The Consiglio d’Ornato
54mn · 4 steps
From the sardine restoration in 1815, it was planned the development of the city on the right bank of the Paillon. A regulatory plan, designed by the architect of Ville Jean-Antoine Scoffier and the geometer Louis Trabaud, envisages the urban extension to the north and to the west. Elaborated in 1829, it was approved by King Charles-Albert in 1832, as architecture and urban planning were one of his skills. This plan is accompanied, like Turin and its Consiglio degli Edili, by a development and ornamental council that takes the name Consiglio d’Ornato.
The Consiglio d’Ornato will give a whole unit and a common aesthetic to the transformed buildings or to build, by fixing a general height, a width of the travees, an exterior decor and this up to the fronts of the shops.
Text: Christophe Prédal
Iconography : City of Nice
Steps
building Garacci-Bensa
5mn
Towards1855, the painter Charles Garacci erect a two-storey building and it is probably in 1897, during the work of soreness, what is achieved by hissgraffite decoration – a decorative technique dating back to Italian Renaissance, where motifs are engraved in the fresh coating.
This process, both artistic and technical, consists of superimposed two layers of coating: a first, background, covered with a second more contrasting. Before the latter dries, the craftsman scratches the surface to make the lower layer appear, thus creating relief patterns of great depth. The speed of execution, dictated by drying time, in fact a delicate and expensive work, usually reserved for friezes.
Yet, south façade of this building, Registered for Historical Monuments since 1995, distinguished by a monumental sgraffite, exceptional in Nice by sound and its iconographic richness. Today, only the main façade keeps this masterpiece, where to mix mythological characters, fantastic animals and winged puttiin a scholarly and dreamlike composition.
A rare testimony of the decorative art of Niçois, combining Italian heritage and technical virtuosity.