Marcello Piacentini (1881–1960) was an Italian architect and urban theorist, one of the main proponents of Italian Fascist architecture. Born in Rome, the son of the architect Pio Piacentini, he began with picturesque housing inspired by Italian vernacular building, and in 1912 took charge of Italian building works in Cyrenaica, in Libya. Under Mussolini he became the regime's favoured agent for rebuilding central Rome: his 1931 plan led to the Via dell'Impero and the clearing of the area around the Mausoleum of Augustus, and he designed the new campus of the Sapienza University (1932) and the EUR district, where Mussolini made him High Commissioner.
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The Palazzo di Giustizia, Milan (1940), the city's courthouse, was built from 1932. For the industrialist Ermelino Matarazzo he designed the Matarazzo Building (São Paulo City Hall) (1939), a headquarters for his companies with an Art Deco look, now the city hall of São Paulo. After the war he won few prestigious commissions; among them was the Palazzo dello Sport at EUR (1960), designed with Pier Luigi Nervi from 1958, which hosted the basketball tournament of the 1960 Olympics.
