Liturgical renovation of modern churches in Rome (Italy)

Abstract

At the beginning of the first half of the twentieth century the bond between ars-venustas and cultus-pietas has produced many churches of Roman Catholic cult.It’s between the 20s and 60s of the twentieth century that the experiments of the Liturgical Movement in Germany lead to the evolution of the liturgical space, which, even today, we see engraving in modern churches in Rome (Italy).The Council of Trent (1545-1563) constitutes the precedent historical moment, in which the Church recognised the need for major liturgical renovation of its churches. In comparison with this, the Second Vatican Council (1959-65) introduced some radical changes within the church architectural spaces.The observations come from the direct reading of the present architectural space and the interventions already realised in modern churches in Rome. The most significant churches from an historical-artistic point of view were selected (1924-1965). Significantly, although every single architecture is unique for dimensions, architectural language and used materials, a comparison, in order to gather the discovered characteristics and to compare the restrictions regarding the different operations, would extremely effective, as demonstrated below.Since the matter is considerably vast, in this work, only some brief notes regarding the liturgical renovation of the Presbytery area will be outlined.