Current name: Festival Hall
Original name: Amusement Hall

City: Castrocaro Terme e Terre del Sole (FC)
District: urban area
Address: viale Guglielmo Marconi, n.14/16

Year of construction: 1937 – 1943
Designer: art director Tito Chini, designer eng. Diego Corsani
Client: Ispettorato Generale delle Aziende Patrimoniali dello Stato, Ufficio Tecnico Centrale del demanio
Architectural style: Rationalist

Can be visited inside: yes
Note: The building is listed by the Committee as a cultural property; ceramic and marble decorations; fresco paintings; rooms dedicated to games or recreation; light devices by the Venini company (Murano, Venice); outdoor dance floor with mosaic floor, within semicircular portico structure

In Castrocaro, the therapeutic use of waters and mud baths boasts ancient origins. On June 1st, 1851, the first thermal establishment officially opened, and it was placed in an already existing building that was readapted according to hygienic and typological criteria considered innovative at the time. The first centre of the current establishment was built only thanks to 1884. The financial disaster and the preponderance of shares held by the INA (National Insurance Institute) led the government to liquidate the Società delle Terme, still private owned (Royal Decree, Law no. 1665 of 09/07/1936), and to proceed with the statehood of the assets constituting the Castrocaro Thermal Baths Company. The Ispettorato Generale delle Aziende Patrimoniali dello Stato (General Inspectorate of State Property Agencies), although it had entrusted the design of the New Thermal Baths Complex to the Central Technical Office of the State Property, in the person of Chief Engineer Diego Corsani, considered it advisable to match the technical figure with an artistic consultant, who could deal specifically with the internal and external decorations, the fitting out and furnishing of the newly built premises, with particular attention to the direction of the architectural part. It was chosen Tito Chini, artistic director of the Chini Furnaces in Borgo San Lorenzo (Florence). The government plan that was promptly drawn up (1936-1937) envisaged the construction of three buildings: the Bathing Establishment, the Grand Hotel, and the Amusement Hall.

This was followed by an initial elaboration of a typically rationalist layout, extensive revision by Chini, who arranged numerous variations: the application of a continuous and developed decorative apparatus on almost all the built surfaces, and the consequent attention to construction detail. The Hall was conceived as a space to be lived in continuously, and adorned with decorations of all kinds (fresco paintings for the interior rooms, geometric motifs constructed with panels of colour-glazed ceramic tiles, luxurious floors, colour-glazed terracotta moulding…), in a burst of light and colour: all this was enhanced by the large openings, which also allowed the surrounding greenery to be an active subject inside.

Constructively, the Festival Hall does not present exceptional situations from a static point of view. On the other hand, the technological solution for the air-conditioning of the halls on the ground floor is rather innovative and characteristic for the period, and was intended to allow the building to be used in the winter months as well: in addition to the traditional radiator system, a system of underfloor ducts was installed between the basement and ground floor levels, allowing direct air intake in the winter months and natural ventilation in the summer.
“[….] the building was conceived in consideration of the multiple uses to which it is to be put […] functioning as necessary, each independent from the other and with complete freedom of operation from each other [….] External architectural characteristics: exquisitely rational and modern in character, with large flat brick surfaces recalling the construction characteristics of Romagna, alternated with bands and squares of travertine with embellishments of green marble mouldings from Prato (Tuscany) […] Large glazed openings so that even from the inside the luxuriant park and its colour play a preponderant decorative element […] Great simplicity of line, noble materials, light with a complete refractive and reflective system; […] the end of the atrium leads through a large opening to the head gallery. Above the large opening, a decorative fresco panel begins the synthesis of fascism with the representation of the March on Rome. The ceiling formed by luminous concentric rings will have a clear glass-block panel in its centre so that the atrium will have plenty of light even during daylight hours. The two terminal niches of the relative staircases will bear two large decorative panels, one representing the Charter of Labour and consequently the beginning of the corporative regime, and the other the affirmation of religious sentiment with the Conciliation [….]”.

Many variations were made during construction. The only certainty on record was the systematic absence of the Roman technician, compensated for by the assiduous presence of Chini, busy with the ordinary management of the building site, which often took the form of the drafting and installation of refined executive details: the central ring set into the ceiling of the atrium, originally planned in glass blocks (similarly to the openings for natural light still in place on the vertical of the side staircases), was replaced by a dome with concentric rings known as the ‘Zodiac’, and artificially lit. The Hall was also a great and gleaming piece of architecture at night, amidst roaring luminous fountains, important soirées, balls and theatrical performances, as well as being aimed at and imagined as part of the Park: for this purpose, the large openings arranged along all the fronts, the adoption of special glazing that would give scenic and spectacular reflections, and the attention to strategic “views”, to enhance the decorative work carried out, were fundamental. Unfortunately, the designer’s attention was not matched by the same care taken in the completion of the projects gradually drawn up and refined by Chini: neither the original layout of the external lighting, nor the areas themselves, nor, on the inside of the building, a large part of the first level were ever completed, except for the tracing of the paths through the greenery and the layout of the external areas according to plan. For this reason, and on the occasion of the recent internal and external restoration work promoted by the current manager of the property, the strategy laid out for each work can be traced back to the precise desire to restore exactly the external distribution and internal finishes then conceived and promoted by Chini.

The Hall was inaugurated of the time in August 1938, in the presence of Umberto II, Prince of Savoy, to the great disapproval of Tito Chini, who did not fail to express his own strong objections to Corsani, who was in any case the one in charge of the project for the Ministry of Finance.