Thematic sites - Municipality of Milan

MILAN IS MEMORY.
PLAQUE IN MEMORY OF ALESSANDRO RIMINI DISCOVERED AT THE COLISEUM CINEMA
The architect of Jewish origin remembered on the facade of the Colosseum cinema which he designed and directed the works between 1926 and 1927. There he was arrested due to his Jewish origins.

Milan, 15 March 2023 – With a plaque placed on the facade at the entrance of the Cinema Colosseo, in viale Monte Nero 84, the city remembers Alessandro Rimini, architect and designer of several buildings in Milan including numerous cinemas and the first skyscraper in Milan, the “Torre Snia Viscosa”, in Piazza San Babila. 

The councilor for Welfare and Health, Lamberto Bertolè, the daughter, Liliana Rimini, promoter of the initiative, and her grandchildren Fanny Chantal and Riccardo Lagonigro. Speaking with them were: Liliana Fargion Picciotto (historian of the CDEC Foundation - Contemporary Jewish Documentation Center), Giovanna D'Amia (professor of history of architecture at the Polytechnic of Milan), Fulvio Irace (professor emeritus of the Polytechnic) e Giovanna D'Amia (professor of history of architecture at the Polytechnic of Milan). Among the guests also the senator for life, Liliana Segre, and the representatives of the Cogeram company, owner of the cinema. 

"Today's ceremony - said councilor Bertolé - allows us, once again, to go back in time to events and people that have marked the history of Milan. The years of the fascist regime with the racial laws, the persecutions and the deportations of the Milanese Jews and the struggle of those who opposed what was happening, at the cost of their lives. And then the extraordinary story of the architect Alessandro Rimini, with his three lives, which we remembered by discovering the plaque dedicated to him on the facade of this beautiful building he designed. A heartfelt thank you to his daughter, Mrs. Liliana, for the generosity and tenacity with which she wanted to leave all of us this memory in honor of her father." 

The choice of the Cinema Colosseo to remember Alessandro Rimini, among the many buildings he created, is linked to today's date, March 15th. It is the day in 1944 when he was arrested, right on the construction site of the Colosseum Cinema, while he was supervising, defying the prohibitions, the restoration work on the building damaged by one of the numerous bombings that hit the city since the end of '42. It wasn't enough for the architect to have been a hero of the Great War, captured after the defeat at Caporetto and sent to forced labor in the coal mines of Munster Westphalia, from which he escaped, to be considered an Italian to be honoured. Following the promulgation of the racial laws, wanted by the fascist regime, and after his arrest in Milan he was imprisoned with other Jews in the Fossoli camp, near Modena and destined for Auschwitz. Loaded onto a train bound for Poland at the Verona station, he managed to escape by pretending to be a plainclothes policeman. On foot he reached Mantua where he had an estate and from there he returned to Milan by bicycle. In the city he lived with the false identity of Guido Lara, a painter, until the end of the war. 

The city has received a lot from his creativity and the Municipality of Milan, at the request of his daughter Liliana and the Cogeram company, owner of the building and the Colosseum Cinema, approved the placement of the plaque in his memory on the facade of the building. On it is written: 'Milan remembers Alessandro Rimini (1898 – 1976), architect and designer of the Cinema Colosseo, inaugurated on 8 April 1927'. 

After the unveiling of the plaque, the ceremony continued inside the Colosseum Cinema with the screening of an extract of the docu-film, created with the patronage of the European Union, as part of the project "Architecture of Remembrance”. In the documentary the testimony story of her daughter Liliana. 

The complete version of the documentary will be screened on May 11th at the Cinema Arlecchino in Milan, hosted by the Cineteca di Milano. The project is coordinated by Foundation of the Order of Architects of Milan with the aim of informing and raising awareness among the professional community and the general public about the discrimination suffered by Jewish architects from the fascist regime and remembering how anti-Semitism led to the exclusion of numerous architects from their professional fields. 

The plaque placed in memory of Alessandro Rimini is part of the Milanese program is Memoria, the platform created in 2017 to highlight and remember people, facts and events that testify to the history and identity of the city of Milan.