Piazza Carducci

Cities have a life of their own. They change and transform over time just like people, becoming something else. In cities, it is the squares and streets that are the architectural elements that define the urban form, and it happens that street and square transform into each other. The proposal for the new Giosuè Carducci square takes the form of transforming the current one avenue into a square. It is not the simple metamorphosis of the avenue, but the transformation of what is imprinted in the historical imagination of the city, forged progressively by the community's urban experience, cared for and protected since its construction. This symbolic avenue can be found in the photographic memories of Conegliano citizens, in the materials preserved in the city's archives, in the newspaper library, but especially in the rich production of postcards that recount the avenue and its transformation in the eyes of the citizens and outsiders who experienced it. The avenue was born with the function of connecting two key elements of the city, Piazza Giovanni Battista Cima and its iconic Teatro dell'Accademia, with the new railway station. It began from the triple archway crowning the Scalinata degli Alpini continuing through a slight slope to the new station; the whole was enclosed by two long, elegant rows of deciduous trees arranged in a converging fashion toward the Scalinata degli Alpini, and kept in geometric form in order to provide a perfect backdrop for stores and city life. Numerous historical postcards recall this belle époque of Carducci Avenue, in which the avenue was almost always photographed from the central part showing the large converging trees to emphasize the perspective and frame the Scalinata degli Alpini, creating an almost initiatory path toward the propylaeum, to continue under the arches to Cima Square and eventually up toward St. Francis and Our Lady of the Snows.