The market in Via Albinelli was inaugurated on October 28, 1931, the retail trade thus abandoned Piazza Grande where it had been held for centuries, the sellers who settled there, already regular visitors to Piazza Grande, became stable traders, definitively distinguishing themselves from the category of peddlers. The project of the covered market aimed at decongesting the city center, cluttered with stalls almost every day of the week, to protect, protect from the weather and regularize the regular sellers of the square, as well as to discourage the itinerant trade, considered socially dangerous and difficult to control.
The construction of the Market started in 1929 and was carried out with great consideration for hygiene issues: pink marble benches for fish sellers, pipes that supplied running water to all benches, a system of water runoff for cleaning the floor. Particular importance was also given to the aesthetic aspect, as revealed by the elegant volutes in worked iron that connect the load-bearing columns, as well as, in the centre of the market, the beautiful fountain of the "little girl with a basket of flowers", by the sculptor and painter Giuseppe Graziosi from Savignano.
Today the Albinelli Market, as well as being a characteristic element of the history of Modena, remains a place of lively buying and selling where you can find typical products and excellent quality at affordable prices.
Piazza Giuseppe Mazzini
As part of the renovation works provided for in the 1902 Plan, the creation of Piazza Mazzini, then called "della Liberta", is one of the main interventions of redefinition of public spaces in the historic center, along with those that lead to the construction of Piazza XX Settembre. The work, carried out by the Cooperativa Muratori but not completed, included the demolition of the buildings up to Via Farini.
However, only the blocks of Via Blasia and Via Coltellini were demolished as far as the front of the Israeli Temple, leaving the blocks around the alleyway, still significantly known as "Squalor", intact.
The urban void of the square opened to the south along the Via Emilia finds its backdrop on the opposite side in the front of the synagogue built by engineer Ludovico Maglietta in 1873, characterized by the facade ended in gable and supported by the giant double order of columns. This shows the presence, until then hidden by the density of construction, the place symbol of the Jewish community, present in this area of the historic center since 1638 at the behest of Duke Francesco I d'Este.
The architectural aspect of the square is completed on the two remaining fronts with the creation of the building curtains in eclectic style. Later, in 1933, an underground daytime hotel was built, the construction of which had been planned since 1919.
The space of the square, substantially unchanged until today, is organized around a green parterre, to which in the Fascist period are added rows of trees, leaving along the perimeter of the circulation routes that run along the fronts of the buildings on the ground floor destined for commercial functions.
Ex Sala Borsa
The project to convert the use of the premises on the ground floor of the Palazzo Comunale was born in 1933, when the Municipality of Modena and the podesta Guido Sandonnino decided to deal with the request, made by the Provincial Council of the Corporate Economy, to provide a covered place for the negotiation of goods.
Remigio Casolari, author of the first proposal, called to arms, gave way to Gaetano Malaguti, who drew up the project that would be implemented in 1939.
The project involved the clearing and removal of the existing nineteenth-century shops and the disembowelment of the numerous internal partitions, in order to create spaces more functional to the new needs.
The part adjacent to the portico is characterized by three rows of bays, covered by brick vaults followed by another separate room, covered by a skylight in round perforated concrete. The rooms are then designed to be closely related to the historic city through the creation of internal crossing routes that connect the porch with via Scudari and via Castellaro.
The appearance of the spaces refers instead to a rigor that looks at the ancient through the marble coatings, accentuated by the iconographic apparatus representing Fascist symbols created by Benito Boccolari and the sculptural program of busts and bas-reliefs by Dante Zamboni in part still visible today, depicting scenes of exaltation of the values of rural life.
Converted until the 1960s into the headquarters of TIMO (Telefoni Italia Medio Orientale) and then used as exhibition spaces, the spaces of the former Sala Borsa now house a room dedicated to catering and music, accentuating the commercial and leisure vocation of the city's historic containers, indicated in the plan drawn up by the architect Pier Luigi Cervellati for the historic centre in 1986.