Green is back in town

In 1840 Prince Alessandro Torlonia began the construction of a monumental greenhouse in the grounds of his great family villa in Rome. The building, strongly inspired by Arab-Spanish architecture and therefore called the Serra Moresca [Moorish Greenhouse], was a unique piece of engineering for its time. Its innovatory construction techniques included, as well as stone, unprecedented materials such as glass and cast iron. After decades of neglect and abandonment, the greenhouse has recently been the subject of a major restoration, to which Neri S.p.A. has contributed with conservative interventions concerning all the metallic structural elements, some of which were severely damaged.
As well as describing these interventions in detail, Arredo & Città relates the history of this important Roman building and of the foundry that created it. The Villa Torlonia greenhouse is a highly original version of a typology much in vogue in the 19th century but little-known today. The introductory essay is dedicated to the diffusion of greenhouses in Europe: it shows how the need to shelter exotic plants led to the fashion for winter gardens, and how the pairing of glass and metal provided the most effective and elegant way of creating them, resulting in a hitherto unknown lightness and transparency. The commitment of celebrated designers and of specialized producer companies ensured their success, confirmed by the worldwide displays offered by the Great Universal Exhibitions.