After five years of restoration work, carried out by David Chipperfield Architects Milan, the Procuratie Vecchie in Piazza S.Marco in Venice are reopening to the public for the first time in 500 years.
To celebrate the event, the rooms of the historic 16th-century building will be set up by the new work of sculptor Edoardo Tresoldi, who wanted to take up the iconography of the monumental column, changing its meaning. “Stripping a monument of its symbolism, what remains is a virtuous and melancholic lyrical song, the rhetorical language of the monumental column as a reflection on our time and on the rhetoric of values to which our society aspires; a society that reaffirms the need to redefine the concept of strength, to reread the role of fragility and that proposes listening and dialogue at the center of intercultural relations,” said the artist defining his new Monument.

The work was conceived together with the artist and architect Carlotta Franco and thanks to the support of GICO Studio. The project is ambitious, the column is about 15.50 meters high, made with the unmistakable Tresoldi’s wire mesh and the addition of construction wood, fragmented glass, iron rods and stones. The diameter of Monumento is 1,2 meters with a basement of 2×2 meters.
Despite its monumental dimensions, it is the lightness of the structure that is striking, as well as the balance of weights and sizes that is created between the work and the environments of the Procuratie Vecchie.

The Procuratie Vecchie will be open to the public Wednesday through Monday, from 10:00 am to 7:00 pm.