From a historical cinema to a modern multi-purpose hall

Paolo Trovato, a managing director of the Italian stage construction company Decima 1948, talks below about his current project, the Teatro Radar in Monopoli, a tourist resort in southern Italy. A remarkable aspect of the small but beautiful hall is its ability to be transformed from a hall with a completely level floor to a theatre with a range of different seating configurations, complete with orchestra pit. The theatre opened in March.

Built as a cinema in 1947, adjacent to the Hotel Savoia, the Radar movie theatre remained in operation throughout the 1970s but was unable to withstand the major crisis hitting cinemas in the 1980s and was forced to close in 1985. The building, along with the neighbouring hotel, was acquired by the city council the same year for use as cultural administration premises. In 2010, a contract was concluded between the city council, the Miur ministry of education and the Nino Rota conservatory to restore the building complex as an arts venue.

The former Radar cinema was refurbished and converted into a multi-purpose theatre, the Cinema Teatro Radar, with the goal of ensuring flexible usage of the space to meet contemporary demands for a range of ...