Cappella di Villa San Giuseppe is a mid 20th century convent chapel at Via Portuense 746 in the Gianicolense suburban zone. The locality is called Corviale.
History[]
The chapel belongs to the convent headquarters of the Italian province of the Society of St Paul, and by the look of it was erected in the Fifties.
Exterior[]
Layout and fabric[]
The chapel is invisible from the street, since the convent is up a fairly long drive. The address is now shared by a couple of care homes for the elderly, and the overall layout is rather messy.
The edifice is rectangular, in creamy white concrete with a pitched roof in grey composition. It seems to stand over a crypt, and is inserted perpendicularly into the front wing of the convent complex.
The side walls have tall narrow rectangular slit windows. The sanctuary, which is abutted by slightly lower flat-roofed ancillary accommodation on all sides, is a semi-circular apse as wide as the nave with its own low half-cone pitched roof less elevated than the pitched nave roof. The apse wall above the sacristy block has a continuous row of short vertical rectangular windows.
The back part of the apse consists of a straight wall, breaking the curve. This has five of the windows just mentioned, and on it stands the campanile. This is formed of a longitudinal row of three tall arches in white concrete, the middle one being higher. These lack decoration.
Façade[]
The façade is mostly blank. There is a large, deep vertical rectangular niche in its centre, framed by two slab piers inserted into its sides and which have their narrow outer faces slightly sunk. The niche contains a large vertical rectangular window with a proud frame.
Above this, at the level of the side rooflines, are eleven vertical rectangular recessed panels, each with a little window at its top.