Coppedè Fairy area

 Quartiere Coppedè, 300 meters from the B&B between Nomentana and Salaria in the Trieste district, is the amazement of an unexpected area near Piazza Buenos Aires.

A considerable arch connects two towering buildings, an iron chandelier, giant bees, lions' heads, floral elements, strange figures above the windows and below the balconies, faded frescoes, and Latin inscriptions add to the abundant decoration.

Rome is full of extraordinary monuments, but this other wonderfully strange architecture of a hidden and extravagant world in the most minor neighbourhood of Rome.

The Coppedè district was created for a housing need between the Parioli and the nascent Trieste / Salario district.

Built between 1921 and 1900 in a vast area of 31,000 meters to be allocated to the upper middle class, it was intended as a hymn to classical Rome, but the architect,

in a creative mix of Art Nouveau, Greek, Decò, Gothic, Baroque, he went beyond the theme of ancient and imperial Rome and created a fairytale town steeped in symbolism: the Palazzo del Ragno, the Palazzi degli Ambasciatori, the Villini delle Fate, around the Fountain of the Frogs on Piazza Mincio.

In the Art Nouveau palaces of the Coppedè District, with abundant floral, mythological and medieval details, Coppedè's fantasies come to life in the Florentine towers and Venetian palaces decorated with mosaics and external frescoes in the Roman Baroque palaces with genuine, and imitations, of the papal coat of arms, a sundial and even a building dedicated to a musical decorative scheme whose wrought iron exterior and carvings mimic musical notation.

The unique medley of art where nature is the main inspiration; bold and eccentric curved lines seek freedom from tradition, coexisting with sensual modern iron.

Coppedè is Rome's answer to the Gaudì structures in Barcelona.

Coppedè worked in the neighbourhood from the late 10s until he died in 1927

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Gino Coppedè, son of Mariano Carver in the art of wood, was born in Florence on 26 September 1866, where he graduated with a diploma in industrial decorative arts. He worked in his father's wood carving studio between 1885 and 1890. It was in the "Artistic House", the paternal workshop, that Gino's sculpture was formed, which was later called the "Coppedè Style". In 1889, he married Beatrice, daughter of the sculptor Pasquale Romanelli, with whom he had three daughters.

In 1891, he enrolled in the Academy of Fine Arts in Florence, where he became a professor of architectural design, in which he had already achieved his first, most important success: the Mackenzie Castle in Genoa was declared a national monument in 1956.

"Academic of Merit" at the 'Linguistic Academy of Fine Arts" of Genoa, "Academic of the Academies of Perugia and Urbino", and Engineer at the School of Applications for Engineers of Rome,

In 1917, he obtained the decree of free teaching in General Architecture at the Royal University of Pisa.

The "Coppedè style" presupposes the exaggeration, the paradox of current taste, with an often original reinterpretation of those now Gothic, now fifteenth-century, now sixteenth-century and Mannerist characters which were effectively a not negligible part of the Italian culture and taste of the time. On the other hand, the most attentive critics trace the sui generis genius of what has been defined as one of the most extraordinary figures who emerged in Italy in this period (Meeks, 1966) to the commitment to this fantastic assemblage.