Nicola Zabaglia and the School of Practical Mechanics of the Fabbrica of St. Peter’s in Rome

Nicola Zabaglia, master mason of the Fabbrica of St. Peter’s and inventor of many ingenious mechanical devices for restoration, was also the director of the “School of Practical Mechanics” for the education of young labourers. At a time when traditional operational experience was strongly rivalled by the coeval achievements in the theory of mechanics and its effect on building, the work of Zabaglia became an instrument of propaganda. Since empirical practice and the oral transmission of operational knowledge were called into question by the pressing progress of science as well as by new institutions, the works of Zabaglia and his talented students were not only an influential model of cohesion between architecture, building yard and applied mechanics, but also a melancholy epilogue of a practical tradition inexorably condemned to oblivion.