OurStory
Via Dante, corner of Via San Nicolò. You look up and cannot stop looking. White, exuberant, with that floral decoration climbing the facade as if someone, at a certain point, simply could not stop.
Romeo Depaoli designed it in 1906 for Augusto Terni, a Triestine entrepreneur with clear ideas and the money to realize them. Art Nouveau was the language of the moment and Depaoli pushed it all the way: floral friezes, medallions, statues, iron balustrades and, at the top of the corners, small domes inspired by Indian architecture that still surprise those who look up at the right moment. The structure was advanced for its era: iron pillars, metal ceilings, and a lift included from the very beginning. Depaoli knew what he was doing. The history of the building carries a few romantic shadows: the patron Terni took his own life for sentimental reasons, Depaoli died young from illness. The palazzo outlasted them both, as places with character tend to do.
Palazzo Terni-Dei Rossi is perceived as a single unit but is in fact made up of three distinct buildings, with the central section slightly set back from the two lateral ones. The constant alternation of receding and projecting elements, small columns, balconies, pilasters and lesenes creates a play of chiaroscuro that animates the facade. It is one of those buildings that changes depending on the time of day: in the morning the decorations cast long shadows on the white stone; in the afternoon everything flattens into a uniform glare; at sunset, every detail begins to breathe again. With Casa Terni-Smolars, Depaoli made his full expressive independence clear. The sculptures on the main facade are the work of Paolo Rathmann, the same sculptor with whom Depaoli would collaborate two years later for Casa Polacco on Corso Italia. The interplay between the three blocks creates a magnificent chiaroscuro effect that in Trieste, a city accustomed to Mitteleuropean austerity, must have seemed almost a provocation. An elegant one, though. The kind that intrigues rather than tires.
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