Michelangelo Maiorfi. L'architetto di Fiesole (1862-1906)

The essay reconstructs the figure of Michelangelo Maiorfi (1862-1906), an architect-engineer trained at the Accademia di Belle Arti in Florence and designer of the Palazzo della Borsa, who from 1862 served for more than thirty years as municipal engineer of Fiesole. Drawing on archival sources, it traces the history of the town plan, from its first version in 1866 to the one approved in 1878, and the systematic resumption of archaeological excavations from 1873, which Maiorfi directed up to the posthumous publication of his Descrizione dei Ruderi monumentali (1912). Few of his public buildings were ever built. His most lasting contribution was to place the ancient city, still buried and partly idealised in his drawings, at the heart of modern Fiesole's identity. In the light of Michel Foucault's reflections, ancient Faesulae is read as a heterotopia: a real yet invisible place, able to suspend and redirect the design of the contemporary city.