Parco della Musica

Parco della Musica is a large public music complex in Rome, Italy, with three concert halls and an outdoor theater in a park setting, hence the name. It was designed by Italian architect Renzo Piano.[1] Jürgen Reinhold of Müller-BBM was in charge of acoustics for the halls; Franco Zagari was landscape architect for the outdoor spaces. Parco della Musica lies where the 1960 Summer Olympic Games were held, somewhat north of Rome's ancient center, and is home to most of the facilities of the Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia.

Auditorium Parco della Musica

View of terrace outside the venue (c.2016)
Address	Via Pietro de Coubertin, 30 00196 Rome RM Italy
Location	Parioli
Owner	Comune di Roma
Capacity	2,744 (Sala Santa Cecilia) 2,707 (Cavea) 1,133 (Sala Sinopoli) 661 (Sala Petrassi) 304 (Teatro Studio Borgna)
Construction
Broke ground	15 January 1995 (1995-01-15)
Opened	21 April 2002 (2002-04-21)
Architect	RPBW Architects
Structural engineer	Studio Vitone & Associati
Services engineer	Manens Intertecnica
General contractor	Techint
Website
Venue Website
Building details
General information
Inaugurated	21 December 2002 (2002-12-21)
Design and construction
Developer	Drees & Sommer
Other designers	Franco Zagari Tecnocamere Müller-BBM
Quantity surveyor	Davis Langdon

The halls are: Sala Santa Cecilia, with about 2800 seats; Sala Sinopoli, in memory of conductor Giuseppe Sinopoli, seating about 1200 people; and Sala Petrassi, in memory of Goffredo Petrassi, with 700 seats. Structurally separated for sound-proofing, they are nonetheless joined at the base by a continuous lobby. Their outer architectural form has led to nicknames such as “the blobs,” “the beetles,” “the turtles” and “the computer mice”.[1]) The outdoor theater, called the Cavea, recalls ancient Greek or Roman performance spaces[1] and is fan-shaped around a central piazza.

The ruins of a Roman villa inside the park

During construction, excavations uncovered the foundations of a villa and an oil-press dating from the 6th century BC. Renzo Piano then adjusted his design scheme to accommodate the archaeological remains and included a small museum to house artifacts discovered, delaying the project's completion by a year.[1] Parco della Musica was inaugurated on 21 December 2002. Within a few years it became Europe's most-visited music facility.[2] In 2014, it had over two million visitors, making it the second-most-visited cultural music venue in the world, after Lincoln Center in New York.