Address: piazza Venezia

The realization of the current Venice square turns out the roughest violence which the city has been subordinate during the century of the superimposition of the Capital of Italy to the papal town. The colossal monument to Vittorio Emanuele constitutes one enormous violation of taste and proportion's logic of the place. The original atmosphere could have been considered the antechamber of the hill capitolino, the place where feracious fights for the control of the same hill have been consumed, ideal key for possession of the city.
Paul II, already cardinal Barbo, began to interest to this place starting from 1455, it orders the construction of a tower that would have to correspond to the massive angular tower of the current Venice Palace. Later on, going up on the papal throne, he confirmed the predilection for this place acquiring numerous parcels of surrounding property and promoting the creation of a worthy building of one papal dwelling.

While the palace was built up, the settlement of indicated adapting piazzetta was delineated with the successive names of "piazza Nuova", "piazza della Conca", "piazzetta San Marco" and finally "of Venice" (Venezia).

This name was had when the palace, carried to conclusion in the 1467 from the grandson of the pontefice, cardinal Marco Balbo, came subdivided in co-ownership between the titular cardinal of the basilica and the ambassadors of the Venetian Republic. The realization of the papal palace did not represent an occasional fact, it became part in a urbanistic design of awakening of the area.
To the beginning of XVI the century, also Paul III Farnese, preferred the Barbo's palace to the more isolated Vatican residence.
Around 1540 Paolo III, extended the Barbo's palace by means of a viaduct and a covered passage, end on the slope capitolina. The tower-palace of Palo III constituted more a personal residence than a papal settlement.
Meanwhile around to the square buildings grew, those that would have been removed in the past century in order expand a not more used space for anachronistic race of horses.
The square came to be in the junction point of two great urban planning operations: the completion of the street axis (Via Nazionale) coming from from the new Termini railway station, and the creation of a wide street axis that, caught up the handle tiberina in direction of the Tevere and Castel S. Angelo (the current Corso Vittorio Emanuele).

Also the purpose to connect, by means of another great road (via Cavour), the Termini Railway station with the city center through the slopes of the Esquilino and the Viminale, it delineated already the hypothesis of the arrival to Venice Public square (Piazza Venezia) of an other important road from the direction of the valley of "Fori".
The error that would have centralized on Venice public square the greater axes of road system was being born, and that in the fascist period would have only found the conceptual improvement.

No other place of the city has endured manipulations like those of Venice's Square, the other demolition's operations put into effect during the twenty years of the Fascist Regimen, did not catch up these climaxes.
In the complex of the operation only the palace of Venice remained intact, came destroyed also the palace-tower of Paolo III, it was proceeded to the movement of "palazzetto " and to the incorporation of the "piazzetta di San Marco" in the gigantic atmosphere.

The creation of the Sacconi's monument represents the initial justification for all that submovement. Exalted like "Altar of the Native Land", it had to carry out a rhetorical function in the fascist period without take root in the political convincement of people and in the logic of the city functionality. The creation of the way of the imperial Fori finds its performance in 1932, when eliminating the Velia hill, the valley of the Fori came opened on the vision of the Colosseo. Also the operation of isolation of the Campidoglio, carried out in 1938, turned out in undespicable results. In order to lighten the pressure of the traffic on the node of Venice square it can be imagined to create new great oriented street axes towards additional city hearts, the realization of underground route would help.