The national heritage catalogue dates it from 1652 to 1941 and attributes the last rebuilding to Giulio Brunetta. The name is still painted on the fly tower. Everything around it is a building site.
At a glance
A tall brick block behind the houses of the old centre, its fly tower rising above the roofs with the words CINEMA TEATRO CONCORDI painted straight onto the brickwork and now worn almost to a shadow. The lower parts are stripped and shored; hoardings run along the street, a crane stands over the site and a board with the scheme is fixed to the fence. The national catalogue records the building as a theatre with a history running from 1652 to 1941, and attributes the project to the architect Giulio Brunetta.
Key facts
- What it is: a theatre and cinema, closed and under works
- Where: via San Martino e Solferino 95, Padua, between via degli Obizzi and the old centre
- Recorded dating: 1652–1941 in the national catalogue of architectural heritage
- Attributed to: Giulio Brunetta (1906–1978) — recorded as an attribution, not a documented signature
- Classification: Rationalist architecture, in the catalogue’s own terms
- Ownership: private
- Catalogue record: ICCD 0500365030
History
The span of dates in the catalogue — 1652 to 1941 — is the whole story in six digits. There has been a theatre on this site since the middle of the seventeenth century, and what stands now is the result of successive rebuildings, the last of them in the years around 1941, when the interior was reworked in the rationalist manner and the building took the form that gives it its catalogue classification.
Giulio Brunetta, to whom the catalogue attributes the project, was a Paduan engineer and architect of the same generation as the men who built the piazza Insurrezione; he later designed the Casa della Gioventù Universitaria at Bressanone, inaugurated in 1953. The attribution here is recorded as an attribution. We repeat it as such.
The building is now closed and inside a construction site. When these photographs were taken the lower storeys had been stripped back, the roof was open in places and the site was fenced. What the works will leave of the theatre is not something we can state.
What you see
From the lane the building is almost all wall: a brick mass four or five storeys high, punctured by small square windows in irregular rows, with a taller blank block at one end — the fly tower over the stage, the tallest thing in this part of the city and the only part visible from a distance. The painted lettering on it, in a plain sans-serif, is the sort of sign that was made to be read from the street below and has outlived the street it addressed.
At ground level, stone facings and a stripped colonnade are visible behind the barriers, along with the pale scars where partitions have been taken out. The rest is scaffolding, netting and red-and-white hoarding.
Why record it now
Because this is the moment when buildings disappear from the record. A theatre in works is not photographed by anybody except the people doing the works, and afterwards the before-state exists only in whatever private pictures were taken from the street. Cultural Heritage Online publishes this card as it stands, with what the national catalogue says and what a passer-by could see in 2026, and will correct it when the outcome is known.
Practical information
- Closed and inside a building site. Nothing is visitable.
- The fly tower and the painted name can be seen from the lanes on the north side.
- Our map point marks the block; the recorded address is via San Martino e Solferino 95.
Getting there
In the historic centre of Padua, a few minutes on foot from piazza delle Erbe and from the Palazzo della Ragione.
Nearby
- Palazzo della Ragione and the market squares.
- The Scrovegni Chapel, 700 m north.
- Palazzo Santo Stefano, seat of the Province, on piazza Antenore.
Look around it
Google Street View opens on the nearest panorama to this point: Via degli Obizzi in Street View.
Sources
- Catalogo Generale dei Beni Culturali (ICCD), record 0500365030, Cinema Teatro Concordi, Padova: address via San Martino e Solferino 95, dating 1652–1941, project attributed to Giulio Brunetta, classification as Rationalist architecture, private ownership, oversight of the Soprintendenza for Venice, Belluno, Padova and Treviso.
- Photograph taken on site by Stefano Vigolo in 2026; the condition of the building and the works are described from it.
Find it on the map
See this place and what’s around it →Record researched and written by Stefano Vigolo for Cultural Heritage Online, 2026.
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