by Barbara Mussetto
Imaginary fish in the center of Rome
Aqua rerum optima, Marcia aquarum. Unaware, or indifferent to such delight, in 537 AD. the Goths destroyed that aqueduct. Almost 1,500 years passed before the new Universal Authority of Rome, a Pope, Pius IX, restored the work by inaugurating its new outlet in Termini. It was September 10, 1870.
The belated revenge of Romanism on barbarism was a direct consequence of the increase in the population of those years and the consequent increased needs for hygiene. On the other hand, the homage to Sora Nostra Acqua was intertwined with a long-term financial operation and the reconstruction of the aqueduct was carried out by granting the concession for 100 years (13 October 1858) to the Società Pia Antica Marcia. The Company easily survived the fall of the temporal power of the Church: it possessed the technology to bring water to the pressure of 4-7 atmospheres necessary to reach the highest floors of the buildings and therefore, even with the new Municipality, it continued its distribution in the eastern part of the city. In those same years, the characteristics of Acqua Marcia so praised by the ancients attracted the attention of Pietro Carganico, a fish farmer from Como, and led him to look for a suitable site for the construction of a fish plant and aquarium in Rome: “As much as I studied the waters of Rome, only Acqua Marcia due to its low temperature is eminently suitable for the birth of healthy and robust fish and mainly for the precious family of trout and salmon”.
Having discarded the first hypotheses of Fontana di Termini and Via Nazionale, the City Council decided on 12 July 1882 to grant Carganico a free public area in Piazza Manfredo Fanti for the construction of an aquarium and a practical fish farming school. The Esquiline building expansion area was therefore chosen, already identified as such by the Papal Administration, but built after 1870 with ardor and voracity, renewed by the great building program connected to the transfer of the capital of the new unitary State from Florence to Rome. The urbanization of the area was a typical product of those years. The buildings completely devoid of the stucco decorations in use at the time, the courtyards, the ocher plaster and the few balconies of the prevalent public housing, 4 or 5-storey rental houses, alternated with stately buildings designed by famous architects such as Piacentini, Koch, Carnivals. The only public buildings from the late nineteenth century are the church of S. Antonio da Padova and Ettore Bernich’s Aquarium.
The Aquarium in Rome was therefore built in the period from the unification of Italy to the eighties when, according to Quintino Sella’s guidelines, an attempt was made to give the city a new connotation by overcoming the ostracism of the “modern” in vogue under its previous sovereign and providing it with those institutions and scientific equipment functional to the task of capital of a modern and liberal state.
Having obtained the concession from the Municipality, Carganico was able to proceed with the practical realization of his idea, illustrated in the Program and Statute of the Roman Fish Farming and Aquarium Society which envisaged the creation of a multifunctional structure with a fish farming school, an aquarium and an associated productive ichthyogenic plant. to another fish farming facility operating in Lake Nemi. The factory had to produce fish suitable for low-cost feeding, “with streams for hatching the eggs, and with basins for breeding small fish arranged both for sale to those who want to populate their waters and to be thrown by us in due course to grow and swell in Lake Nemi… Our establishment will not only market indigenous and foreign eggs and small fish for those who want to populate their own waters, but will also sell large live fish intended for cooking. 
And for this reason the ponds in our garden will always be equipped with a few thousand kilograms of fish of refined quality, which we will import there, and the good connoisseur will not look down on us, because in their captivity we will know how to improve their meat, as is done with chickens in the coops”. Associated with the establishment is the practical school of fish farming, with annual courses and the Aquarium “Through those clear crystals, one hundred picturesque and natural scenes attract us to study the mysteries of marine, lake and river vegetation and fauna, whose life stirs in clear waters between various cliffs, gravelly bottoms, and verdant aquatic grasses”‘.
Carganico did not even neglect the recreational purpose for the use of a wider public: “This large room, with its stalls, boxes and loggias capable of holding around two thousand people, can be used for vocal-instrumental entertainment, for meetings, wine exhibitions, and above all for flower exhibitions, thanks to the adjoining garden…'” and the possibility of practicing sport fishing in the garden pond “These small lakes, always fed by fresh and pure running waters, will be open to fishing, which visitors will be able to practice , finding a welcome entertainment, while they will be able to send the caught fish to their kitchens, or to that of our café restaurant open in the garden.
In 1884 the construction of the Aquarium began based on a design by Ettore Bernich (Rome 1845? – Naples 1914?) Roman architect, already author of the first Aquarium project on Via Nazionale. The masonry works ended in mid-1885 but the inauguration was postponed several times due to financial difficulties which became increasingly pressing to the point that Carganico was forced to hand over the concession and the properties to the Società Anonima dell’Acquario Romano probably formed by them previous financiers.
The inauguration – which took place on 29 May 1887 – had wide resonance in the Roman newspapers La Capitale, Il Messaggero, Capitan Fracassa, Il Fanfulla, Il Cracas, Osservatore Romano and L’Illustrazione italiana which on the occasion published the few remaining images of the building , entrance and garden by the designer Dante Paolocci and a photo of the internal room. To give adequate resonance to the opening of the Aquarium, a chromolithographic poster designed by Giuseppe Marchetti (Rome 1844 – there 1908) was also printed which depicts Art leading the fish to Rome while Tritons and Sirens try to prevent it. The comments in the press were all enthusiastic and positive, for the beauty of the building, its decorative apparatus and for the originality of an initiative that aimed to reconcile science, production and entertainment.
The use of the Aquarium as a concert hall began almost immediately, announced by L’Osservatore Romano of 3 July 1887 in the city news: “Tomorrow evening at the Roman Aquarium, from 6 to 9 pm, the Roman musical concert will be played by maestro Ruiti” while, for the 1888 carnival, on 9 February the newspaper warns readers “Roman Aquarium. This evening the great balls will also be inaugurated here, which cannot be very brilliant, due to the vastness and richness of the premises, illuminated in electric light”.
The brief scientific and educational activity of the Aquarium lasted only until 1899 directed by Decio Vinciguerra, a Genoese ichthyologist. The fish farming activity was also soon abandoned while the use of the building for various types of events, balls, agricultural exhibitions and skating events increased. The Municipality then put the Society of the Roman Aquarium in default, requesting the return of the area granted “for the exclusive use of establishment and practical teaching of fish farming and aquarium with the related industries” and regained possession of it at the end of 1891.
The estimate carried out on behalf of the Municipality on 24/4/1894 is certainly the most complete description of the buildings and the garden, usable, due to the breadth and exhaustiveness of the report, also for the study of the architectural elements.
There were therefore various attempts to use the structure: from the project of transformation into public toilets in 1895, to the agreement signed on 20 December 1900 between the Municipality, the Ministry of Agriculture and Commerce to temporarily use the premises for the count of the fourth census of the population and subsequently reuse it as a fish farming establishment and fishing museum in collaboration with the Zoology Museum of the University of Rome. The concession had a duration of nine years, but was not used.
From 1908 the Aquarium was used for theatrical and cinematographic shows, until 1930 when all trace of Carganico’s original idea of a multifunctional structure also open to the public was lost and the building was first used for the services of the Governorate and subsequently as a warehouse for the scenarios of the Opera theater. Vacated at the end of 1984 for the start of restoration work by the Municipality, it was used for years as a venue for conventions and conferences. It is currently the headquarters of the Casa dell’Architettura.
The few contemporary images of the Roman Aquarium are the work of Dante Paolocci (Civitavecchia 1849 – Rome 1926), correspondent-illustrator from Rome for L’Illustrazione italiana for around thirty years. Paolocci sent drawings, photoengravings and photographic services on the events and characters of Roma Capitale to Milan, the headquarters of the publisher Fratelli Treves, about one or two plates a week.
For the inauguration of the Aquarium he designed the façade and the main entrance which, together with the depiction on the left wall of the building’s atrium, constitute the only remaining visual documentation of the original situation.
A small Ionic portico (now demolished) on Via Carlo Cattaneo marked the main entrance, aligned with the façade of the building, reachable by crossing two rustic bridges that crossed the pond. 
Side paths entered the garden, skirting the pond, among cliffs, flowerbeds and the archaeological remains of the Agger servianus, ancient Roman walls from the Republican era. A low masonry fence (later demolished), with cast iron rods fixed, surrounded the garden, interrupted by two other side entrances on via Principe Amedeo and Principe Umberto. Inside, in an eccentric position, is the Aquarium, a public building with a monumental appearance and clear archaeological references to the Pantheon and the Colosseum. A profound expert of classical antiquity, particularly Roman, Bernich uses the typology of the amphitheater for the cylindrical body and that of the triumphal arch and nymphaeum for the forepart. The cylindrical body is punctuated by semi-columns with Doric capitals in the lower area with rustic ashlar and by Corinthian pilasters in the upper area with smooth ashlar. The entire decoration of the forepart is inspired by marine subjects: on the sides of the central niche with shell cap there are two aedicules decorated with allegorical statues of Navigation and Fishing, with triangular pediments surmounted by roundels in relief between two caryatids.
The decorative prominence of the frieze of the crowning frame with dolphins, tridents, shells and palmettes is strong, identical to that of the baths of Agrippa at the Pantheon. Above the frame rises the final group in mortar, now mutilated, depicting Venus’ chariot pulled by a triton and a nereid.
The text of Barbara Mussetto’s editorial is extracted from the catalog of the Mostra Roma città dell’acqua [P .365-369] allestita in Casanatense nel 1994.
The images in the Gallery are taken from: Buchoz, Pierre Joseph Première [- second] centurie de planches enluminées et non enluminées, representant au naturel ce qui se find de plus interesting et de plus curieux parmi les animaux, les vegetaux, et les mineraux, to serve as intelligence for the general history of the three kingdoms of nature. Paris : Amsterdam ; Lacombe : Rey, 1775-1781