Grilles, gates, balconies, lamps, andirons: wrought iron is one of the most common decorative crafts on Italian facades, and one of the least documented. Art historian Ortensio Mendicino surveys six centuries of the craft.
Palazzo Alemanni in Catanzaro, built for the marquesses of Pianopoli between the late eighteenth and the mid nineteenth century and now a state heritage office: a noble house read through the wrought-iron railings of its balconies, whose pattern comes from a Naples foundry.
Villa Margherita is the principal public garden of Catanzaro, the regional capital of Calabria, laid out in the late nineteenth century on the city’s…
