1

Cristina Pallini

Exiles who, fleeing from the Pope or the Bourbons, had embarked at
night in fishing boats from Barletta, or Taranto, or from the coast of Sicily, and after weeks at sea disembarked in Egypt. . . . I imagined them,
the legendary fugitives of the last century, wrapped in their cloaks, with
wide-brimmed hats and long beards: they were mostly professional men
or intellectuals who, after a while, sent for their wives from Italy or else
married local girls. Later on their children and grandchildren . . . founded
charitable institutions in Alexandria, the peoples university, the civil cemetery. . . . To the writer Fausta Cialente, these were the first Italians who
crossed the Mediterranean in the first half of the nineteenth century to
reach what had survived of trading outposts founded in the Middle Ages.
Egypt, the meeting point between Africa and Asia, yet so accessible from
Europe, was at that time the scene of fierce European rivalry. Within only
a few years Mohamed Ali had assumed control of the corridors to India,
pressing forward with industrial development based on cotton. Having
lost no time in inducing him to abandon the conquered territories and
revoke his monopoly regime, the Great Powers became competitors on a
 Fausta Cialente (Cagliari 1898 London 1994), Ballata levantina (Milan: Feltrinelli,
1961), 127128.
 Mohamed Ali (Kavala, Macedonia 1769 Cairo 1849) is considered to be the founder
of modern Egypt. His mark on the countrys history is due to his extensive political and
military action, as well as his administrative, economic, and cultural reforms. His vast
program of public works included the digging of the Mahmudiyyah canal from the Rosetta
branch of the Nile to Alexandria, of fundamental importance in bringing the city into the
orbit of the western world.

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Italian Architects and Modern Egypt

Cristina Pallini

number of major projects for the transit of the road to the Indies across
Egyptian territory.
Between the early nineteenth century and the 1940s, Italian emigration
to Egypt was a matter of individual initiative and ambition. For many
Italians Egypt was a second homeland, where their language was widely
understood and spoken, where their fellow-countrymen held prominent
posts enjoying the trust and esteem of the pashas, and where they could
operate under particularly favorable conditions due to the Italian imprint left on many institutions by their successful and highly appreciated
forerunners. For them Egypt was a land of promise partly on account of
the many large-scale projects shaping the future structure of the country
and its main cities against an international background where a vital stage
in the development of a market economy was in progress.
Italian emigration to Egypt included a sizeable number of architects, engineers, and builders: pioneers who set to work for Mohamed Ali; political
exiles who had been involved in the Risorgimento risings; emigrants seeking their fortune in and after the golden days of the Khedives; and upand-coming professionals. Their influence began to make itself felt with
the reconstruction of Alexandria (18191848), reaching a peak at the start
of the twentieth century and lasting until the Nasserite period. They held
a dominant role in the building industry and were to be found wherever
construction was going on: in Alexandria and Cairo as well as in minor
cities like Damanhour or Mansoura, or in the newly founded Helwan, Port
Said, Ismailia, and Suez.
I have here chosen some examples to show how the approach frequently
adopted by Italian architects in Egypt was one of courageous experimentation often producing results of great interest, a point that historians tend
to neglect.
In discussing the remodeling of Egyptian port areas (Alexandria and Bulaq) and the building of theaters and schools in Alexandria and Cairo,
I want to emphasize that both are factors that facilitate the creation of
social cohesion: the port was the basic reason for founding a settlement,
explaining the presence of many ethno-religious groups; theaters and
schools were important features of the resulting social framework that
was to foster composite, yet individual, cultural identities.
 During the rise of modern architecture in the 1930s those who continued to practice
eclectic architecture in Egypt tended to be ignored or forgotten by their Italian contemporaries.

1. Italian contribution in the building of ports and their

environments

Alexandria

The buried port (1916): The poet reaches it / then rises to the light /
sowing his song. To Giuseppe Ungaretti the discovery of a pre-Ptolemaic port, proving that Alexandria had been a port even before 332 BC,
suggests a metaphor expressing the very essence of poetry. On returning
to Alexandria in 1930, Filippo Tommaso Marinetti vividly expresses the
dynamism of the port area spreading rearward along the Mahmudiyyah
canal: crowded in the pool above the lock, the boats are restless, anxious
to be off with their load of raw cotton: groaning, grumbling, creaking in
their aversion for that European trap! The poet Giuseppe Regaldi emphasizes the presence of an extraterritorial settlement, the place where
the Franks are most often to be found . . . a quadrangle commonly known
as the Place des Consuls. (Fig. 1)
This long rectangular square was created in the 1840s under the joint supervision of Ibrahim Pasha and the Italian engineer Francesco Mancini, both
playing a leading part in the Commission of Ornament. Old photographs
and maps enable us to see the square in detail as Giuseppe Regaldi saw it in
1850. At the southeast corner stands the Okelle of St. Mark and the NeoByzantine/Neo-Moorish Anglican church by the London architect James
William Wildt. Along its eastern side are the Neoclassical Okelle dAbro
and Okelle de France, the traditional-style Okelle Moharrem Bey, and the
 Giuseppe Ungaretti (Alexandria 1888 Milan 1970).
 Filippo Tommaso Marinetti (Alexandria 1876 Bellagio, Como 1944), Il Fascino
dellEgitto (Mondadori: Milan, 1981, original 1933), 77-78.
 Giuseppe Regaldi (Novara 1809 Bologna 1883), LEgitto antico e moderno (Florence:
Le Monnier, 1884), 59-60.
 Ibrahim Pasha (Kavala, Macedonia 1789 Cairo 1848) was the son of Mohamed and
commander in chief of the Egyptian army.
 My biographical details about Francesco Mancini are still incomplete. He came from
the Papal States in Italy, arriving in Egypt in 1820, an exile for having served under Eugene
Beauharnais in the Napoleonic Regno dItalia. After a period of participation in Mohamed
Alis military campaigns, he undertook civilian works, subsequently becoming chief engineer to Ibrahim Pasha, with whom he planned the Place des Consuls. In 1834 he proposed
institution of the Commission of Ornament in Alexandria, later taking it over as chief
engineer. This may have reflected Mancinis involvement in the Commissions of Ornament
set up in Italy under Napoleon and operating in Milan (capital of the Regno dItalia) and
Venice.

Fig.1 Alexandria: Place des Consuls

around 1850 (authors reconstruction).
Legend:
1. Okelle du Caf de lEurope; 2. Okelle
Zizinia, Antonio Lucovich; 3. Mixed
Tribunals; 4. Okelle Moharrem Bey/Neuve
(including the Italian Theater), 1820 c.;
5. Okelle de France; 6. Okelle Abro; 7.
Anglican church, James William Wildt,
18451854; 8. Okelle St. Mark; 9. Tossizza
Palace, Francesco Mancini; 10. Okelle des
Enchres Publiques; 11. Okelle Prince Ibrahim Pasha; 12. Okelle Domaines de lEtat;
13. Hotel dEurope (including an hammam);
14. Okelle dAnastasy (including a collection of antiquities); 15. Okelle Gibarra; 16.
Cheikh Ibrahim Mosque; 17. New Bazaar;
18. Convent of the Lazarists, 1844-1848;
19. Convent of the Sisters of Charity, 1844
1848; 20. Hotel Abbat; 21. Okelle Caruana;
22. Greek-Orthodox Church, 18471856;
23. Tossizza Schools, 1854; 24. Roman
Catholic Church, Serafino da Baceno,
18471856 (and School of the Frres of the
coles Chretiennes); 25. European Hospital, founded in 1816 and rebuilt in 1857. A.
Old sea-walls, demolished in 1842; B. New
sea-walls built around 1840 and demolished before 1865. T. Location proposed for
the Italian Theater in 1858.

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Italian poets who were born in Egypt or lived there for a considerable time
may help us to visualize the life of Egyptian ports from ancient times to
their flourishing development in the course of the nineteenth century.

Cristina Pallini

Fig.2 Alexandria: Tossizza Palace, Francesco Mancini. The original faade.

Neo-Moorish Okelle Zizinia by the Venetian architect Antonio Lucovich.

Bordering the old Frank Quarter are the Caf dEurope and the Okelle
Gibarra. The western side of the square is lined with the elegant Okelle
dAnastasy and three large blocks similar in size, the Hotel de lEurope,
and the Okelles Domaines de lEtat and Ibrahim Pasha. At the highest
point, dominating the square from its southern end, stands the temple-like
edifice of the Tossizza Palace. (Fig. 2)
The square was the court of trading-consuls, merchants, and financiers
with whom Mohamed Ali associated.10 With the sole exception of the
Anglican church, all other buildings are okelles, a westernized form of the
Arabic word wikala indicating commercial structures traditionally used in
Egypt for warehousing and trade, also serving as a hostelry for dealers.11
All compact blocks of approximately the same height, some have a traditional layout, such as the vast Okelle Moharrem Bey, while others look
more like European mansions.
Francesco Mancini, who excavated the whole area to lay the foundations
for these okelles,12 is also believed to have designed their Neoclassical faades with a base, central body, coping or pediment, and introduced Doric
and Ionic ornamental pilasters or semi-columns. It may be asked why he
so extensively adopted a Neoclassical style in contrast with the Turkish
town and with the other styles then being introduced. This may have
merely reflected his training in Italy during the Napoleonic period, but
may also have been a classicist revival attempting to link this new stage
 Antonio Lucovich (b. 1815), engineer, architect, and entrepreneur, arrived in Alexandria
in 1837. Reference to Antonio Lucovichs Italian origin can be found in Ersilio Michiel,
Esuli Italiani in Egitto (1815-1861) (Pisa, 1958), 130.
10 While Moharrem Bey was Mohamed Alis son-in-law, Abram dAbro was an Armenian
financier who settled in Trieste and was related to the Minister of Foreign Affairs Boghos
Bey Yussufian; Giorgio Gibarra was a rich Italian merchant, an Austro-Hungarian subject,
head of the Administration of Commerce. Michali Tossizza, a Greek from Metzovo, was
consul-general of Greece and president of the Commission of Ornament; Etienne Zizinia,
a Greek from Chios, was a French protg and consul-general of Belgium; and Jean
dAnastasy, a Greek merchant, was consul-general of Sweden and member of the Commission of Ornament. Tossizza, Zizinia, and dAnastasy were three of Mohamed Alis Greek
agents, providing him with ships, weapons, and munitions from Malta, Leghorn, Trieste,
Genoa, and Marseille.
11 An okelle is a square building with a single entrance, whose open inner courtyard is
lined with arched-over spaces for wholesale trading; facing onto the streets are structures
for retail trade, and access to the upper floors is gained though porticoed galleries lined
with rooms to house merchants and temporary settlers.
12 See Sir John Gardner Wilkinson, Modern Egypt and Thebes ( London: John Murray,
1843), 166.

While Alexandrias flourishing development in the 1840s explains how

Mancinis city planning in the Commission of Ornament had to cope with
the changing needs of an expanding population in continuous movement,
the final layout of the European town wedged between the Turkish and
Arab townsits main streets following the orientation of the square to
reach Ras el-Tin palace, the canal port, and the ancient Canopic street
shows that the square was conceived both as the city center and as its
ultimate form in embryo. Mancini, known to have extensively explored
the still visible vestiges of the ancient city and to have discovered the
remains of a Roman stadium,13 may have found inspiration for his long
rectangular square from the famous Heptastadium,14 from the shape and
size of a Hippodrome,15 or from the Qaramaydan at the foot of the Citadel in Cairo.
What is certain is that the Place des Consuls became the scene of many
historical events. In 1882, it became the main target for British bombardment and the site of executions of Orabi Pashas nationalists. Reconstruction of the new blocks, similar to the European galleries of the nineteenth
century, marked a decisive change; originally so vital to the port, the square
had now become mainly a financial center. The Boursethe former Tossizza Palaceprovided the background for Nassers speeches to the masses, eventually to be destroyed by fire during the Bread Riots of 1977 and
completely pulled down in the early 1980s.
Bulaq

Where the first pyramid hides the other two, writes Luigi Odescalchi,
you will find Bulaq, more or less a suburb of Cairo for which it acts as
a storage point, port and customs house; it also has a remarkable museum.16 Odescalchi describes the Bulaq of the early 1860s as a place in
13 Wilkinson, Modern Egypt and Thebes, 171,172.
14 The Heptastadium was a seven-stadia-long dike (7 x 185 m. = 1295 m.) built by the
Ptolemies to join the mainland to the island of Pharos. In the Arab period the Heptastadium silted up and became a neck of land, where the Turkish town was later to grow up.
15 Mohamed Alis intention to evoke the cityscape of the Bosphorushis Ras el-Tin
Palace in Alexandria built la Constantinopolitaine, his Alabaster Mosque in Cairo closely
resembling the Sultan Ahmed Mosquemight also have influenced Mancini in designing
the elongated square, similar to that of the Istanbul Hippodrome.
16 Odescalchi, LEgitto Antico Illustrato e lEgitto Moderno (Alexandria: Tipografia
Anglo-Egiziana, 1865), 264.

5
AKPIA@MIT - Studies in ARCHITECTURE, HISTORY & CULTURE

in the life of the port-city with its mythical Hellenistic past, or again may
have been the means for establishing a lingua franca to give a European
touch to the new Alexandria.

Cristina Pallini

transition: from a major Nile port, given new life by the presence of
the AlexandriaSuez overland route, to a settlement near Cairo becoming
little more than a suburb of the city. Most probably he also saw what still
remained at Bulaq of the main manufacturing site set up by Mohamed Ali
in his plan to industrialize Egypt: the naval arsenal and docks, the textile
factories (1818), the great foundry (1820), the government printing house
(1822), and the School for Civil Engineers (1821), later to become the
Polytechnic (1834).
While Carlo Rossetti, a trader from Trieste, had made a collection of antiquities in his country house at Bulaq as early as 1800,17 Giuseppe Bocti,
a mechanic and a veteran of the Egyptian Expedition, also from Trieste,
was one of the European experts who discussed with Mohamed Ali his
projects for liberating Egypt from dependency on foreign industry, also
aiding him in setting up his cotton industries at Bulaq, in Cairo, and in
the provinces.18 Pietro Avoscani, from Leghorn,19 was engaged in urban
development south of Bulaq as early as 1865. When Ismail Pasha20 began
planning a modern Cairo close to the old city, Avoscani was among the
investors who acquired plots of land on which he intended to build an
cole mutuelle and a School of Arts and Crafts; in 1873 he also intended
17 Carlo Rossetti (Trieste 1736 Cairo 1820) arrived in Egypt around 1780, started as a
trader, later becoming consul general of Austria and Russia, while maintaining a close relationship with Murad Bey, one of the Mamluk beys who controlled Egypt in the last quarter

of the eighteenth century.

18 See L. A. Balboni, Gli Italiani nella Civilt Egiziana del Secolo XIX, vol. 1 (Alexandria,
1906), 229-30, and John Bowring, Report on Egypt and Candia (London, 1840), 31.

19 Son of a nobleman ruined by risky trading enterprises with the Indies, Pietro Avoscani
(Leghorn 1816 Alexandria 1890) emigrated to Alexandria in 1837, perhaps because of
a charge of conspiracy for having joined Mazzinis Giovine Italia movement. Avoscani
arrived in Egypt already trained as a goldsmith, fresco painter, and decorator and his work
on the Ras el Tin palace soon won him the esteem of Mohamed Ali. In 1839 he left for
Athens, Constantinople, Odessa, Moscow, St. Petersburg, and Vienna on a diplomatic
mission. This was also a pilgrimage in the field of art. In front of monuments like the
Acropolis, Avoscani came to realize his real vocation as an architect. His experience as an
architect and artist was interwoven with his many journeys, with his patriotic activity, and
with his work as entrepreneur. Before Ismails visit to the 1867 Exposition Universelle in
Paris Avoscani was asked to prepare a project for a new quarter designed to join Cairo to
Bulaq; see L. A. Balboni, Gli Italiani nella Civilt Egiziana del Secolo XIX, vol. I: 407.
20 A grandson of Mohamed Ali, Ismail Pasha (Cairo 1830 Istanbul 1895) became the
fifth independent sovereign of Egypt, the first Khedive. He took power in 1863, abdicating in 1879 in favor of his son Tewfiq. His reign saw the establishment of European
influences in Egyptian political life. He initiated an extensive program of public works.
The opening of the Suez canal in 1869 gave him an opportunity to transform Cairo into a
capital comparable with those of European countries.

to build warehouses, a market, and public stables to promote industrial

development close to Bulaq along the Ismailia canal.21 Augusto Cesari
of Ancona,22 an architect-draftsman employed by the management of
Ismails properties, was asked in the early 1870s to draw up a project for
the Museum of Egyptian Antiquities in Bulaq, which had been housed
since 1863 in a building on the banks of the Nile that had served as offices for the Nile Steam Navigation Company. Though it is still unknown
what Cesaris project really consisted of, we do know that the Museum
did much to restore the attractions of Bulaq, becoming both a school of
archaeology and a place where Egyptians could visit exhibitions and learn
to appreciate the history of their country. Later on Cesari again worked in
Bulaq to restore the School of Fine Arts.

Introduction of the theater into Egypt was important in promoting development of social life, embodying, as it did, aspects of collective activity.
Alexandria

Pietro Avoscani guides us through events that led to building a theater on

the road to the Rosetta Gate in Alexandria, and another at the Ezbekiyya
park in Cairo. For Avoscani the theater was a real passion. On returning
from his first diplomatic mission in 1841 he produced Gemma di Vergy
by Donizzetti, Ernani by Verdi, and the Barber of Seville by Rossini
at the Gabbari palace in Alexandria, arousing the enthusiasm of Mohamed
Ali. Shortly later he successfully produced a patriotic piece at the Italian
Theater (located in the Okelle Moharrem Bey), highly appreciated by his
compatriots. In the 1840s he designed a theater that was also to house
the Stock Exchange, a club, and a reading room, although this was never
built. In July 1856 he organized a grand public festival at the Gabbari
where he put on operas, tragedies, ballets, and gymnastic shows during
the three days of the event.23 A year later, together with other Italians,
he asked permission to build a new Italian Theater and organize a competition for its design, eventually won by the Florence architect Mariano
Falcini.24 (Fig. 3) This project was never implemented, but in 1862 Etienne
Zizinia, the powerful Greek consular representative for Belgium, finally
entrusted Avoscani with the design for a theater to be built on the road
to the Rosetta Gate. Avoscanis building closely resembled the Teatro
21 Avoscani never managed to implement these projects. See Jean-Luc Arnaud, Le
CaireMise en place dune ville moderne, 1867-1907. Des intrts khdiviaux aux socits
prives, Ph.D. dissertation, Universit de Provence, December 1993: 60-64.
22 Balboni, Gli Italiani nella Civilt Egiziana del Secolo XIX, vol. II: 236.
23 Les ftes dAlexandrie, in LIllustration, a. 28 n. 70, 16 August 1856: 103-106.
24 Mariano Falcini (Campi Bisenzio 1804 Florence 1885).

Fig.3 Alexandria: competition project for

the Italian Theater, Mariano Falcini,1858.
The image is taken from Ricordi di Architettura, 1882 (V), n. II, plate V.

AKPIA@MIT - Studies in ARCHITECTURE, HISTORY & CULTURE

2. Theaters

alla Scala in Milan. In contrast with the Scalas Neoclassical style he used
terracotta decorations, typical of Milanese buildings of the Risorgimento
period, perhaps to celebrate the accomplishment of his patriotic ideals
after Italian Unity was proclaimed in 1861. Although the city contained
other theaters, it was his Zizinia Theater that marked the line of the road
to the Rosetta Gate as a main urban axis of the European quarter, along
which consulates and villas came to be built a few years later.

Cristina Pallini

Cairo
Fig.4 Cairo: Khedivial Opera House, Pietro
Avoscani, 1869 (photo J. P. Sebah).
Harvard Semitic Museum Photographic
Archive

Avoscanis great opportunity arrived when Ismail decided that Cairo must
appear as a European capital for the Suez Canal opening ceremonies in
1869. He had almost completed the Opera when in the fall of that year
he took the poet Giuseppe Regaldi to see the Ezbekiyya park, telling him
how that very spot had been a depression forming a lake during the Nile
flood until Mohamed Ali reclaimed it and turned it into a garden of acclimatization.25
The Opera, the most important of the new public buildings financed by
Ismail to transform the Ezbekiyya park into a showplace for the new Cairo, stood isolated, dominating a small square, its longer side facing onto
the park. (Fig. 4) For its main faade Avoscani seems to have experimented with a monumental version of the Zizinia Theater in Alexandria: a
tripartite composition with a central portico supported by Ionic columns,
and a loggia with arched doorways framed by terracotta decorations and
decorative pilasters. With its interplay of volumes, a central loggia, and
horizontal cornices, the great frontage of the Opera facing onto the Ezbekyia park visually balanced those of the new hotels.
It might seem that in designing his theaters Avoscani was merely aiming to
please foreigners. The views of Abou Naddara, considered the founder
of the Arab theater in Egypt, may however help us to avoid hasty judgments. His ideas for plays of topical interest developed after going to the
Ezbekiyya theaters, the Opera and the Commedie Franaise. He said, at
that time, in 1870, a good French troupe of musicians, singers and comedians, and an excellent company of Italian players were the joy of the
European colonies in Cairo. . . . Seeing the farces, comedies, operettas
and dramas acted here gave me the idea of creating my own Arab theater,
and with Gods help I have carried it out.26
25 Giuseppe Regaldi, LEgitto antico e moderno, 144-145.
26 Interview given in 1877 by Abou Naddara, published in Jannet Tagher, Les dbus due
thatre moderne en gypte, in Cahiers dHistoire typtienne I, 2: 192-207.

3. Schools

While theaters provided focal points of social life for upper-class members of the different ethno-religious groups, schools and hospitals became
community buildings par excellence, furthering cohesion of the social
fabric to which large entrepreneurs were giving an economic impetus.
Schools in particularwhere every group could teach its own language,
history, and traditionswere not only the expression of a communitys
presence, but also of its permanence, prosperity, and culture. One of
the key periods to illustrate school building in Egypt is the 1930s when
increasing nationalistic tendencies were causing some communities to become mere groups of mutually hostile nationals.

AKPIA@MIT - Studies in ARCHITECTURE, HISTORY & CULTURE

Culturaland economicpenetration is of paramount importance in

the programs of the Great Powers in Egypt. . . . Till now Italian cultural
policy has only been aimed at Italian communities. No plan whatever
has been made to promote Italian culture in Egypt, and diffuse its spirit among the Egyptian ruling classes.27 Addressed in 1931 by Roberto
Cantalupo, Minister of Italy in Cairo, to Piero Parini, General Director
of Schools abroad, these words express an appeal for change. Projects
such as the Royal Littorie Schools in Alexandria (19311933), the Italian Schools in Cairo (1934), and the Casa dItalia in Port Said (1936)all
designed by Clemente Busiri Vici28were vitally important for the fascist
regime, aimed as they were at strengthening the links between Italians in
Egypt and their homeland while associating fascist ideology with a new
spirit of national identity.
Italian journals and newspapers circulating in Egypt at the time show how
the Littorie Schools in Alexandria were both an experiment and a manifesto29: a community building of a new kind, where most of the social,
27 See Situazione scolastica in Alto Egitto, Cairo, 5 June 1931, Archivio Storico Diplomatico del Ministero degli Esteri, Affari politici, Egitto 2 (1931): 8-9. This reference is
taken from Simonetta Cirannas article Italian Architecture in Egypt in the Thirties. The
Works of Clemente Busiri Vici, in Amate Sponde . . . Presence of Italy in the Architecture
of the Islamic Mediterranean. Environmental Design 9-10 (1992): 118-119.
28 Born in a family of architects, and graduating in 1912 at the School of Applied Engineering, Clemente Busiri Vici (Rome 1887 Rome 1965) expresses the combined figures
of the technician-builder and of the architect-artist. He was becoming known even before
the outbreak of the First World War. Later, in the 1930s, he worked extensively for the
Fasci Italiani allEstero, an institutionbegun in the early 1920s and ratified by Mussolini in
1928that reflected the nationalist attitude innate in fascist philosophy and the new political concept applied to emigration (emigrants were supposed to form a compact political
force, subject to the authorities of Rome to further the interests of the mother country).
29 In particular Il Legionario, the weekly for Italians abroad, and the special issue of Il
Giornale dOriente published in February-March 1933 marking a visit to Egypt by King
Vittorio Emanuele III.

cultural, and recreational activities of the Italian community were concentrated and where new behavioral patternsathletics and fascist youth
associationswere encouraged. The school had to function as a piece of
the homeland, its extremely plain style intended to mark a clean break with
the revivalist architecture of the past.30

Cristina Pallini

Fig.5 Cairo, Italian Schools at Shubra,

Clemente Busiri Vici, 1934.
The image is taken from A. Regagioli,
Scuole italiane in Egitto, LIngegnere, n.
22, Dec. 1935, p. 928.

The ground chosen for this complex was situated in the Chatby area,
where the British Boys School, the Greek complex, the St. Mark College,
and the Lyce Franais already formed a city of education. Exceptional in size, the Littorie Schools were to house the nursery, the primary
and boarding schools, high schools, a library, a theater for 2000 people,
and extensive sports facilities. Busiri Vici concentrated the building in
the higher half of the area, leaving the lower half for sports grounds. A
symmetrical layout gave coordination to the spacing of building volumes,
which consisted of a series of pavilions connected by walkways to form a
single structural complex.
In 1934 Clemente Busiri Vici designed a new Italian School complex in
Cairo. (Fig. 5) Located on the great Shubra road, at that time a major route
to a rapidly developing area, this building included many forms of activity:
sports facilities around an open-air gymnasium, a garden for recreation,
the nursery school and the Casa del Balilla facing onto a common open
space, and the primary school facing onto a great courtyard overlooking
the Shubra road.
While the Cairo complex embodies Busiri Vicis idea of the school as an
all-inclusive citadel, the Littorie Schools seem to show that Busiri Vici was
aiming at a strong evocative effect, inventing what he intended to appear
as an example of modern (fascist) Italy. Here his architecture is full of
symbolic features, all aimed at arousing emotional feelings among the users: arched walkways, porticoed courtyards recalling those in convents,
plain and simple volumes evoking the works of Italian metaphysical painters, with the school overlooking the sports grounds as eighteenth century
Italian suburban villas overlooked their parks.
Busiri Vicis focus on experimenting with buildings of a new kindsuch
as the new school and the casa dItaliaall aimed at transforming
the Italian individual emigrant into a member of an Italian-fascist colony
abroad, seems to have led to a highly original form of figurative research,
even to the point of challenging the constructional principles of architec30 It is an extraordinary thing that construction of the Royal Littorie Schools should have
been started only 16 years after the huge neo-renaissance building of the Italian Schools
had been opened; this emphasizes the urgent need felt by Italians to mark the beginning of
a new stage in the life of the community.

Concluding remarks
Italian architects, engineers, and builders emigrated from places of widely
different historical origins, each with its own marked cultural identity and
political and economic role. They came from ports and capital cities of
the single states existing prior to unification, from Leghorn (Avoscani),
Trieste (Bocti), Venice (Lucovich), Genoa, Ancona (Cesari), Bari, Catania,
Palermo, Turin, Florence (Falcini), Naples; from towns like Voghera, Ferrara, Bologna, Modena, Carrara, Siena, and Ascoli Piceno; from territories
like Trento, Udine, and Gorizia. As time went on, arrivals from Rome
and Milan increased, while many were second- or third-generation Italians born in Egypt. Only a few never went to Egypt but prepared their
projects in Italy.
The training and cultural backgrounds of these Italians ranged between
two extremes: architect-artist (Avoscani) and technician-builder (Bocti),
whether possessing a regular qualification, or knowledge acquired solely
through practice. Some had risen from the ranks of apprentices to more
traditionally trained artists, for others the family cultural background fulfilled a fundamental role. Some of these pioneers (Mancini) came from
military careers, but the later arrivals had been trained in academies of
fine arts and in polytechnic schools, each dominated by some emerging
personality, architectural teaching having become a separate national curriculum only in the 1920s. Few had a European-style education, while
several were trained entirely in Egypt.
Rather than seeking what Edward Said called a way of coming to terms
with the Orient . . . based on the Orients special place in European Western experience,31 Italian architects, engineers, and builders espoused a
non-Eurocentric attitude, their diverse cultural and academic backgrounds
proving to be a factor for integration. Even after unification of the country in 1861, Italy still had to face a complex process of integrating widely
differing local cultures. For the Italian architects in Egypt there was no
single concept of the meaning of architecture; their approach to design
and urban development was greatly influenced by their individual origins,
diversified training, and academic experiences, and also by their cultural
levels and professional opportunities.

31 Edward Said, Orientalism (London: Penguin Books, 1995, original 1977), 1.

11
AKPIA@MIT - Studies in ARCHITECTURE, HISTORY & CULTURE

ture, aiming as he did at creating an allegorical representation of Italy as

the homeland.

Cristina Pallini

12

On arriving in Egypt, they tended to seek some kind of balance between

personal backgrounds, local traditions, and their clients demands. At
such a crucial time when a physical and social environment had to be
rebuilt, they found new ways of using traditional types, experimenting
with architectural styles to give an identity to some new urban settlements
(Mancini). While Egyptian cities were being Europeanized, these architects were seeking fresh interpretations for major western institutions
such as the theater and the museum (Avoscani, Cesari). At a later stage
they experimented extensively with new building types, such as the all-inclusive modern schools (Busiri Vici). Most of these architectural features
reflected the original kind of sociocultural environment that distinguished
Egyptian cities between the early nineteenth century and the 1940s.
Gaetano Moretti, a prominent Italian architect who visited Egypt around
1900, said that the other European architects there were mere adventurers, capable of little else than reproducing in Egypt popular features from
their own countries, regardless of their fitness for the Egyptian context.32
I hope that I have here managed to challenge such severe judgments. Two
aspects were decisive for a successful outcome: the architects imagination
and the clients demand for an architecture that people could understand.
I believe that a consideration of the experiences of Italian architects in
Egypt is not only a matter of historical interest, but it may also suggest
some criteria that architects can usefully adopt in approaching problems
of architectural design in dealing with major changes in progress.

.
32 See Gaetano Moretti, La villa Zogheb al Cairo. Due parole sullarchitettura moderna
in Egitto, LEdilizia Moderna, January 1903: 1-3.