They were once cinemas, now they are testaments to 20^th-century avant-garde architecture

Rome has lost more than 100 movie theatres, including the prestigious Maestoso and Airone

by Cristina Chinetti

Puccini, Gerini, Maestoso, Reale, Airone, Volturno, America, Apollo, Astoria, Rex, Roxy, Galaxy, Tiffany, Empire... what does this list of names refer to? Do they remind anyone of anything? Perhaps the names of old cinemas or theatres? Yes, exactly: they are all historic cinemas in Rome, now closed and abandoned or awaiting rebirth. Perhaps.

And the list could continue, because there are 101 abandoned movie theatres in the capital of italy. Of these, 53 have been permanently transformed into shops, supermarkets, or bingo halls, as well as banks, hotels, apartments, and even churches. Only five have been reopened in recent years and converted, through private initiatives, into cultural spaces with a social impact. A total of 43 remain simply empty containers, often in disrepair, scattered throughout the city.

A conference titled The restoration of abandoned cinemas was held a year ago, organized by the Order of Architects of Rome, with the scientific coordination of Paolo Verdeschi.

Held on the opening day of the Rome Film Fest, the conference aimed to explore the methods and possibilities for safeguarding, protecting, and restoring an architectural heritage that is sometimes exceptional, given that many of these prestigious cinemas were designed by the great masters of twentieth-century architecture. This was without neglecting the social and cultural value, a reference for the entire territory, that cinemas have held in the past as places of gathering and encounter, of collective memory and remembrance, and the sharing of emotions.

More recently, the world of architecture has again addressed the same question. At the recently concluded 19th International Architecture Exhibition in Venice, the Austrian Pavilion presented a comparison of two different models of urban governance, two opposing and alternative approaches to the housing issue, in an era of real estate speculation, in two major capitals, Vienna and Rome.

Vienna's social housing model, where nearly 80% of the population lives in rented accommodation, often in affordable housing, and where most apartments are owned by the municipality or managed by non-profit cooperatives, is compared to the more creative and improvised approach of Rome, a city that "knows how to metabolize the ruins of the contemporary, transforming them into housing opportunities and 'rehabilitating' abandoned spaces, converting them into laboratories for social experimentation, often born out of clandestine realities"1 as a spontaneous response to urban contradictions.

In the space dedicated to Rome, at the center of the room, stands a wooden model of the Serpentone (snake) di Corviale, the famous residential complex on the southwestern outskirts of the capital, designed in the 1970s by Mario Fiorentino and 23 other architects. The model has been created through a complex assembly of folding builders' rules and encloses 100 small, removable wooden panels. Each panel bears an engraved history and the stories of decay and abandonment, as well as the occupations and attempts at recovery and redevelopment, often by citizens' committees, of just as many abandoned buildings, almost all of them disused cinemas and theatres, as mentioned at the beginning.

The various entries recount the "life" of each individual cinema, sometimes expository, sometimes narrative, for example by imagining a local character (a street vendor, an elderly man, etc.) who recalls its importance to the area and its residents, or even personifying and giving voice to the cinema itself. All the capital's historic venues are included, such as the Puccini, the Volturno, the Gerini, and the Teatro Valle, which, following the transformations that society and the world of cinema have experienced from the 1980s until today, have progressively undergone changes in use, closures, and abandonment.

Here, we focus on just two emblematic cases relating to true and significant examples of 20th-century architecture, namely the Cinema Maestoso and the Airone, both located in the Appio Latino neighborhood.

The Maestoso was Rome's first multiscreen cinema, designed and built between 1954 and 1957 by engineer Riccardo Morandi (the same engineer who designed the Genoa bridge). Morandi, it was said, had conceived "something innovative for the time: a building that combined cinemas, apartments, and shops in a technically advanced structure. Prestressed concrete supported an entire apartment block above the main hall. The large glass window on the façade allowed glimpses of the internal stairways, crowded with the comings and goings of people every day. The square, set slightly back from the street, created a quiet meeting place in the densely populated Appio Latino neighborhood."2

The movie theatre's true decline began in 2012, with the owners intending to sell and the subsequent occupation by employees. Despite the neighborhood's mobilization to support the squatters' struggle and defend the value of the place, the cinema closed in 2018, and since then, "the crisis in the film industry and the complex structural interventions have relegated the Maestoso to a limbo of endless waiting. Today, the Maestoso is a shadow of its former self: where once there was life, now there are wooden panels, detached neon tubes, and homeless people seeking shelter in the empty spaces."

This fate is shared by the other movie theatre, which is not only indisputably part of Rome's architectural and cultural heritage, but also of the history of 20th-century architecture: the Airone, in fact, was designed and built in 1954 by one of the masters of the last century.

This is what its description reads: "I am here hidden between five buildings on the Appio Latino, designed by architects Calini and Montuori, who embrace me like a nest. My name is Airone and I was born in 1954 from the hands of Adalberto Libera... He decided to lower me seven meters underground, sheltered in this courtyard where only my back emerges, almost like a concrete sperm whale. I was once beautiful, and my ovoid body, that "whale's belly" as they called it, welcomed 800 enraptured gazes." That was how large was the splendid and surprising Airone theatre, with excellent visibility and perfect acoustics.

“How many lives have I seen pass by and descend my staircase, accompanied by the brushstrokes of the frescoes by the painter Giuseppe Capogrossi (a leading exponent of the Roman School)! I guided them from the luminous atrium to the darkness of the hall, passing beneath that painted sky now buried under years of neglect and layers of varnish… Once through my doors, it was like being welcomed inside a newly opened shell: the white bands of my canopy widened towards the back and tapered towards the screen, creating a perfect perspective illusion. The grazing light enhanced my sinuous forms, making my space seem almost infinite.”

After being transformed into a nightclub and undergoing several name changes, the Airone cinema has been shrouded in silence since 1997, and not even the late maestro Ennio Morricone managed to revive it as a music center. "They periodically announce my recovery, but I remain here, scarred by infiltrations, forgotten. The rubble falls, the security tape flutters. I am the Airone Cinema, a witness to an era when cinema was a social experience, not just entertainment."

This is the melancholy voice of a Roman cinema, but it could also be that of many other theatres in our cities, where cinemas, which in the 20th century, with their widespread presence, were landmarks throughout the region and represented the physical sites of mass cultural evolution, now languish abandoned or no longer exist. Places of shared memory and recollections, which offered us moments of lightheartedness, joy, or emotion, where we laughed, cried, and dreamed alongside so many other spectators, are now merely silent witnesses to a piece of our personal and collective history.

1 Simona Galateo, “Biennale Architettura: il dialogo sul diritto all’abitare nel Padiglione Austria tra Vienna e Roma”, in Artribune, 22/06/2025 – translated by MEDIA Salles
2 This section in quotation marks and the following ones are taken from the model descriptions of the Serpentone di Corviale, present in the Austrian Pavilion at the 19th Venice International Architecture Exhibition