Istanbul’s Società Operaia in the pages of Giuseppe Mancini

Giuseppe Mancini’s article, published in il Mulino on 22 February 2013, describes the Italian mutual aid society of Istanbul on the eve of its hundred and fiftieth year. Founded on 17 May 1863 by forty-one workers, with Garibaldi as its first president and Mazzini as honorary president, it still had some forty members.

The article also takes the measure of the building: about two hundred square metres over four floors, in a lane off İstiklal Caddesi, the old Grande rue de Péra. It was built around 1880 and underwent a corrective intervention in 1908-1910 to steady it. Its theatre long housed society balls and, until 2011, documentary screenings. Inside are Risorgimento busts, plaques marking the society’s turning points – one of them identifying Garibaldi’s dwelling – a small library, and an archive holding the minutes of assemblies and the registers of members. The building is attributed to the architect the article names as “Alessandro Vallauri/Alexandre Vallaury”, the theatre to a design by Enrico De Nari.

The plan Mancini reports did not end with the restoration. Once the structural consolidation and the recovery of the decoration, carried by the support of TÜRSAB’s president Başaran Ulusoy, were complete, the building was to become an Italian-Turkish cultural centre: a small museum of documents and keepsakes, an exhibition room open to Italian and Turkish artists, a theatre fit for lectures as well. I was coordinating the project at the time, and the article grew largely out of that conversation.