Searching ‘Italianità’ in the Dodecanese Islands (1912-1943). Some considerations on Art, Architecture and Archeology through the works of Hermes Balducci (2022)
The research for a nation’s identity might also pass through the rediscovery and enhancement of fourteen small islands in the eastern Mediterranean Sea. In May 1912, following the Italian -Turkish war for the control of Libya and as a military action aimed at weakening the enemy, Italy annexed as a possession the islands of the Dodecanese in the eastern Aegean, formally still under the dominion of the Ottomans.
For just over twenty years the islands witness the Italian presence in the Dodecanese in an ambiguous position of invaders and colonizers. From 1912 to 1923 several military governors followed one another in the civic and public administration of the islands, but after the rise of Fascism in Italy in 1922, the political attitude towards the new possessions began to change, manifesting the intention to make the islands more ‘Italian’ also through the rediscovery of historical roots that justified its annexation, at least from a cultural point of view.
For thirteen years, between 1923 and 1936, the former ambassador in Rhodes, Mario Lago, held the office of Governor of the Dodecanese islands with balance, humanity and great respect for the ethnic components of the local inhabitants. Things changed radically in the following years, when the authoritarian fascist regime wanted to give the colonies a more Italian imprint. From 1936 to 1940 the governor Cesare Maria De Vecchi, count of Val Cismon administered the possessions of the Dodecanese with excessive harshness, with an almost obsessive respect for fascist ceremonial and ideology, showing very little respect for the customs, traditions and rights of Greek, Turkish and Jewish community that even under the Ottoman rule in previous centuries were always respected. At the outbreak of World War II in 1939 a new governor replaced De Vecchi until 1943, when the German Nazis took control of the islands until the end of the war. After 1945 the islands came under British military occupation for two years, before their complete return to Greece.
At that time, the greatest interest for European scholars was directed to the classical age and to the rediscovery of the ‘classical’ roots of Western countries, the essence of architecture, the ancient Greek-Roman world and not to study local art and architecture. Therefore, in the name of a supposed past ‘Italianità’ of the possessions, not well identified but attributable to the period of the ancient knights of Rhodes, an architectural program of reconstructions and - based on historical remains and archaeological excavations - was carried out in all the islands of the Dodecanese and especially in the city of Rhodes.
In this context, many were the architects, engineers and planners, as well as archaeologists and scholars sent by the Kingdom of Italy to study and research the past of the islands and to plan, design and rebuild these new Italian possessions. The cultural policy carried out by the Italians on the archaeological and monumental heritage had already begun between 1912 and 1913, immediately after the occupation of the islands, and continued uninterruptedly during the fascist era until the German occupation in 1943. The investments were mainly addressed to cultural activities that led to the establishment of the Italian Archaeological Mission, the realization of large excavation and restoration campaigns, the creation of museums and archaeological sites, the birth of the Superintendency of Rhodes and the FERT Historical Archaeological Institute.
This paper aims to highlight the thoughts and ideas about Italianità of one of the protagonists of that colonial adventure intended to recreate and redefine the past with the Italian presence during those years. Within this purpose, the example of Hermes Balducci’s works in Rhodes and the Dodecanese Islands stands as a fundamental case study in the search for a lost and rediscovered Italian spirit.
Since ancient times the settlement of Galata was positioned on the Golden Horn opposite Byzantium. This area, that became the Genoese walled town, developed inside. Beyond the furthest northern point of the settlement, where the north walls and the tower stretched, lied the endless fields and the uninhabited rural area. Due to many historical, political, economic, social and other factors, later in time, this area beyond the Genoese settlement will become fruitful land for construction of, at the time, the most cosmopolitan part of Ottoman Istanbul.
Since life in Galata was intense due mostly to maritime trade and harbor’s activities, the settlement will not be enough to absorb the influx of incoming population and the increase of new trades with the Western powers. As a result, its borders will be pushed and extended outside its walls towards the rural area of the hill and its ridge above that later will become known as Beyoğlu and Pera.
These rural areas on the North side of Galata that were mostly occupied with fields and agricultural land as well as cemeteries and groves, will transform through the centuries into an area marked with diplomatic representative residences and palaces. Among these residences slowly, the cosmopolitan city will set up, following Western European models. The rural fields of the past will be replaced with new structures that later will change the entire area into a new cosmopolitan core of modern Istanbul baring the name of Pera withholding all the facilities one could find in any Western European capital, such as theaters, churches, cafes, shops, offices etc. The district of Galata and its walled frontier in time slowly will disappear and the transition from Galata towards Pera they will be put under the name of Beyoğlu that will become the center of the new emerging cosmopolitan bourgeoisie of the late 19th and early 20th century.
From Galata to Pera: Shifting borders in Ottoman Society 1453-1923 (2021)
Critiquing ‘Façadism’: the case study of Tarlabaşı Urban Renewal Project in Istanbul (2020)
In the first half of the 1900s, Beyoğlu was a cosmopolitan district in Istanbul with a predominantly non-Muslim upper-middle class population. The nationalistic movements of the 1950s forced this population to flee the area, paving the way for an influx of rural in-migration. New infrastructures and demolitions in the following decades affected the urban texture of the area and the socio-economic background of the newcomers led to the dilapidation of the district, compromising its culturally-rich atmosphere.
The case study of the urban renewal project in Beyoğlu’s Tarlabaşı neighborhood aims to discuss the changes of the socio-spatial context from one of piecemeal development to a large-scale intervention where the historic façades were kept as an implementation of ‘façadism’. A comparative analysis of the urban fabric prior to and after the renewal project developed by the local authorities in 2006, via historical records, maps, and photographs will be presented, pointing to the gap between the policy and the implementation of the concept of preservation.
Building the future (?) beyond the stereotypes: Istanbul’s architectural identity in the new millennium (2000-2020) (2020)
The purpose of this paper is to present some controversial and contradictory aspects of Istanbul, through examples of urban planning, infrastructures and architectures built over the last twenty years. As an international hub of the 21st century’s new global society, Istanbul is a perfect example of a city that grown incredibly in its recent past, that tries to locate herself as a contemporary metropolis and - at the same time – to link with a not well identified past, swinging between the Ottoman and the Turkish traditions in search of original marks to redefine its identity.
While in the past the name of Constantinople, Byzantium or Stamboul evoked in the mind of Western travelers visions of decadence, indolence and 'oriental' immobility, the new millennium Istanbul, Turkey's financial and economic capital, presents itself as a reality in constant motion, with dynamics and transformations that physically change its skyline; with futuristic constructions in progress and hundreds of construction sites scattered everywhere, in a frenetic race, detached from any realistic territorial planning, including financial operations and investments, between speculation and building deregulation. In this last decades, in fact, the imposing and literally vertical growth of the city highlights the combined action of administrators and investors, willing to transform and make Istanbul a competitor among the other emerging big cities on the planet.
A massive increase of the vertical city, an astonishing development of infrastructures like suspended bridges, underwater highways and subway systems, a new international airport and a gigantic telecommunication tower highlight the combined action of administrators and investors willing to transform Istanbul into a competitive city-hub with the other great metropolis. Buildings still under construction (beside the announced and ongoing financial crises) and hundreds of building sites are scattered everywhere in the dense areas as well as in the dumpy and shabby outskirts. In a frenetic rush, detached from any realistic or concrete territorial and urban planning, mostly promoted by financial operations and investments, between speculation and building deregulation, the city is searching for a ‘new’ and ‘genuine’ identity, at least in the intentions of the local governmental authorities. The intention is to create a strong identity able to keep foot in the ‘glorious’ past of the Ottoman memories, swinging between Ottoman and ‘Turkish’ traditions without loosing vision for futuristic architectural panorama, frenetically in search for original marks to constantly redefine it.
As part of the architectural heritage left by the Italians during their occupation of the Dodecanese Islands in the Aegean Sea, this article presents the thermal bath resort complex in Kallithea, Rhodes, its history, life and today’s re-use.
The scope of the paper is to mark the modern architecture left by the Italian architects after the invasion and the colonization of the islands with a focus on the summer bath resort of Kallithea, located on the island of Rhodes (Rodi). Built in 1928, the bath resort has been selected in order to better understand the richness of the architectural environment, since it is a material evidence of the Italian presence in the territories and a reminder of the remains of the ‘colonialist’ culture that arrived after the decline of the Ottoman Empire and the acquisition of the Dodecanese Islands first by the Italians during the Fascist era and then by the Greeks and their annexation to their State. During the period 1999-2007 the resort was restored and is now operating as a prominent touristic destination on the island.
Kallithea, Rhodes: a summer thermal bath resort at the border of the Italian Fascist Empire and its reuse today (2020)
The aim of this paper is to present the case of Kuzguncuk, a small district in the Bosphorus Strait, as an example of multiethnic and multi confessional village established in Byzantine time and developed during the Ottoman era (1453-1923). As part of the Great Municipality of Istanbul, the small district, for more than five centuries, was instead an interesting example of tolerance among the residents, in which minorities contributed at each level to the daily life and survival of the village.
In this framework, the village of Kuzguncuk, based on the typical Ottoman mahalle system, in which each community, including Turkish Muslims, Jewish, Armenian and Rum Christians shared the life together for centuries, could be ascribed as a good example of an Ottoman multicultural environment.
Multiculturalism on the Bosphorus shores: the Kuzguncuk mahalle in Istanbul between past and present (2019)
The Ottoman landscape of Büyükçekmece. a case of oversight or misinterpretation of the past? (2019)
The main focus of this paper is the importance of the Ottoman site at Büyükçekmece Lake in Thrace, incorporated today in the outskirts of the fifteen millions inhabitant’s megalopolis of Istanbul, and its relations to the surrounding environment. The Ottoman site analyzed as case-study was designed in the second half of the 16th Century by the master-builder Sinan for the will of Sultan Suleiman and Grand Vizier Sokollu Mehmet Pasha. The Büyükçekmece complex, a post station on the road, includes a monumental stone bridge for crossing the lake, a capacious caravanserai, a small mosque and a fountain, and for centuries was an important center along the Imperial road connecting the capital of the Ottoman Empire with the West.
As a result of an uncontrolled expansion of the outskirts of Istanbul, starting in the 50’s and 60’s of the 20th Century, the site has been radically compromised, with the complete transformation of the rural landscape that was surrounding the complex and the lake itself, transforming into an industrial area interspersed with residential zones. A recent project consisting of a tourist-sports center and an entertainment park done by the Great Municipality of Istanbul in order to revitalize the area and attract more visitors and residents, had instead compromised the historical buildings and the original site, making impossible to read the traces of the Ottoman past in that region.
This paper aims to describe how that process of regenerating the Ottoman heritage in Büyükçekmece, hastily done in an inappropriate way, had definitely compromised the whole area, giving no more possibilities to read neither the buildings in the proper way nor the surrounding landscape that once characterized the area.
Lost Highways. Sinan’s architectural and urban transformations in Thrace as traces of the Ottoman civilization and as possible cultural landscape for the future (2018)
The paper is about the traces left by architect Sinan’s Works in Thrace during the 16th Century, in order to define a sort of ‘Ottoman Landscape’ that needs to be preserved and valorized. The memories of the transformations in those territories, characterized by a networks of roads and complexes has been obliterated by the making of modern Turkey. Despite many architectural elements, buildings, infrastructures and landmarks are still visible in the region, there is a lack of information and loss of collective memory to identify and recognize these important artifacts as a unique system that once grounded the connective spine of all the Ottoman Empire.
The Imperial roads that connected the great Ottoman Empire to the Western states are now abandoned or their traces are lost, although the potential impact when placed in an appropriate framework and considering the common past shared in those geographies between Europe and Turkey, could be used as a spring to reconnected a common cultural and even physical environment.
An Italian presence in the architectural panorama of Istanbul: Edoardo De Nari (1874-1954). (2015)
In the cosmopolitan world of Istanbul, at the beginning of the century, Edoardo De Nari seems to have found its professional way and its own success. Born in Chiavari, a small village near Genoa, he had traveled for some years all around the world before settling down in the capital of the Ottoman Empire.
In few years he became one of the most influent Italian in that ‘milieu’; he worked as decorator, painter, architect and eventually engineer for many private clients belonging to the bourgeoisie, for the Levantine community and for other minorities, like Armenians and Jewish, for large public works related to the Ottoman authorities and also for religious institutions.
Over the course of his long life, the architect Sinan saw most of his countless projects carried out in what was one of the largest and most powerful empires of the modern age: the Ottoman Empire.
His fame is inextricably linked to his activities as an architect and his works, with their constructive clarity and their rational spatial organization in close relationship with the urban context, are still showing today the very essence of the classical Ottoman architecture, in particular in the capital of that Empire, Istanbul.
Doğan Holding headquarter – Altunizade, Istanbul (2015)
The executive office building of Doğan Holding is located in the Asian part of the city, near the highway close to the first bridge over the Bosphorus. The architect Nevzat Sayın, founder of the NSMH studio, designed and built this complex between 2006 and 2011.
In the projects of NSMH there is always a considerable interest both for the general formal composition and for the materials used, the construction techniques and the smallest details.
Sinan and the urban space in the 16th Century Istanbul (2015)
The history of Istanbul's twentieth-century architectural culture is intrinsically linked to the history of Turkey itself; In fact, over the last century the country has experienced such changes as to affect, for better or for worse, the current appearance of the city of Istanbul, both in the social and cultural field and in the urban and architectural one.
Cosmopolitan city on the edge of the eastern Mediterranean, center, port and crossroads for millennia of different civilizations and religions, eternally suspended between Asia and Europe, Istanbul can be defined as an ancient contemporary metropolis on the move, with multiple and often contradictory identities, in a continuous process of assimilation, conservation and renewal.
Istanbul (2013)
Edoardo De Nari in the Architectural Panorama of Istanbul (2012)
In the first half of the 20th century, Edoardo De Nari became a prominent figure in the architectural landscape of Istanbul. He had talent in many fields and had qualities that made it possible to pursue his professional career in foreign lands: architect, engineer, decorator, composer, world traveler and finally politician.
Unfortunately, for decades Edoardo De Nari's name was not even known in the history of local architecture and has been ignored to this day. The combination of some fortunate circumstances today - one of which is to reveal an important part of his personal archive - has enabled researchers to learn more about his private life and his working life. De Nari spent sixty years of his life in Turkey by designing important buildings for the representatives of the state, different religious institutions, other public and private institutions, as well as the Ottoman and Levantine bourgeoisie.
In this paper the urban environment and the transformed landscape of Thrace enriched by the works of Sinan in the second half of the 16th century are analyzed. Considering especially the smaller towns and villages along the caravan routes as well as the infrastructures like bridges and roads, the works of master Sinan are here presented as a whole.
The choice of the Thrace region as a case study is due to the fact that in this area there are a considerable number of works done by Sinan which, can be considered as the best achievements of his long life long career in true heart of the Ottoman Empire.
Following Sinan’s signs in the landscape of Thrace (2009)
Through the reports, memories and sketches of some Italian travelers, in this essay we will try to highlight the descriptions and impressions of the city of Istanbul, its customs, its people, over a period of about 100 years, i.e. from 1831 to 1931.
In this regard, several authors have been selected who can tell with their words what happened in the important Ottoman metropolis that from the capital of an empire that lasted almost 600 years became a modern but contradictory city in search of identity, in the years immediately following the advent of the Republic.
