Alfonso Guerra

(b Naples, 24 Jan 1845; d Naples, 1920). Italian architect. He was the son of the painter Camillo Guerra (1797-1874) and studied at the Istituto di Belle Arti, Naples, graduating in literature and mathematics (1863) and later in engineering (1867). His interests lay in formal and decorative problems, but also in those of a technical and structural nature. He expressed the contemporary aesthetic preference for the eclectic style based on Renaissance examples. He received a large number of commissions for public and private buildings, but is best known for the Schilizzi Mausoleum (1881-9) at Posillipo and the Palazzo della Borsa (1890-98) in Naples. The austere exterior of the funerary chapel, with its Egyptian Revival forms, contrasts with the splendid interiors in an Arab style. The building is two storeys high and entered from an atrium; the nave comprises three bays with small transepts, a square apse and an imposing dome above the crossing. The Palazzo della Borsa in the Piazza Bovio was built in collaboration with the structural engineer Luigi Ferrara (1810-94), and the lengthy and complex design stage was preceded by study trips to central Europe. In plan it is almost square and at its centre is the two-storey trading hall. The general proportions of the exterior and the repeated Gerlian motif were inspired, as the designers themselves declared, by Veneto architecture of the late Cinquecento. The lower part of the exterior is heavily rusticated; above it, the smooth ashlar is regularly punctuated with elegant arches. The Ionic order of the ground and first floors is succeeded by the Corinthian order on the second floor, and crowning the whole is an attic storey with caryatids.

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