Rome Stories: A new concert hall opens

A gathering of gigantic dung-beetles has appeared on the banks of the Tiber: the architect Renzo Piano, co-designer with Richard Rogers of the Pompidou Centre in Paris, is the man who put them there, and today, when Myung-Whun Chung raises his baton and the Santa Cecilia National Symphony Orchestra launches into the opening bars of the William Tell Overture, Rome's new auditorium will become reality.

The project has been a long time coming – 68 years since its conception in Mussolini's heyday – and there are still 11 months to go before the largest of the beetles throws open its doors and the auditorium can be declared complete.

Building in Rome is a task to daunt any architect. Piano had the benefit of a site well to the north of the historical centre, and although work was halted when excavators hit the ruins of an ancient Roman house (Piano wrapped the ruin into his project, which prevented the delay becoming permanent), the only visual competition is from nondescript modern apartment blocks and the ramp of a motorway.

It is far more problematic to build anew in the heart of Rome, where the ghosts of long-dead Caesars are scarcely less palpable than their fantastically sturdy architecture. The ancient structures and the imperial self-confidence with which they resonate are a challenge to the virility of any architect.

A case in point is the site which once accommodated Rome's last great auditorium. No trace remains of the 19th-century concert hall, the Corea, which once stood on this prime piece of real estate between Via del Corso and Via della Ripetta, though it is still fondly remembered: "The acoustics were perfect, the sound was like honey, the architecture superb," recalled one oldster. Mussolini tore the place down in 1936, along with 120 other buildings that hemmed it in, and for a very particular reason: at its heart – discovered in 1903 – was the ruined mausoleum of Augustus, first emperor of ancient Rome. As the first emperor of modern Italy, Il Duce meant to re-create the mausoleum along Fascist lines, as a fabulous monument to both of them.

But all there is to see of the project is an inscription in Latin on the piazza – and the name Mussolini has been shortened to musso, or ass.

Rome has yet to muster the vision to bring the site back to life. Today it is a sad heap of crumbling masonry, surrounded by overgrown cypresses. Plans to restore the piazza, drawn up by the celebrated American modernist Richard Meier, are on the stocks, but Rome is not sure about them. "Looks like a gas station," they say, "a pizzeria in Dallas."

The ghost of autocrats past walked again this week when Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi's hopes of having a trial, in which he is accused of having bribed a judge 20 years ago, transferred to a friendly bench were dashed by the Supreme Court. Livid, Berlusconi told the judges that he was the boss, not them, and floated the idea of granting himself permanent immunity against anything.

Meanwhile, a magazine claimed that Berlusconi has begun construction of his own great mausoleum, on his estate outside Milan – though the architectural inspiration is not so much Augustus as Tutankhamun.