The Provianda di Santa Marta: industrial archaeology and award-winning restoration
There are buildings that change function over the centuries without losing their identity. The Provianda di Santa Marta, in the heart of Verona's historic centre, is one of these. Built between 1863 and 1865 by the Austrian military authority to produce bread and hardtack for the troops, this imposing industrial complex has gone through wars, abandonment and revivals, until it became today the seat of the economics departments of the University of Verona. A long and troubled journey, which has left visible traces on every façade.
The origins of the place
Even before the Austrians built the factory here, the site had a long and layered history. There stood here a monastic complex dating back to 1211, founded by the Order of Saint Augustine and expanded over the centuries, until a Napoleonic decree at the start of the nineteenth century ordered its suppression. After a brief period of use as a stallion shelter — a hardly glorious page of its history — and a subsequent passage to the Capuchin Fathers, who oversaw its restoration, in 1850 the entire property was acquired by the Austrian military authority. Thirteen years later, the church and most of the convent were demolished to make way for the new factory.
The project was drawn up by three officers of the Austrian Engineer Corps stationed in Verona, whose names can still be read in an inscription on a pillar in red Verona marble in the entrance hall of the bakery: Andreas Tunkler, Ferdinand Artmann and Anton Naredi Rainer. They were no ordinary technicians. Tunkler was known throughout Europe for his studies on fortifications and his teaching at the Engineering Academy; Artmann was a specialist in food production and conservation, and personally oversaw the installation of the machinery; Naredi Rainer had already shown his talent in the project for the expansion of Porta Vescovo. This dedication to the designers, carved in stone, represents a unique case in Habsburg military architecture and testifies to the exceptional recognition given to their work.
How the complex is structured
The complex is organised in three main buildings arranged within a rectangular enclosure. The absolute protagonist is the bakery, a five-storey building — one of which underground — with a footprint of 118 by 49 metres, divided into three distinct sections around three internal courtyards. On the ground floor were the twelve intermittent ovens capable of producing about 52,000 bread rations a day, plus 20 quintals of hardtack. A steam engine drove the machinery used for kneading, sifting and lifting. The basement, equipped with a natural ventilation system, was instead reserved for storing perishable food. A logistics designed to the last detail, where productive efficiency and rationality of spaces blended in an exemplary way.
North of the bakery are the two grain silos, also built using innovative technology for the time: airtight cells above ground with sheet-metal cladding, capable of holding grain reserves sufficient to supply an army of one hundred thousand men for a year and a half. Their position was no accident: they stood near a railway branch from the nearby Porta Vescovo station, to make supply easier.
Architecturally, the entire complex stands out for a neo-medieval style of northern European derivation — the so-called Rundbogenstil — with rhythmic buttresses, arched openings and stepped crowning that give the whole a stern yet elegant character, rather unusual in the Veronese building landscape. On the southern façade of the bakery, a chiselled coat of arms can still be seen, probably the emblem of the Habsburg empire; on the northern one stands out the dial of an old tower clock.
The restoration by Massimo Carmassi
After years of abandonment, between 2007 and 2015 the complex underwent a major restoration by architect Massimo Carmassi, who managed to reinterpret the industrial spaces without betraying their memory. The internal courtyards of the bakery, for example, have been covered with glazed structures that bring in light without altering the perception of the original spaces. A work recognised with the Italian Architecture Gold Medal in 2015, awarded precisely because the project shows how past and present are not opposites, but complementary.