Un cantiere del tardo Cinquecento veneto: la "Rotonda" di Rovigo I comminttenti, l'architetto e i documenti di fabbrica

The aim of the research was to study the Beata Vergine del Soccorso church, starting from its archive and from the anlysis of the accounting documents. In lack of the project's drawings, the goal was parsued throughout the realization of some digital reconstructions and the planning of a database, in which it was used the technique of markup. The ammount of data were useful to reconstruct the story of the two building sites (the one of the church anche the one of the bell tower), the original form of the church and to improve knoledge about the Renaissance buiding sites of the Veneto. Based on a project of Francesco Zamberlan, the octagonal church surrounded by a peristyle was built from 1594 to 1603, year in which its wood dome was completed; this was maybe the first single-shelled dome of the Serenissima Republic. However, in 1606, the cupola was demolished and replaced with a pitched roof. During time the church was modified several times, most of all in the twenties of the XVII century, when started the decoration of the inner space with statues and paintings, and at the beginning of the XVIII century, when the upper part of the central octagon was totally reshaped. In 1655 Baldassare Longhena designed the tower bell, which construction ended only in the eighties of the XIX century. To complete the study of the church was analized the context, the Polesine, in particular the city of Rovigo, that lived a phase of architectural renovation at the end of the XVI century. Investigate the patronage of the Rotonda underlined the collective dimension of this work: built as a sanctuary, from the 1612 the building became ufficially a civic temple. For this change and for the inside decorations the Rotonda is a real unicum in the panorama in the Veneto of the Renaissance period. The study about the church was supported by a detailed analysis of the architect of the church Francesco Zamberlan and of the reasons why he was chosed to plan the Rotonda. Often misunderstood by the critics, who believed he was a man of secondary importance, Zamberlan appears as an eclectic and complex figure, an architect capable of developing a personal language, dry and simple, suitable for containing building costs. Therefore not just a collaborator of Andrea Palladio, but an architect able to meet the needs of ambitious patrons, but withlimited economic resources. Models choosen for the Rotonda, like the Mausoleum of Diocletian in Split, prove that; they were wellknown in the territories dominated by Venice and functional for the creation of the city image under the sign of the Serenissima.