BOLOGNA
Basilica di San Petronio
Video Projection Mapping, 2022
/ Overview
From 15 to 19 September 2022, the unfinished facade of the Basilica of San Petronio — unresolved for more than five centuries — became a luminous canvas in Piazza Maggiore for five consecutive evenings. The project The Square Lights Up: the hidden drawings of an unfinished facade, conceived and produced by Bologna Festival with the support of Alfasigma and the contribution of the Italian Ministry of Culture (Special Projects Fund 2022), entrusted the video mapping production to Luca Agnani Studio. On the opening evening, 15 September, the video mapping intertwined with the live symphonic concert by Orchestra Senzaspine conducted by Matteo Parmeggiani, with music by Respighi, Wagner and Rossini. Over the next four evenings, thousands of spectators attended the repeats in Piazza Maggiore, greeted by applause and cries of wonder from the Bologna audience.
/ Project Details
Name: The Square Lights Up – The hidden drawings of an unfinished facade
Client: Bologna Festival
Location: Piazza Maggiore, Bologna
Date: 15–19 September 2022
Technique: Architectural Projection Mapping
Artist: Luca Agnani Studio
/ Challenge
The Basilica of San Petronio was intended to be larger than St. Peter’s in Rome. Its facade has remained unfinished since 1390, when work was interrupted. Over the centuries, great architects imagined its completion: Andrea Palladio, Giulio Romano, Baldassarre Peruzzi, Jacopo Barozzi da Vignola, Francesco Terribilia and Girolamo Rainaldi. The original sketches of these projects, preserved for centuries in the archive of the Basilica Museum, became the starting point for Luca Agnani Studio’s work: researched, digitized and transformed into animated sequences, up to the final proposal by contemporary architect Mario Cucinella, who imagined a green facade with a vertical forest in the irregular brick spaces.
/ Visual Development
Historical reconstruction
The original sketches preserved in the Museum of the Basilica of San Petronio were digitized and adapted to the building’s real surface. Each historical project — from Gothic to Renaissance, Baroque to Neoclassical — was animated while maintaining the real architectural proportions of the facade, approximately 51 meters wide.
Architectural transformation
The facade changes visual language through Renaissance, Baroque, Neoclassical and modern hypotheses. Each transformation respects the building’s proportions and dialogues with its unfinished state.
Urban storytelling
Piazza Maggiore becomes a shared scenic space: light builds, dissolves and recomposes the architecture in front of the audience, creating a collective narrative about the city’s memory.
/ Solution
The mapping selected and animated some of the most significant historical facade projects, bringing archive research and contemporary digital language together. The narrative crosses eras and virtually reconstructs alternative versions of the basilica, transforming architecture into a living archive of possibilities.
/ Technique
Projection mapping
The architectural surface was digitally reconstructed and calibrated on the real facade to achieve perspective correspondence, volumetric precision and depth effects.
Multi-projector setup
The projection was created with a high-power multi-projector system designed to cover the entire monumental facade of San Petronio in Piazza Maggiore.
Music & synchronization
The sound component guided the rhythmic development of the sequences, with symphonic music on the opening night and audiovisual repeats during the following evenings of the event.
/ Contesto
The Basilica of San Petronio is the fifth-largest church in the world and Bologna’s most important monument. Construction began in 1390 with the intention of creating a cathedral larger than St. Peter’s in Rome: a project never completed, leaving the facade unfinished for more than six centuries. For the first time in thirty-seven years, the event brought a major cultural event back to Piazza Maggiore, promoted by Bologna Festival and covered by ANSA, Sky TG24, Il Resto del Carlino and Repubblica Bologna.
/ Rassegna stampa
ANSA
“Video mapping completes the facade of San Petronio in Bologna” — July 2022.
Sky TG24
“Video mapping completes the facade of San Petronio in Bologna” — July 2022.
Il Resto del Carlino
Official media partner of the event. “Thousands of spectators for the show in Piazza Maggiore” — September 2022.
Chiesa di Bologna
“Cries of wonder and applause from the audience when the facade lit up” — September 2022.
/ Context
The event “The Square Lights Up – The hidden drawings of an unfinished facade” took place from 15 to 19 September 2022 in Piazza Maggiore, within Bologna Estate and produced by Bologna Festival. The project enhanced the history of the Basilica of San Petronio through preserved drawings and unrealized design hypotheses, bringing architectural heritage into a contemporary public experience.