The Principe di Piemonte bathing establishment (formerly Select) is located in Viale Marconi in Viareggio.
History
On the area occupied today by the “Principe di Piemonte” bathing establishment, the “Lido” bathing establishment was originally built around 1920. In the magazine “Il Lido di Viareggio” we read: “Another very happy initiative by Mr. A. Barsanti was that of the construction of an elegant “Il Lido” bathing establishment located in a delightful and fragrant strip of the admirable beach of Viareggio, near of Viale Marco Polo, where the water is purer and more crystalline and the sand is finer, velvety and deep.The “Lido” establishment is made up of a large number of cabins distributed with a pleasant arrangement towards the sea and in the middle of large and soft sand beds, and can accommodate a large number of bathers from the numerous hotels and pensions, and villas that adorn the admirable Viale Carducci and the bright adjacent streets “Il Lido”, a modern, elegant, pleasant and comfortable establishment , is suitably equipped with an important Restaurateur, who will constitute the highest enjoyment of the bathing colony.The exquisite cuisine, and the elegant and impeccable service, entrusted to the direction of Mr. A. Barsant i, are a guarantee of the greater satisfaction of the public, who will be able to pay the highest and most deserved applause to the happy creator”.
The “Il Lido” bathroom was later the object of new projects by various professionals, that of 1923 by Alfredo Belluomini, that of 1929 by A. Crippa and that of 1938 by R. Brizzi.
The three projects, none of which completed, have totally different characteristics: Belluomini’s project is characterized by a composition of an exotic-Islamic nature, with ovoid domes, pointed arches and Moorish friezes under the eaves. That of Crippa in 1929 proposes the construction of a “hotel and new lido” as an extension of the “Barsanti” establishment and contains a series of public establishments, such as venues for exhibitions, shows and concerts, a “grandiose building for stately homes”, a hotel, cafe and restaurants. The suggestions derived from the architecture of the skyscraper and from the myth of verticality are expressed here in an object with an eclectic language (with a giant order of pilasters, buttresses in the corner volumes, a projecting crowning, a dome with a peristyle), whose extension of scale is made possible by new technologies. The third unrealized project, by Raffaello Brizzi from 1938, instead reveals adherence to the constants of rationalist architecture, through a “dialectical continuity between exterior and interior, between volume and surface, between architecture and furnishings and the casual articulation and interpenetration of volumes that break any rigidly symmetrical pattern”.
The project that was instead carried out, in 1938, was that of the Florentine engineer Aldo Castelfranco, of whom P. Fornaciari, in a 1992 article, states: “Following a new urban plan for the sea area of the city, which decreed the end of the wooden buildings of the Promenade, the bathing establishments were modified: the stilt houses and the characteristic roundabouts disappeared and the baths were rebuilt “comb-style”, i.e. arranged on the beach in a monotonous array of structures perpendicular to the shoreline. for architectural setting and level of receptivity it was the “Select” bath. The inauguration of the new “Select” bathing establishment represented the great event of the Viareggio summer of 1938 and coincided with the urban planning of the seaside area of via Marco Polo, piazza Puccini and piazza Mazzini.In this area, in fact, new gardens were created with flower beds, a viewpoint over the sea and a ‘artistic fountain with in the center of the basin, supported by three red Levanto columns, the valuable sculpture in Trani stone, “The little bather”, by Professor Mario Carlesi. The Select, built by the engineer Giuseppe De Micheli, based on a project by the Florentine architect Castelfranco, in just over six months of work (De Micheli was not new to such undertakings, in fact, in just 225 working days he had built, in 1922 , the “Select Hotel”) was inaugurated on 23 July, in the presence of Marshal Graziani, Minister Perrone Compagni, the Dukes of Pistoia and Bergamo and the highest fascist authorities of Versilia and the Province of Lucca. The ceremony, opened as per protocol by the notes of the “Royal March” and “Giovinezza”, continued with the blessing imparted by the prior of S. Paolino and concluded with a visit to the complex which was presented as “the most perfect currently existing in matter”. The establishment that occupied 10,000 square meters of beach included: 150 cabins, all equipped with drinking and sea water and toilets, swimming pool with diving board, dance halls, restaurant, café with cold buffet, a rotunda by the sea and a large cinema-theatre, equipped with air conditioning systems”.
It should be noted that subsequently the “Principe di Piemonte” (new name of the “Select”) was the subject of a series of interventions which in any case did not distort the original structure in its essential characteristics. The rotunda that faced the sea is revised and a paved area is created that reaches as far as the swimming pool, which has also been modified. The two elliptical shelters that served as a cover for the external helical stairs to reach the first floor of the cabins were demolished. The cabins of the two arms of the “U” located on the first floor, which originally remained set back from those on the ground floor to create a large terrace on the first floor, are increased and brought up to the length of those on the ground floor, and are changed the openings of the cabins themselves. In addition, large tent structures were built both in front of the central entrance porch to the bathroom and in front of the lateral buildings.
The entire complex with its volumes has remained almost unchanged from 1938 to the present day, if we exclude some modifications concerning the two wings of the “U” which contain the cabins and the central part, including the swimming pool, between the two wings themselves.
The Prince of Piedmont was Casino Municipale from 9 February, the opening date, to 20 June 1946
Architecture
The layout sees the arrangement of the largest and most representative rooms, i.e. the various multifunctional rooms (originally the ballroom and gaming rooms), the hall, the bar and the large congress hall (originally the cinema-theater) set up parallel to the avenue to the sea, on this side of which, right in front of the bathing establishment, is the 1922 Principe di Piemonte hotel (ex Select). At the ends of the part parallel to the avenue, two narrow elongated bodies containing the cabins stand out, this time perpendicularly towards the sea.
The large terrace overlooking the sea and the swimming pool are located inside the “U” shaped body that is formed. It should be noted that the larger rooms, the former ballroom and the former cinema-theater are currently unusable.
Like Brizzi’s unrealized project, this one by Castelfranco also looks to the avant-garde experiences of Italian rationalism when it proposes smooth surfaces, clear-cut volumes and large windows, but unlike that of Brizzi it cannot detach itself from a rigidly symmetrical scheme which sees on the sides of the central volume with an almost square plan, two other bodies slightly lower than the central one, figuratively identical to each other. Thus, passing through the portico of double-height pillars and crossing a small atrium, one reaches the octagonal-shaped hall, which leads into the large side rooms or onto the platform overlooking the swimming pool. Still today, as in its origins, the hall is accompanied by a large central circular fountain with a shaped edge in marble, with central jets, to which a skylight of the same shape and size corresponds in the ceiling. The large ivory-lacquered glass door that leads into the former ballroom is characterized by huge vertical handles in shaped wood and brass.
The elevation on the avenue to the sea is characterized by the portico whose five high arches are reproduced on the entrance facade of the central body, in the form of glass windows, broken horizontally by a masonry band. The pillars of the portico and the pilasters between the windows are covered, up to the shutters of the arches, with slabs of cipollino marble, while travertine is used for the steps which lead from the level of the swimming pool to that of the cabins and for the two helicoidal staircases which they lead to the first floor of the cabins.
The two side bodies, on the façade, are characterized by full-height vertical glass windows (some doors other windows) separated by a marble cladding, where the width is that of a pillar, and by protruding horizontal masonry strips, 10 cm in height. height, where the space between the windows is equal to the width of a window itself.
Critical Luck
The work arouses different, if not opposite, opinions. While in the pages of “Versilia mare” we read that “the New Bathing Establishment “Select” was inaugurated, bringing together a complete installation of cabins, a swimming pool, ballrooms, restaurant, café and bar, a large rotunda overlooking the sea and a vast cinema theater […]. The grandiose work that involved Italian workers and materials was built in just six months and constitutes a significant affirmation of the creative will of one of the most tireless Italian industrialists, the Cavaliere del Lavoro Giuseppe De Micheli which was keen to establish, with the construction of the Viareggio establishment, a European record in terms of bathing facilities”.
By contrast, the judgment that appears on the pages of Leonida Répaci’s Secret Notebook is different, in which we read that “the only thing in Viareggio that speaks of Select, the new reinforced concrete factory, built on the beach of the old Lido with the express purpose of take away from the first floors of the Albergo De Micheli the satisfying view of the sea. The establishment is externally between the station of Florence and the prison-model of the future. Inside, proudly planted on precious porcelain mosaic floors or statuary marble splinters, one can see fountains with luminous jets, gambling halls, bars, luxury shops, and even a rotunda on whose ideal figurehead two majestic sailing ships shine in the western sun.This rotunda which could be a treasure if moved a hundred meters ahead, its horizon is strangled on its sides by two wings of cabins that stand guard over the swimming pool, the latest trend of beach establishments, for which the real sea is no longer enough. scina, costing her alone a million, I mean a million, if the bather of the Select has risked the sight of the sun when it descends into the sea on this side of the Tino, dazzling with red flashes the whole Gulf of La Spezia up to the Bocche di Magra. I know that many people are less interested in the sunset than in a game of bridge. However I am not of this opinion, and I think with nostalgia of the many dying suns which, from the rotunda of the old Lido, as from the deck of a brigantine eaten away by the salt air and the storm, have given me the triumphal sense of death. In short, I do not like this sumptuous Select. Among other things, I would be afraid that I would have to wear a tailcoat to go swimming”.
