Cappella dell'Istituto Sant'Anna Falletti di Barolo is a mid 20th century school chapel at Viale Guglielmo Marconi 700 in the Ostiense quarter.
History[]
The congregation of Sisters of St Anne (Suore di Sant'Anna) was founded at Turin in 1834, by some well-connected locals in the suburb of Moncalieri who wanted to found and staff an orphanage. As with many other such foundations in the earlier 19th century, a small charitable initiative immediately grew massively in response to major social needs which were not being addressed by the secular authorities.
The congregation was initially called the Sisters of Providence, after the famous icon of Our Lady at San Carlo ai Catinari. However, the name was changed to Sisters of St Anne and Providence during the massive expansion under Bl Maria Enrichetta Dominici as Mother Superior. She and her congregation were part of the enormously influential ecclesiastical movement at Turin centred on St John Bosco.
The expansion led to the congregation becoming international in scope.
After the Second World War, in common with many other congregations of active female religious, the sisters instigated a major project for a new Generalate (headquarters) at Rome. The complex was completed in 1963 -see Cappella delle Suore di Sant'Anna, Also, they built a huge new school in the Ostiense quarter, the architect being Vincenzo Passarelli.
The school still flourishes and is one of the biggest private schools in Rome, but the administration is now mostly in secular hands even though the congregation retains possession.
Appearance[]
The school is a very large complex, but unfortunately it is on a restricted triangular site next to a railway. Outdoor facilities are limited, which for other such schools has encouraged a move to better accommodation.
Three four-storey blocks face the street, Two symmetrically arranged L-shaped ones have a single-storey entrance range in between them, and this leads to a covered corridor to a further set of buildings around an enclosed courtyard. The chapel, a church-sized edifice with its own architectural identity, is part of this.
The chapel is a rectangular edifice in red brick, with a pitched and tiled roof. There is a shallow and narrower sanctuary, under the same roof. The walls do not distinguish any bays or subdivisions. The frontage is in plain brickwork, with a single unadorned entrance over which is a row of three enongated horizontal rectangular windows. The equally blank side walls each have three horizontal rows of very small vertical rectangular windows, the top and bottom rows aligned and the middle row aligned with the spaces between the windows of them.