The Italian Legacy in the Dominican Republic

he National Palace, unveiled in 1947, is the seat of government in the Dominican Republic, and it

is unquestionably one of the country’s cultural icons. Its façade appears on

peso

notes, in official

government documents, in the press, in photos and accounts of recent national history, and in

anything that tells our individual stories. Although it was built and inaugurated in the 1940s, the

desire to bring this monumental work to fruition had been present in local circles of power since at least the

1920s. This last assertion can be made based on statements published in the 1924 Report of the Secretary

of State for Development and Communications. Like other neoclassical public buildings around the world,

the iconic entrance of the palace is a portico that evokes a Greek temple with its pediment or frontispiece

(see image 1), crowned by a unique cylinder-base structure that dominated the Santo Domingo skyline

of the time (see image 2). This characteristic round object that many of us call a dome has reached the

twenty-first century full of meaning. Family tradition informs us that, for the architect, the Italian engineer

Guido D’Alessandro Lombardi, this was one of the most difficult parts of the structure to build. His wid-

ow, Carmen Tavárez, lamented that the proper execution of the dome was ultimately injurious to Guido’s

health, in that he had to remain standing and immobile for many hours a day looking up, taking measure-

ments, and providing instructions to the building workers (see image 3). A decorated Italian hero of World

War I, D’Alessandro Lombardi certainly understood self-sacrifice; however, the back and neck pain that he

developed while overseeing the construction reminded him that he was no longer an energetic youngster.

Nonetheless, he did whatever was necessary to ensure that the work was perfectly executed. The dome was

a fundamental part of this great project, one inspired in the work of other Italians.

The Palace’s dome is more specifically the combination of three elements—a lower cylindrical segment

or drum surrounded by 16 columns, a hemispherical dome or cupola with decorative ribs, and a small upper

tower called a lantern. Despite the fact that the columns of the dome have a rather Tuscan appearance and

are not paired, their tangential proximity to the inner core or

cella

and their fragmented entablature offer a

parallel with Michelangelo’s dome in St. Peter’s Basilica, which was built from the sixteenth to seventeenth

centuries and which is also ribbed (see images 4 and 5). The interior of the Palace dome includes, at its base,

a Doric frieze forming a ring in which triglyphs and metopes alternate (see images 6).

However, this resource of European architectural vocabulary, very fashionable in the High Renais-

sance and neoclassical periods, had its origins in a discreet intervention prior to St. Peter’s Basilica, a com-

mission that occurred in the beginning of the fifteenth century. King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella of

Castile commissioned Donato Bramante to design a small chapel in the courtyard of a convent in Rome

called San Pietro in Montorio, in the place where the apostle Peter is believed to have been martyred. Giv-

•

Portico with a Classical

Greek-style pediment

at the entrance to

the National Palace

of the Dominican

Republic. Photo facing

northwest.

CHAPTER 26

The Dome of the Dominican

National Palace and

Guido D’Alessandro Lombardi

By Jesús D’Alessandro, PhD

Director of the UNIBE School of Architecture.

Director of the Urban Planning Department of the National District of Santo Domingo