Designed by an architect named Francesco Mazzarelli, the triumphal arch found at the end of Corso Giovecca, where it meets Piazza Medaglie d’Oro, was built between 22 October 1703 and 27 June 1704, thanks to the support of the Municipality. It originally had three arches and was decorated by marble coats of arms. The original design, including the coats of arms of the pope, the legate and the Giudice dei Savi (Judge of the Sages, who was Carlo Fiaschi at the time), was changed by the designer as it was being built, adopting the indications of the Judge of the Sages, who requested that the coats of arms of the nine Savi del Maestrato (Sages of the Magestrate be added. This second design included octagonal commemorative plaques located above the lateral arches (which some scholars believe were destroyed in the late eighteenth century under French occupation), a different layout of the statues of Saint George and Saint Maurelius, which effectively were never installed, and the ornamental pinnacles for greater height. Once completed, Mazzarelli himself described it as a triumphal arch with Tuscan order columns, divided into three archways.

The less drastic changes implemented in the nineteenth century were paired with more substantial ones in the early twentieth century, modifying the original appearance of the Prospettiva di Corso Giovecca, while reconfirming its status the as one of the main monuments of Ferrara. With the widening of the street and the design and implementation of the city plan that created Piazza Medaglie d’Oro, which the Municipality worked on from the late 1930s onwards, the triumphal arch was expanded by adding two lateral openings, for pedestrian use, each topped with its own pinnacles.

Similar to the Prospettiva della Ghiara, built at the end of Via XX Settembre by architect Gaetano Genta in 1776, the main scope of the Prospettiva di Corso Giovecca is to 'set the stage’. In other words, when travelling outwards, it acts as a ‘final vanishing point for the street, which became an entry gate to a different kind of city, that is, to the land of the Delizie, to luxuriant gardens’ (C. Bassi, Nuova Guida di Ferrara. Vita e Spazio nell’Architettura di una Città Emblematica, Italo Bovolenta editore, Ferrara 1981 p. 246). Likewise, heading inwards, it allowed for the entry into the heart of the city through one of its main avenues. In addition to this historical role, it also allows for the entry and exit of people and goods to be managed.

The earthquake that struck Emilia in 2012 made it necessary to temporarily remove the pinnacles along the top, which were cleaned and newly affixed with special earthquake-proof plates in December 2015.

The triumphal arch in Corso Giovecca appears in one of Giorgio Bassani's poetic works, capable of reinstating the entire view of the avenue (as already was the case in the very beginning of the tale titled The Walk Before Supper), with the gate that seems to get larger heading towards and coming from the castle. The work is in fact Rolls Royce, one of Bassani's most admired lyric poems for its effectiveness in conveying the feeling of exile. Unlike the narrative piece, the aspect portrayed in verse is much more intimate and clearly references the autobiographical experience of the author, restored by Bassani through an overlapping of real visual information with an imaginative transformation drawn upon from memory and by intense nostalgia, which turns the past into a present that is very much alive.

In addition, in Bassani's novel The Heron, the Prospettiva di Corso Giovecca is a threshold between Ferrara and the familial, more external side of the protagonist, Edgardo Limentani, and his deeper, subconscious, more personal side, corresponding to the hazy, damp elsewhere of Codigoro and its surroundings (G. Bassani, L’airone, in Opere, Il Romanzo di Ferrara, p. 726 and 840).

Rolls Royce

Immediately after having closed my eyes forever,

here I am once again, who knows how, recrossing Ferrara by car

- an immense metallic-coloured

foreign made limousine with

wide murky windows, perhaps a

Rolls Royce-

Driving once more down from the Este castle along

Giovecca Avenue towards the rose-coloured

arabesque on the end of the Prospettiva that in the meantime

slowly but surely came into focus within the concave

rectangle of the windshield

His neck long and stiff the chauffeur, seated in front on the right,

certainly knew very well which way to go, and I, on the other hand,

wouldn’t have even dreamed

of telling him

anxious as I was to recognize, on the left, the church

of Saint Charles, further on the right

the Theatine one

already standing together chatting so early in the morning on the sidewalk

in front of the Folchini

pastry shop

my father’s friends when he was young

most of them with broad grey Homburg hats, some flashing

silver-handled walking sticks in their fists

anxious actually eager as I was in short to retrace all of Main

Street of my city in a day of almost May-June

around the mid-Twenties a quarter of an hour before

nine in the morning

Almost pushed by its own luxurious murmur finally the Rolls turned

down Via Madama and just after at Via

Cisterna del Follo

and at that point I was no more than ten

cheeks burning for fear of being late to school

leaving at that precise moment with books under arm

from door number

one

it was I who, while continuing to run, was turning back

at my mother leaning out the upstairs window reminding me of

something

it was I, really me, who, an instant before disappearing

around the corner, from my young mother's sight

waved my left hand in a gesture

of both impatience and

goodbye

I would have liked to have cried ‘halt’ to the stiff

chauffeur and to have gotten out, but the Rolls Royce,

lurching gently, was already passing

the Montagnone, was even beyond, already outside

the gate, already down wide deserted streets

completely void of roofs on either side and completely

unknown

(G. Bassani, Rolls Royce and Other Poems, translated by Francesca Valente, Greg Gatenby, and Irving Layton, Toronto, Aya Press, 1982, p. 11)