Rome’s Regulating Plans since 1873

An overview of Rome’s planning since the Risorgimento looking at the plans of 1873, 1883, 1909, 1931.

Rome Regulating Plan 1973. This laid out plans for districts around the city including Prati, Esqualino. and Testaccio that were within the walls of the fortified city.

Prati plan 1872 with a diagonal boulevard to St Peter's.

1873 plan as later built

Plans of the Prati District north of the Vatican showed alternate street and block layouts.

Top left unbuilt plan by Antonio Cipolla 1872 with a diagonal boulevard towards San Pietro.

Top right alternative plan by Alessandro Viviani 1873.

The built plan improved on the 1873 Regulating Plan by shifting the grid on the north towards the river for additional residential blocks and limiting the industrial blocks to the southwest. which became Rome’s Abattoir and is now part of the Roma Tre University campus.

The square blocks contain a variety of apartment building typologies.

Note how the some of the apartment buildings permit every unit to have a street view no matter how oblique.

Rome Regulating Plan 1883. This made subtle shifts in the street and block patterns of the earlier 1873 plan.

The Garbatella District plan marked a change from the previous grid-iron patterns with curved streets and freestanding villas and palazzini. The central focus of the district is a square with a church, high school and retail.

The urban pattern is made up of palazzini

Stairs winding up the hillside.

The central square with church, school and shops.

Sabbatini's social housing offers a monumental scale to the district.

The apartment buildings are both freestanding and street wall buildings.

The 1931 plan had a much looser urban pattern as seen in areas such as the areas to the south and east.

The looser street and block pattern differentiates these neighborhoods from the earlier Regulating Plans. In place of continuous street walls, most blocks were made up of palazzini, freestanding multi-story apartment buildings.

This aerial photo shows the contrast between the 1909 era Flaminio District with its diagonal boulevards and the looser street and block pattern of the Pincio District to the east.

Public works to celebrate the achievements of the Fascist regime were not dissimilar to those in FDR’s New Deal in the US.

Sapienza University was planned and built in three years. The campus plan was led by Marcello Piacentini with individual buildings by multiple architects including Gio Ponti and others.

The plan is laid out along two major axes centered on a Grand Hall designed by Piacentini.

The University has 120,000 students and tuition is free to local residents.