settembre. At its foot is the Futurist fountain in marble, brick and blue ceramic: during the war the basin was partly demolished to open the entrance to an air-raid shelter, and it was restored in 2022.
The building took the place of the houses of the old Torretto district, at the foot of the hill. A new theater was to be built on that site, to replace the demolished Politeama Duca di Genova, but in 1928 it was decided to build the post office instead.
The laws of the time required part of the cost of public buildings to be spent on works of art: that is how La Spezia's post office got its mosaic.
The square has changed too: the row of maritime pines planted to set off the building was removed in 2015 for the redevelopment project by the artist Daniel Buren.