Birth Anniversary: Mario Tamagno — June 19, 1877

Mario Tamagno was born in Turin on 19 June 1877 and trained at the Accademia Albertina, the school that supplied a good part of the Italian contingent in Siam. Between 1868 and 1930 Italian architects, engineers and artists worked for the Siamese government, and Tamagno spent his career among them. The Neilson Hays Library in Bangkok, which opened on 26 June 1922, is his: a white neo-classical rotunda with an Italianate dome, commissioned by a widower in his wife’s name. He also worked on the Ananta Samakhom Throne Hall.