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more prosaic offices around the fine enclosed garden. Representative and major
functions take place on the second floor in the transverse wing, where first and
foremost the City Council convene, and in the rooms facing the City Hall
Square, where the Banqueting Hall and the offices of the executive power were
placed.
The glass roof spans the entire space between the two major wings, so when
the arcade was constructed on the first floor of the Main Hall and not on the
ground floor, it was precisely to stratify and separate the activities of mundane
daily work from the more festive and sophisticated events.
However, at all times of the day and night the hall and the corridors echo with
busy but soft footsteps on stone and terrazzo, heading for departments, offices
and the Wedding Rooms, press conferences, morning cleaning, committee work
or the weekly assembly in the City Council on Thursday evenings.
It is a distinctive house, characterised by its artistic appearance and yet modern
for its time, straightforward in the practical organisation of rooms and connecting
corridors, so complete already in the first drafts that the plan for the various
functions form the envisaged foundation for the illustrious overtones of the
building.
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