Iglesias, “Giorgio Asproni” Mining Technical Institute

The building is located on a large area along Via Roma, where the medieval walls of the city ran, demolished starting at the end of the nineteenth century, in front of the remains of the convent of San Francesco. The presence of elementary schools for boys, now home to the artistic high school (1904), and for women's elementary schools (1933) contributes to making the area a sort of “school district”, continued after World War II with the building of the scientific high school, now an all-encompassing institution.
The building houses two museums: the Mineralogy Museum and the Mining Art Museum. The construction of the Technical Institute stems from a competition wanted in 1905 by the mining engineer Giorgio Asproni, who assumed the economic burden as well as the partial financing of the construction. The competition ended without prizes but with the recommendation of a project by the architect Francesco Sappia, taken up with modifications by the civic engineer Telesforo Tarchioni and with the subsequent direction of work by Dionigi Scano in anticipation of an arrangement of the area, then not built.
Completed in 1911, the solid building has a rational interior layout, which contains classrooms, offices, services, mining exercise galleries for students and also the mineralogical museum, now open to the public.
On the outside, it is characterized by an impressive appearance with the main side punctuated by two front bodies on the sides and a central part surmounted by a tympanum that bears an elegant inscription with the school's title after Asproni himself. A double-ramp staircase parallel to the façade gives access to the building, which is completed by low-arched windows with two lights on the various levels, with sober decorations.

History of studies
A review of the studies can be found in the bibliography relating to the fact sheet in the volume of the “History of Art in Sardinia” on nineteenth-century architecture (2001).

Bibliography
F. Masala, Architecture from the Unification of Italy to the End of the 20th Century. Nuoro, Ilisso, 2001, sheet 29.