ex convento di San Domenico

A former Dominican monastery, now stripped of its friars, this building presents a puzzle of prismatic volumes. The courtyard, arcaded on its east and north sides, is the heart of the complex, but its enclosing wings are far from uniform. The west wing rises higher than the others, its three storeys dominating the two-storey east, south, and north ranges. The church itself is grafted awkwardly onto the east wing, a reminder of the original purpose.

Nineteenth-century alterations have muddled the original plan, yet the early volumetric logic remains legible: the north, south, and west wings were once a unified, regular block. The east wing, more stubborn, has kept its original shape. Access to the courtyard comes via a main entrance with a fake barrel vault, or a secondary one with a lunette vault. The ground floor, disrupted by the church and a change in level, is only habitable in the south and west wings. The result is an irregular, intriguing space, the ghost of monastic regularity haunted by later improvisations.

Description via source. Coordinates and heritage data from the Atika atlas.