palazzo Russo

The prismatic bulk of Palazzo Russo’s main façade is a deliberate deception. It conceals a remarkably intricate interior, where volumes of varying heights, prisms and parallelepipeds, assemble around two internal courtyards. This complexity is the result of gradual aggregation over time, as two neighbouring residential units were merged. Each originally had its own entrance, hall, courtyard and staircase on Via Vittorio Veneto. Recent renovations have erased much of this history: the southern staircase is gone, leaving a single access to the upper floors; its courtyard has been sealed under a glass roof. The other, once larger, has been reduced to a lightwell, its space carved into ramps and landings serving miniature apartments at every level. The load-bearing walls retain their regular grid, but the interior fragmentation makes the original typology illegible. What remains is a palazzo that has been so thoroughly reworked that its past is now visible only as absence.

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