Introduction

In architecture, as in art and design, Italy and Portugal have shared some fundamental characteristics over the last hundred years that determine lines of direct collaboration and profound affinity.

Exchanges between Portugal and Italy have been intense, numerous and varied over the last century. Proceeding by summary examples one could mention the exchanges during the years of coexistence of the two dictatorial regimes - Estado Novo and Fascism - (think of the projects for the university cities of Lisbon and Rome, the national stadiums, Piacentini and especially Muzio's plans for the city of Porto, which were fiercely opposed by a very young Távora, but also the similar research on popular anonymous architecture such as that of Pagano and the Inquerito); the intense relations in the immediate post-war period, the Portuguese interest in Bruno Zevi, the trips to Italy by Fernando Távora and others in his retinue; the affinities on the theme of the historic city (for example the Cervellati Plan for Bologna and the Tavorian Plan for Barredo, almost contemporaries; or the renewed relationship between 'church and city' between the 1950s and 1960s); the role of Italy, and Vittorio Gregotti in particular, in the beginning of the international fortune of Portuguese architecture since the Carnation Revolution; or, in the same years, Portugal's interest in Italian studies on the city, which saw Aldo Rossi as a major figure; the increasingly widespread, from the 1980s to the present, reciprocal presence and influence of the two architectural cultures in the two countries, which has led to very significant exchanges, in pedagogy, publishing, and the profession.

The two countries are certainly connected by their geographical location, in the centre of the Mediterranean and on the fringes of Europe, thus on the 'border' - physical or cultural - of different geographies. This position has not prevented - but perhaps even favoured - the cultural (if not economic) success of the two architectural and, more generally, creative cultures.