WASTEFUL BUILDINGS.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXI, Issue 9101, 29 May 1908, Page 3

WASTEFUL BUILDINGS.

AN ITALIAN ®£CANDAL. The popular feeling in Rome over the Nasi case has scarcely subsided when another big national scandal has been forced upon the attention of the country in the revelations of a Parliamentary Commission relating to the gross mismanagement of State funds in the erection of the new Palace of Justice in Rome. This mammoth and absurdly overdecorated Renaissance building which rises on the banks of the Tiber over ajaiost the Castle of San Angelo was begun 19 years ago. It was to be completed within aix years, at a total-outlay of £320.000. It is »sill far from finished, but has already cost over a million sterling, while it is calculated that a further £300,000 will be swallowed up in pitting the finishing touches. Moreover, the contractors have succeeded in obtaining judgment against t:ie State Administration fur a sum close upon a quarter of a million Bt«rliner for work beyond the limits of . their agreement. .When the works were much too far advanced to bo stopped, it was realised that the plans were altogether unsuitable for law courts, and a subsequent project for converting the huge pile into Houses of Parliament had to be abandoned as even mare impracticable, since utility has baon so sacrificed to architectural caprice that there is not a decentsizad hall in the 'vhole block. A similar wicked waste of public money is observable in regard to the unfinished national monument to King Victor Emmanuel, which has been in b tilding on the slopes of Capitaline Hill during a couple of decades. The Parliamentary Commission att ibutes this costly fiasco to the neglect of previous Ministers for Public Works.