page_title: Florestano Di Fausto
section_title: Rhodes and the Dodecanese
hierarchical_section_title: Florestano Di Fausto / Rhodes and the Dodecanese
caption_attribution_description: English: Offices of the Prefecture of the Dodecanese, former Palazzo del Governatore, in Rhodes, Greece Français&#160;: Bureaux de la préfecture du Dodécanèse (anciennement Palazzo del Governatore) à Rhodes, Grèce
context_page_description: Florestano Di Fausto was an Italian architect, engineer and politician who is best known for his building designs in the Italian overseas territories around the Mediterranean. He is considered the most important colonial architect of the Fascist age in Italy and has been described as the "architect of the Mediterranean". Uncontested protagonist of the architectural scene first in the Italian Islands of the Aegean and then in Italian Libya, he was gifted with a remarkable preparation combined with consummate skills, which allowed him to master and to use indifferently and in any geographical context the most diverse architectural styles, swinging between eclecticism and rationalism. His legacy, long neglected, has been highlighted since the 1990s.
context_section_description: In 1923, Di Fausto started to work for the governor of the Italian Islands of the Aegean, Mario Lago. This was a liberal and far-sighted diplomat, the first civilian governor of the islands after their occupation in 1912 during the Italo-Turkish War, who favored the peaceful coexistence among the different ethnic groups of the islands: Greeks, Turks, Ladinos and, since 1912, Italians. His first work in Rhodes was the city plan, finished on 29 January 1926: he chose to retain almost totally the medieval walled city, isolating the ancient walls and introducing respect zones, and reused paths and alignments of the ancient plan by Hippodamus of Miletus for the new quarters. The new city was erected outside the walls, south of the west bank of the Mandraki harbour, and was conceived as a garden city, an urban model which was highly fashionable in Italy in those years. The main road of the new town, south of the Mandraki, was christened Foro Italico, and there Di Fausto designed the main buildings, preferring an eclectic style mixing Byzantine, Ottoman, Roman Renaissance, Venetian, Knight Chivalric and local elements. This style was well suited for the multi-ethnic population of the island. The most important works among the many which he designed in Rhodes city are: the Palazzo del Governo (today the prefecture building) built in 1926, in Venetian Gothic style, with a white and pink stone façade, resembling the Doge's Palace in Venice; the neo-Renaissance post office building of 1927; the Catholic cathedral of Saint John of the Knights (now Evangelismos Greek orthodox church), rebuilt among great quarrels in 1924–25, whose plans were reconstructed using engravings of the original church, located within the walled city and destroyed in 1856; the Grande Albergo delle Rose, now Casino Rhodos, built with Michele Platania, but "cleansed" of all its deco embellishments in the late 1930s by Governor Cesare Maria de Vecchi; above all, the Mercato nuovo (Nea Agora, "New Market"), the center of the new city, an irregular polygonal structure enclosing the fishmongers pavilion, which possesses an unquestionable Oriental style. Besides Rhodes, Di Fausto was active also in Kos, where his most important works are the Palazzo del Governo (1927–29) and the Catholic church of the Agnus Dei (1927), built with Rodolfo Petracco, with central plan and a bell tower tapered on the façade, considered his best work in the Dodecanese; in Kastellorizo, where he erected the Delegate's Building; in Kalymnos and Leros. Since 1926 ever increasing differences of opinion with the governor pushed him to gradually abandon his commitments in the Aegean. The quarrel ended in 1927 with a legal dispute, where Di Fausto showed that during his service in the Dodecanese he had designed no less than fifty buildings—houses, public buildings, churches, barracks, markets, schools—thirty two of them already built or in construction in 1927. To keep this high pace of work, the architect worked also during his frequent boat trips between Italy and Rhodes.
caption: Palazzo del Governo (today the offices of the Prefecture of the Dodecanese) in Rhodes, built in 1926.
exif: {"Image ImageWidth": "3456", "Image ImageLength": "2592", "Image BitsPerSample": "[8, 8, 8]", "Image PhotometricInterpretation": "2", "Image Make": "SONY", "Image Model": "DSC-HX1", "Image Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Image SamplesPerPixel": "3", "Image XResolution": "72", "Image YResolution": "72", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image Software": "Adobe Photoshop Elements 11.0 Windows", "Image DateTime": "2013:02:06 14:24:04", "Image YCbCrPositioning": "Co-sited", "Image PrintIM": "[80, 114, 105, 110, 116, 73, 77, 0, 48, 51, 48, 48, 0, 0, 2, 0, 2, 0, 1, 0, 0, 0, 1, 1, 1, 0, 0, 0]", "Image ExifOffset": "328", "Thumbnail Compression": "JPEG (old-style)", "Thumbnail XResolution": "72", "Thumbnail YResolution": "72", "Thumbnail ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormat": "938", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormatLength": "8454", "EXIF ExposureTime": "1/640", "EXIF FNumber": "4", "EXIF ExposureProgram": "Program Normal", "EXIF ISOSpeedRatings": "125", "EXIF ExifVersion": "0221", "EXIF DateTimeOriginal": "2011:10:22 08:00:04", "EXIF DateTimeDigitized": "2011:10:22 08:00:04", "EXIF ComponentsConfiguration": "YCbCr", "EXIF CompressedBitsPerPixel": "4", "EXIF ShutterSpeedValue": "1165241/125000", "EXIF ApertureValue": "4", "EXIF ExposureBiasValue": "0", "EXIF MaxApertureValue": "3", "EXIF MeteringMode": "CenterWeightedAverage", "EXIF LightSource": "Unknown", "EXIF Flash": "Flash did not fire, compulsory flash mode", "EXIF FocalLength": "83/10", "EXIF FlashPixVersion": "0100", "EXIF ColorSpace": "sRGB", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "3456", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "2434", "Interoperability InteroperabilityIndex": "R98", "Interoperability InteroperabilityVersion": "[48, 49, 48, 48]", "EXIF InteroperabilityOffset": "812", "EXIF FileSource": "Digital Camera", "EXIF SceneType": "Directly Photographed", "EXIF CustomRendered": "Normal", "EXIF ExposureMode": "Auto Exposure", "EXIF WhiteBalance": "Auto", "EXIF SceneCaptureType": "Standard", "EXIF Contrast": "Normal", "EXIF Saturation": "Normal", "EXIF Sharpness": "Normal"}