Description
The Santa Maria Novella station is the main railway station of Florence and Tuscany, one kilometer from the Duomo, right behind the apse of the basilica of the same name. It is not just a place to pass through: the passenger building, designed by the Gruppo Toscano led by Giovanni Michelucci, is considered one of the finest examples of Italian rationalism.
It was built after a competition in 1932, which the Gruppo Toscano won among over a hundred entrants. The design broke with the regime's rhetoric: form had to follow function. The station divided the cultural world, with the conservatives led by Ugo Ojetti on one side and the young intellectuals of the Giubbe Rosse, such as Elio Vittorini, on the other.
The fear was that a modern building would clash with the basilica's Gothic. That is why the station is a long, low block, clad in the same pietraforte as the church: as the designers put it, a “limit” that lets the apse of Santa Maria Novella prevail.
From the façade comes down the waterfall of glass, a window in seven large bands that lights the hall and the platform area, covered in copper and glass and 160 meters long, with no central supports.
In the head gallery, as big as a city street, the floor alternates bands of white Apuan marble and red Amiata. The back wall, in travertine, looks like a colossal departure board with copper lettering, and colored marbles and metals reach even the most practical parts.
Seen from above, it looked like a fasces. That is how Margherita Sarfatti persuaded Mussolini, who on June 10, 1934 received the designers at Palazzo Venezia and ended up approving the station.
Before, there was the Maria Antonia station, opened on February 3, 1848 and built much closer to the church's apse: to make room for it, gardens and parts of the convent were demolished.
At platform 16, a monument remembers the trains that left for the Nazi extermination camps: on November 9, 1943 with three hundred Jews, headed for Auschwitz, and on March 8, 1944 with over a thousand deportees, mostly political prisoners, after a strike.
It was built after a competition in 1932, which the Gruppo Toscano won among over a hundred entrants. The design broke with the regime's rhetoric: form had to follow function. The station divided the cultural world, with the conservatives led by Ugo Ojetti on one side and the young intellectuals of the Giubbe Rosse, such as Elio Vittorini, on the other.
The fear was that a modern building would clash with the basilica's Gothic. That is why the station is a long, low block, clad in the same pietraforte as the church: as the designers put it, a “limit” that lets the apse of Santa Maria Novella prevail.
From the façade comes down the waterfall of glass, a window in seven large bands that lights the hall and the platform area, covered in copper and glass and 160 meters long, with no central supports.
In the head gallery, as big as a city street, the floor alternates bands of white Apuan marble and red Amiata. The back wall, in travertine, looks like a colossal departure board with copper lettering, and colored marbles and metals reach even the most practical parts.
Seen from above, it looked like a fasces. That is how Margherita Sarfatti persuaded Mussolini, who on June 10, 1934 received the designers at Palazzo Venezia and ended up approving the station.
Before, there was the Maria Antonia station, opened on February 3, 1848 and built much closer to the church's apse: to make room for it, gardens and parts of the convent were demolished.
At platform 16, a monument remembers the trains that left for the Nazi extermination camps: on November 9, 1943 with three hundred Jews, headed for Auschwitz, and on March 8, 1944 with over a thousand deportees, mostly political prisoners, after a strike.