GIOVANNI BERLAM

He was born in Trieste on July 3, 1823; he first studied painting in Venice, then moved to the Vienna Polytechnic, where he graduated in civil engineering; returned to Venice, he completed his architecture studies at the Academy.

Later settled in his hometown, the B. entered the direction of public buildings, where he had the opportunity to exercise a role in a certain sense moralizing the Triestine building costume, at the same time realizing a vast series of works, among which we remember the Villa Stem now completely renovated, the Gopcevich house (later Diem) on the Grand Canal, completed in about 1851, the Panfili house in Piazza della Libertà. the Ruzzier house, in via Cesare Battisti, the Mauser house. From 1876 onwards he worked with his son Ruggero, together with whom, from 1876 to 1878, he designed the reconstruction of the ancient Mauroner Theater (which was later named "La Fenice"), built in wood by the architect G. Ferrari in 1827 and burned in May 1876.

He died in Trieste in 1892.

The B. was the first of a family of architects who exercised a great influence in the Trieste area from the middle of the last century to the beginning of the present, more, moreover, for an accentuated professional and civil honesty than for the intrinsic value of the works. He was certainly the most modest personality of the family, but finds its worthy place in the architectural and cultural environment of Trieste which, after a rich and interesting flowering of neoclassical works, at the beginning of the century. XIX, it had gradually decayed under the blows of the most disqualified building of speculation. B.'s merit lies precisely in the fight against this degeneration, even if his academic style, now in a pure Lombard manner, now spoiled by eclecticism, can no longer collect an independent critical interest today.