GIANNANTONIO SELVA

Architect (Venice 1751 - ibid. 1819). Student of T. Temanza, he stayed in Rome (1779-80, with A. Canova), in Paris, in London, training himself on the classical examples and on those of the great Venetian architects of the century. 16th and 18th century English Palladians; for interior decoration he also studied R. and J. Adam. From 1797 he taught at the Venice Academy.

His main work is the La Fenice theater (1790-92; the interior, altered after a fire in 1836, was destroyed by a fire in 1996 and rebuilt in 2003) in Venice, where he also designed the cemetery on the island of S. Michele and the Gardens (1810).

In addition to the renovation of numerous Venetian palaces, he built the theater of Trieste (1798-1801) and the reconstruction of the cathedral of Cologna Veneta (1806-17).