Sulle tracce dell’architettura italiana a Cuba. Francesco Vanvitelli Ingegnere Capo de la Habana,

The paper comments on the work of architect and military engineer of Francesco Vanvitelli in La Habana in the last decades of the eighteenth century. Son of the famous architect Luigi Van¬vitelli, Francesco was born Rome in 1745. He undertook at a young age his military career in the Bourbon army entering the body of engineers. In 1763 he moved to Madrid upon the orders of the king Carlo III of Bourbon. In 1784 Francesco moved from Spain to Mexico and in 1785 from Ciudad de México to the island of Cuba where he stayed until 1796, when he returned in Spain. As chief engineer of the city of La Habana, he built the Casa Consular, the Real Casa de Beneficencia and the defensive battery of Santa Clara, on the rocky massif of Punta Brava. His most significant architectural work was the Real Casa de Beneficencia built in1794 outside the city walls of La Habana. Unfortunately the building was demolished in 1950 but the autographed projects of Francesco Vanvitelli and some pictorial representations they are preserved. Like the “Albergo dei Poveri” in Naples and the one in Palermo, it was realized to welcome the poor youth of the city and give them a professional education. The institute was located outside the ur¬ban expansion of the city into a peripheral space of easy natural access called Extramuros area. The building, placed in a rectangu¬lar lot, was conceived by Vanvitelli according to the compositional principle of symmetry on the central axis. It was composed of a central body in which the chapel was positioned and two lateral wings, intended respectively for male and female students. It pre¬sented a rigorous formal language, prone to the rational simplicity of neoclassical architecture and lacking the baroque decorations spread in other contemporary buildings of the city.