POLETTI, LUIGI. – Architect, born in Modena on 28 October 1792, died in Milan on 2 August 1869. As a young man he studied in Bologna at the Accademia Clementina; then, from 1818, he settled in Rome with Raffaello Stern, during the years in which the latter was engaged in work on the Braccio nuovo of the Vatican Museums.
Having gained the esteem of the competent offices of the Apostolic Camera, in 1833 P. was commissioned to continue the reconstruction of the basilica of S. Paolo, already begun by Pasquale Belli. This, which remained his greatest work and which he continued until his death, he carried out while making some modifications to the original designs and erecting beside the apse a strange lighthouse-shaped bell tower. In 1833 P. was also working on the restoration of the Lateran Palace, and subsequently designed and built the two classically styled façades at the ends of the Borghi, toward Castel S. Angelo, which were demolished during the modern redevelopment of the area. Appointed an academician of S. Luca and of the Virtuosi al Pantheon, and regarded as the purism (v.), P. was commissioned to direct various works in the basilica of S. Maria degli Angeli at Assisi, and in Rome he erected (1854–58) the column dedicated to the Immaculate Conception that stands in Piazza di Spagna. Meanwhile, outside Rome, he built the theatres of Fano (1845–63), Terni (1849), and Rimini (1857). The latter building, especially in its interior, unfortunately very severely damaged in the Second World War, is unquestionably solemn and grandiose. Other buildings by him are the Collegio Scozzese in Via Quattro Fontane in Rome, the church of S. Filippo at Nocera Umbra, and the rebuilt basilica of S. Venanzio at Camerino. In this last building he used forms imitated from Burgundian Gothic.
A typical exponent of architectural purism in his use of Vignolesque syntactical forms to express new concepts, P., as he grew older, inclined toward a certain eclecticism of Romantic character, as demonstrated by S. Filippo at Nocera Umbra, in neo-Gothic forms, and by the same Collegio Canadese, bearing a fifteenth-century imprint.