{{unreferenced, date=March 2020 Monumentalism defines the architectural tendencies that during the first half of the twentieth century had as their essential canon the inspiration and connection to

classicism Classicism, in the arts, refers generally to a high regard for a classical period, classical antiquity in the Western tradition, as setting standards for taste which the classicists seek to emulate. In its purest form, classicism is an aesthe ...

and

neoclassicism Neoclassicism, also spelled Neo-classicism, emerged as a Western cultural movement in the decorative arts, decorative and visual arts, literature, theatre, music, and architecture that drew inspiration from the art and culture of classical antiq ...

. Critics divide this architecture into two streams:

Neo-Baroque Neo-Baroque may refer to: * Neo-Baroque music * Neo-Baroque painting, a painting style used by Christo Coetzee and others *Baroque Revival architecture * Neo-Baroque film *the Organ reform movement The Organ Reform Movement or ''Orgelbewegung'' ...

and Simplified Neoclassicism.

Neo-Baroque

(Baroque Revival) shows a return to the eighteenth century with the proportion of orders becoming gigantic, enriched with ornamental friezes. It is the public architecture of the

Soviet Union The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR), commonly known as the Soviet Union, was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 until Dissolution of the Soviet ...

with the various buildings of the central party committees in

Leningrad Saint Petersburg, formerly known as Petrograd and later Leningrad, is the List of cities and towns in Russia by population, second-largest city in Russia after Moscow. It is situated on the Neva, River Neva, at the head of the Gulf of Finland ...

as in

Kiev Kyiv, also Kiev, is the capital and most populous List of cities in Ukraine, city of Ukraine. Located in the north-central part of the country, it straddles both sides of the Dnieper, Dnieper River. As of 1 January 2022, its population was 2, ...

. The scenographic vision of the architectural space, which is to celebrate the regime, takes over on the planimetric composition of the buildings.

Simplified Neoclassicism

Simplified Neoclassicism, also called

Novecento Italiano Novecento Italiano () was an Italian artistic movement founded in Milan in 1922 to create an art based on the rhetoric of the fascism of Benito Mussolini, Mussolini. History Novecento Italiano was founded by Anselmo Bucci (1887–1955), Leonardo ...

style, is linked to the classical architectural culture, but lightens its elements and architectural details, removing or simplifying the decoration. This is the architecture preferred by

totalitarian regimes These are examples of purported totalitarian regimes. They have been referred to in an academic context as "totalitarian", or the concept of totalitarianism has been applied to them. Totalitarian regimes are usually distinguished from authorita ...

for its celebratory efficacy in the built environment, with the exaltation of the

Roman age In modern historiography, ancient Rome is the Roman people, Roman civilisation from the founding of Rome, founding of the Italian city of Rome in the 8th century BC to the Fall of the Western Roman Empire, collapse of the Western Roman Em ...

in the Italian case. Its major theorist will be in Italy the architect

Marcello Piacentini Marcello Piacentini (8 December 188119 May 1960) was an Italian people, Italian urban theorist and one of the main proponents of Italian Fascist architecture. Biography Early career Born in Rome, he was the son of architect Pio Piacentini. He ...

who dominates the fascist twenty years with his canons, crowding out the

rationalists In philosophy, rationalism is the epistemological view that "regards reason as the chief source and test of knowledge" or "the position that reason has precedence over other ways of acquiring knowledge", often in contrast to other possible s ...

, who attempted to reconcile the themes of the

Modern Movement Modernism was an early 20th-century movement in literature, visual arts, and music that emphasized experimentation, abstraction, and Subjectivity and objectivity (philosophy), subjective experience. Philosophy, politics, architecture, and soc ...

within an

authoritarian regime Authoritarianism is a political system characterized by the rejection of political plurality, the use of strong central power to preserve the political ''status quo'', and reductions in democracy, separation of powers, civil liberties, and ...

. This style also affected new urbanistic projects ( university city of Rome, E42) and the demolition and reconstruction of historic centers (

Via della Conciliazione Via della Conciliazione ("Road of the Conciliation") is a street in the Rione of Borgo within Rome, Italy. Roughly in length, it connects Saint Peter's Square to the Castel Sant'Angelo on the western bank of the Tiber River. The road was constr ...

, historic centers of

Brescia Brescia (, ; ; or ; ) is a city and (municipality) in the region of Lombardy, in Italy. It is situated at the foot of the Alps, a few kilometers from the lakes Lake Garda, Garda and Lake Iseo, Iseo. With a population of 199,949, it is the se ...

and

Livorno Livorno () is a port city on the Ligurian Sea on the western coast of the Tuscany region of Italy. It is the capital of the Province of Livorno, having a population of 152,916 residents as of 2025. It is traditionally known in English as Leghorn ...

). Piacentini will develop two essential canons: the exterior modernization of the style and the classic structure of the architectural design, with: * the elementaryization of the architectural details; smooth walls, full balconies, flattened frames, lightened capitals, elementary arches, beveled columns, which must remind the

Mediterranean Sea The Mediterranean Sea ( ) is a sea connected to the Atlantic Ocean, surrounded by the Mediterranean basin and almost completely enclosed by land: on the east by the Levant in West Asia, on the north by Anatolia in West Asia and Southern Eur ...

and past "

Roman times In modern historiography, ancient Rome is the Roman civilisation from the founding of the Italian city of Rome in the 8th century BC to the collapse of the Western Roman Empire in the 5th century AD. It encompasses the Roman Kingd ...

", also adopting specific materials such as

marble Marble is a metamorphic rock consisting of carbonate minerals (most commonly calcite (CaCO3) or Dolomite (mineral), dolomite (CaMg(CO3)2) that have recrystallized under the influence of heat and pressure. It has a crystalline texture, and is ty ...

; * an empty neoclassical architectural space with symmetrical and blocked plans, closed volumes, gigantism of proportions, exaltation of the overall scenographic vision.

Links with the Modern Movement

Some scholars identify traits that of the

in architects who straddle the nineteenth-century language and the

, as in the last works of

Auguste Perret Auguste Perret (12 February 1874 – 25 February 1954) was a French architect and a pioneer of the architectural use of reinforced concrete. His major works include the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées, the first Art Deco building in Paris; the C ...

, where the features are however much more sober and somehow refer to the classical French tradition, as in the Public Works Museum of 1937. Other examples are found in the so-called Scandinavian Classicism and with some constructions by the Swedish architect

Gunnar Asplund Erik Gunnar Asplund (22 September 1885 – 20 October 1940) was a Swedish architect, mostly known as a key representative of Nordic Classicism of the 1920s during the last decade of his life. At this time, he was a major proponent of the mode ...

, who for some in the Stockholm Crematorium 1935–40 achieves a balance between modern forms and monumentalism in an ideal of synthesis with the languages of the past classical tradition. Some include in monumentalism, even if in part, the so-called metaphysical architecture of interwar Italy, typical of which some fascist-era cities of foundation such as

Portolago Lakki (), known as Portolago (Πόρτο Λάγο) until 1947, is a community on the Greek island of Leros, in the Dodecanese, at the head of Lakki Bay. The population was 2,093 at the 2021 census. The area was built up as the main base of the Ita ...

(on the Greek island of

Leros Leros (), also called Lero (from the Italian language), is a Greek island and municipality in the Dodecanese in the southern Aegean Sea. It lies from Athens's port of Piraeus, from which it can be reached by a nine-hour ferry ride or by a 45-min ...

) or

Sabaudia Sabaudia is a coastal town on the Tyrrhenian Sea, in the province of Latina, Lazio, in central Italy. Sabaudia's centre is characterised by several examples of Fascist architecture, as it was one of several towns built in the 1930s built on land ...

. This, however, seems more related to the themes of the Modern Movement in its specification and Italian characteristic (

Italian Rationalism In architecture, Rationalism () is an architectural current which mostly developed from Italy in the 1920s and 1930s. Vitruvius had claimed in his work that architecture is a science that can be comprehended rationally. The formulation was taken ...

), defining the two cities described above as rare examples, although unknown as regards the first, of the

International Style The International Style is a major architectural style and movement that began in western Europe in the 1920s and dominated modern architecture until the 1970s. It is defined by strict adherence to Functionalism (architecture), functional and Fo ...

. Some critics go even further, including in Monumentalism part of some architectural expressions of the Modern Movement, when they concerned a search for symmetry, perfect, repetitive and monumental rhythm, as in the works of

Mies van der Rohe Ludwig Mies van der Rohe ( ; ; born Maria Ludwig Michael Mies; March 27, 1886August 17, 1969) was a German-American architect, academic, and interior designer. He was commonly referred to as Mies, his surname. He is regarded as one of the pionee ...

, of which the

Seagram Building The Seagram Building is a skyscraper at 375 Park Avenue, between 52nd Street (Manhattan), 52nd and 53rd Street (Manhattan), 53rd Streets, in the Midtown Manhattan neighborhood of New York City. Designed by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe along with P ...

it is the most complete expression. Also in some works by

Giuseppe Terragni Giuseppe Terragni (; 18 April 1904 – 19 July 1943) was an Italian architect who worked primarily under the fascist regime of Benito Mussolini and pioneered the Italian modern movement under the rubric of Rationalism. His most famous work is the ...

the primordial forms of Monumentalism such as the cubic, monolithic and strongly symbolic volumes are found. Moreover, the

Casa del Fascio A ''casa del Fascio'', ''casa Littoria'', or ''casa del Littorio'' () was a building housing the local branch of the National Fascist Party and later the Republican Fascist Party under the regime of Italian Fascism, in Italy and Italian Empire, i ...

Como Como (, ; , or ; ) is a city and (municipality) in Lombardy, Italy. It is the administrative capital of the Province of Como. Nestled at the southwestern branch of the picturesque Lake Como, the city is a renowned tourist destination, ce ...

, one of the masterpieces of

, is designed on the golden section and built on symmetrical balances. However, these buildings belonging to the Modern Movement have different articulations in plan in relation to the functional distribution, which is less found in decidedly monumental constructions; in them the architectural space is closely linked to the relationship between form and function, which is the first and essential characteristic of the rationalistic theme.

Fascist architecture Fascist architecture encompasses various stylistic trends in architecture developed by architects of fascist states, primarily in the early 20th century. Fascist architectural styles gained popularity in the late 1920s with the ri ...

Stripped Classicism Stripped Classicism (also referred to as Starved Classicism or Grecian Moderne) Jstor is primarily a 20th-century classicist architectural style stripped of most or all ornamentation, frequently employed by governments while designing officia ...

Architectural history

Neo-Baroque

Simplified Neoclassicism

Links with the Modern Movement

Related pages