Current name: Hall B (Padiglione B)
Original name: Bathing Establishment (Stabilimento Bagni)
City: Castrocaro Terme e Terre del Sole (FC)
Hamlet: urban area
Address: viale Guglielmo Marconi, n.14/16
Year of construction: 1937 – 1940
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: partly yes
Significant elements: The building is listed by the Committee as a cultural property; ceramic and marble decorations; chrome-plated ceramic coating.
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.
Tito Chini provided one of the many ‘architectural drawings’ as early as 1937, a complete perspective of the Bathing Establishment and Grand Hotel. the typically rationalist distribution layout was maintained, and enriched with the decorative devices still in place on the north, east, and west elevations, and in the atrium. The entrance hall, preceded by a short portico in giant order and crowned by splendid metopes dedicated to the healing water, still presents itself today as an extraordinary double-volume resting place, studied down to the smallest detail: floor mosaics, decorated veils, balustrades, window frames, furniture, fabrics, in complete harmony with the two large wooden panels on the side walls.
The floor plan was built on three levels above ground and a basement intended to serve the rehabilitation and reception activities already on the upper floors: everything was connected by two symmetrical staircases with respect to the atrium; essentially it distributed the rooms intended for treatment on the ground floor, while the two upper levels housed rooms with bathrooms, for the reception or stay of guests. Specifically, from the entrance hall there was direct access to 47 bathing and mud bathing cabins, which could be reached directly from the rooms on the upper floors of the building. The Bathing Establishment was opened without being completed, and already in June 1938, and again in 1939, Chini presented the engineer Corsani new drawings, variations and hypotheses for the fronts on Via Conti. In this case, the attempt was to restore homogeneity, to this part as well, with the other three fronts of the building, embellished with ceramic motifs and clear and legible architectural partitions. However, partly due to the rapid change in the economic-political conditions of the town (and consequently the probable acceleration of the other parts pending on the entire area), and partly due to the presence of atypical pre-existent features on that front, the entire front insisting on Via Conti was substantially abandoned.
No direct or written evidence has been found of the period in which the chimney and the boiler room below it were demolished. It seems clear that if their presence can be verified in the early post-war period, and even up to the complete reopening of the factory (1961), it can be assumed that this demolition took place in the period between the reopening and the changes made to the entire Hall, i.e. during the 1970s. The substantial changes related to the original 1938 version can be summed up in the construction of a space inside the courtyard, accessible both from the basement level and from the ground floor. At the same time, part of the basement level was equipped to house additional rooms to serve the patients, with particular reference to water therapies. Internally to the building, there are numerous other minor variations, not related to the fronts nor to the overall volumetry.