Il disegno delle piazze porticate in Piemonte. Le nuove «porte» della città ottocentesca

The need to reconstruct decorous city border areas and to "stitch together" the pre-existing city with the areas of recent expansion was something that began with the demolition of the ancient fortifications in the most important cities in Piedmont during the Napoleonic era.
Piazzas sprang up, creative in their use of spaces and architectural solutions, at the entrance points of the old city centers. These piazzas served to take the place of the older city gates as stately entrances. This is what took place in Turin with its four new porticoed piazzas and what was repeated during the course of the 19th century in other cities in Piedmont that were then the hubs of the regional economy. Today the porticoed piazzas are not only prestigious gathering points but also places that remind us of a specific era in the cities' histories, the era of the expansion of the cities beyond their old walls. This book examines this phenomenon in ten cities in Piedmont through a comparative reading of direct surveys as well as historical and archival documents. The cities featured are those in the "Cisalpine" area - Ivrea, Pinerolo, Cuneo, Alba, and Asti - and those in the area influenced by Lombardy - Acqui Terme, Alessandria, Tortona, Vercelli, and Novara. Each porticoed complex is surveyed and designed in various scales, so that their current morphological and formal characteristics can be detected within the context of the inhabited spaces surrounding them. This is done according to the formal methods of city surveying.
The designs are accompanied by an original photographic collection and a wealth of archival documentation.
These have enabled the authors to delve into history as a way of explaining the reasons behind the current formal and symbolic make up of these places that are emblematic for the décor of the cities. This volume continues the two author's previous work on the porticoed pathways of Turin, which came to fruition in the publication of the Politecnico di Torino (DISET), Il disegno dei portici a Torino. Architettura e immagine urbana dei percorsi coperti da Vitozzi a Piacentini, edited by Dino Coppo and Pia Davico, Celid, Turin 2001.