run-down port city on the edge of Europe that has
suffered from decades of industrial decline, and an
iconic building designed by a world-famous architect
at the peak of his career. The description may sound
a lot like Bilbao, but where are the hordes of tourists
and the booming economy?
The iconic building I’m referring to here is not by
Frank Gehry but by Gio Ponti, the legendary Italian
architect-designer best known for the Pirelli Tower
in Milan and the ‘Superleggera’ chair, which he created
for Cassina in 1957. Yet this is arguably the greatest
work of his later years, and it deserves to be rescued
from the obscurity into which it has gradually sunk
since it was completed in 1970.
The city is Taranto, which sits beneath the heel of
southern Italy. A major naval base, it has a remarkable
history and a spectacular setting between a sweeping
bay and the Mare Piccolo, an inland sea. Founded
as a Spartan colony in the eighth century BC, it grew
to become one of the biggest cities in pre-Roman
Europe, but sadly, contemporary Taranto has seen
its fortunes fade. Though it had a minor boom in the
19th century, in the 1930s Mussolini had a quarter of
the ancient centre demolished to build a row of grim
apartment blocks, and it was badly bombed in the
Second World War. To add insult to injury, Europe’s
biggest steelworks belches dust and dioxins into the
air, giving Taranto the unenviable reputation of being
one of the worst polluted cities on earth.
Back in the 1960s, though, a mood of optimism,
and the rapid expansion of the so-called Città Nuova
to the south east, convinced the local archbishop,
Guglielmo Motolese, that Taranto needed a new
cathedral to supplement the small 11th-century basilica
in the old town. The choice of Gio Ponti as architect
might seem unusually enlightened, but Ponti wasa deeply religious man and had already designed several
churches in Milan. Not surprisingly, he jumped at
the chance of building a cathedral and, between 1964
and the start of construction in 1967, he developed
what is arguably his most complex and original plan.
The design of the Concattedrale Gran Madre di Dio,
as it became known, was inspired by its maritime
surroundings. In place of a central crossing tower,
Ponti came up with the idea of a ‘sail’. A kind of belfry
without bells, the full width of the nave and 40m
high, it is built from two concrete walls just a metre
apart, perforated with vertical slits and hexagonal
openings, including what Ponti called a ‘door to the
sky, opening onto the immensity and the mystery
of space and time’. The west front follows this
openwork idea, featuring a stripped-down version
of a medieval screen, with Gothic arches replaced
by triangular canopies. A stepped podium raises the
cathedral above a piazza and a trinity of reflecting
pools that symbolise the ocean, while sea-green floor
tiles add an appropriately aqueous accent inside.
The interior is equally considered. Triple bronze
doors lead to a galleried narthex and the wide, low
nave, lit by a scattering of tiny hexagonal windows
tucked between the V-shaped springers of the
transverse vaults. Beneath the ‘sail’, where the crossing
would normally be, the roof level rises dramatically,
flooding the choir with light from a full-width window
immediately above but hidden from the nave. Five
steps higher than the nave, the choir is flanked by two
side chapels with galleries above, enclosed by three
levels of arcades, their reveals and soffits painted in
various shades of green. Stepped seating rises behind
the futuristic winged altar, which is flanked by two
freestanding columns supporting spindly crosses
that also read as anchors – another nautical touch. »ABOVE, LOOKING FROM
THE BRONZE ENTRANCE
DOORS THROUGH THE LOW
NAVE TOWARDS THE ALTAR
OPPOSITE, THE NAVE,
THE CHOIR, WITH THE
GREEN-PAINTED BISHOP’S
THRONE, AND THE SIDE
CHAPELS. PONTI’S AQUEOUS
COLOUR SCHEME HAS BEEN
REFRESHED OVER THE YEARS100 ∑