The German sculpturer Olaf Metzel chose the fortress of Montalcino for his intervention for Arte all’Arte. This military building, placed on a hill that seems at the same time dominating it and crowning it, was built as a symbol of the city freedom, power and indipendency and it is today a favourite for Italian and foreign tourists’ strolls and excurtions.
Entering the court-yard from the portal, the visitor feels almost captive in the fortress walls: there is no decoration or other minor architectural detail that could mitigate the sense of power emanating from this enclosed and hostile architecture. Once climbed up through a tower to the passages on top of the walls, the visitor has two different scenarios: on one side the view from above of the fortress closed yard, like an amphitheatre; on the other side, the open Tuscan landscape. This last view is unexpectedly interrupted by a nearby sports ground with its stands.
Medioeval military building, sport, tourism: these different historical, aesthetical and social elements, are the conceptual stones that Olaf Metzel used for the fortress court-yard intervention: aggression, free time, landscape. In the fortress court-yard, roughly covered with concrete, Olaf Metzel placed his Velodrome. A bike ring built according to that sport’s rules and only shrinked in size to fit the yard. Its elegant elliptical raising curves are like in a dialogue with the sharp corners of the surrounding architecture. The velodrome, immediately visible and usable in its primary function, will reveal its aesthetical function to the visitor entering the fortress only when seen from above, from the passages on the walls.