Raimondo Tommaso D'Aronco

Raimondo Tommaso D’Aronco (1857–1932) was an Italian architect renowned for his building designs in the style of Art Nouveau. He was the chief palace architect to the Ottoman Sultan Abdülhamid II in Constantinople for 16 years.

D’Aronco was born 1857 in the provincial town of Gemona del Friuli, Udine, Italy (now in Friuli, at that time part of the Austrian Empire) into a family of builders for several generations. He completed the Gemona Arts and Trades School after the primary school.

At the age of 14, D’Aronco attended the Johanneum Baukunde in Graz, Austria in 1871, a school for construction famous for training skilled masons and joiners, which still exists today. Already knowledgeable after years of practical experience with his father, he proved an outstanding student, and his teachers urged him to study architecture. After his return to Italy with his resolve, D’Aronco enrolled at a summer school of design in Gemona, winning first prize in the competition, which he entered upon completing the second course.

D’Aronco then volunteered for military service and worked as a fortifications engineer in Turin, which gave him experience in timber construction. Upon discharge, he entered the Venice Academy of Fine Arts, Accademia di Belle Arti, where the teaching was not confined to any particular school of thought, enabling D’Aronco, whose ideas had not been shaped by any previous architectural education, to experiment freely with form and style. At the Academy, the ideas of Camillo Boito were dominant in design classes, which taught him, how to combine existing environment with other sources. At the end of the year, when he was still only 19 years old and full of enthusiasm, he was awarded first prize for architectural composition.

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