What better way to celebrate the completion of Thanksgiving than with a tour of Luigi Moretti architecture and design throughout the city of Rome.  He was a prodigy!  And by the end of the day I could see why.

By 9 am, we were already inside the Casa della Gioventù a Trastevere (built in 1933).  My favorite design feature of this building were the windows, shown below, that fanned open upon pushing the bottom one outward.  My engineering side was thrilled by the simple lever system.  The unusual “L” shaped pool was also interesting to see.

Next stop, the Restauro della Torre a Porta S. Sebastiano.  We started inside the museum, which, if I remember correctly, was actually home to Moretti at one point in his life.  Corey is standing on top of a mosaic in one of the small rooms inside the porto.  The view from the top was also stunning and we were actually able to walk along the bottom of the wall for about a hundred meters.

Next we went to see the exterior of the Casa detta il Girasole, constructed in 1949.   The facade of the building is a strange mishmash of material and designs all flowing together somehow.  The front of the building is smooth mosaic and only a few inches thick while one of the other street sides is a bulkier, uneven material like unpolished travertine.  Apparently it was commissioned by some count that Moretti met while in jail.  The count owns the top floor of the building.  Must be nice.

The Palestra del Duce al Foro Mussolini was a shell of a building and Moretti was assigned the task of designing the inside.  I’m not sure if that means the entire inside or just some of the rooms but what we saw of his work was pretty ridiculous.  Mussolini’s gym, now a conference room, was amazing, high ceilinged, and clad on 3 sides with amazing slabs of marble, each apparently hand picked by Moretti.  We also were able to see where Mussolini himself used to tan (the third picture below).  What a weirdo.

Our last stop was the Moretti show at the Maxxi.  We were given a tour by the show’s designer and another Moretti expert.  It was the first time all of his documents, designs and models have been shown since his death because of some legal dispute between his family and his architecture firm.  The models and sketches were very cool to see, especially after seeing the actual buildings close up.  It’s so awesome to see how some crazy sketch idea can turn into an actual physical building.