The renovation

The recovering work of the historical Magnolfi structure understood the aim to functionally renovate an historical building, keeping the original historical and architectural significance, next to the need of adjusting it according to new cultural requirements.

In particular it was a case of renovating the theatre providing it with all the services and rethinking the volume of building in order to create a didactic area and an area reserved for guests.

The renovation of building was carried out in three years, quickly delivering to the town a complex of great importance, both from the architectural and the cultural and educational point of view.

The restoration of vault and stage decorations in the theatre

The historical past of eighteen-century convent complex and of its life in the course of time is left to particulars characterizing the environment, from the marble bust of the orphanage founder to the commemorative stones, up to architectural friezes like a staircase bannister or polychrome painting traces in colours green, dark brown and pink like the precious decorative patterns visible in the theatre hall.

The theatre, built in 1817, brings some pictorial fragments in the centre of the big dome-roof vault. The central pictorial frieze representing two little cherubs holding the orphanage emblem in the air, was saved and restored.

Following the wake of studies and restoring action, this painting was credited to Pietro Pezzati, the Florentine painter who frescoed the Council Hall in the Municipal Building.

The restoration of theatre paintings also became the keystone of the general project idea, totally played on the salvage of aesthetic values dictated or inspired by the rich tradition of Prato decorative arts, typical of the period in-between the end of eighteenth-century and the beginning of twentieth-century.

The committment to carry out the pictorial tests and to recover the structure of the vault and all decorative setups of the scenic front, as well as paintings, was assigned to “Laboratorio per Affresco di Vainella” (Vainella Fresco Workshop), with two steps of restoration, the preparatory one and the executive one.It took 3 years, from 2000 to 2003, to complete renovating work of the spaces.