Travertinsäulen

Travertinsäulen stands in Stuttgart-Münster, between the coverings of a power plant, a recycling yard and a waste-to-energy plant. Fourteen travertine columns rise fifteen metres above this industrial setting, although the nearby incinerator partly hides their monumental scale. Their Tuscan order gives the group a clear architectural rhythm beside the surrounding machinery.

Berlin commissioned the columns from Stuttgart’s Lauster quarry in 1936. They were intended for the lower level of a Mussolini monument within Albert Speer’s planned Germania, Adolf Hitler’s projected world capital. The Second World War stopped that scheme before the columns travelled to Berlin, and Lauster later bought them back. Stuttgart has kept them ever since, turning an unrealised Nazi project into a stark reminder of twentieth-century political ambition. Their location makes the contrast concrete: classical stone stands in the shadow of a large industrial furnace.