Carved rosettes and festoons decorate the area where the glass and ironwork ceiling meets the walls of the debating chamber, and frame the magnificent frieze painted by Giulio Aristide Sartorio. Sartorio (1860-1932) was a painter, sculptor, writer, critic, photographer and filmmaker. In just 930 days, he created this magnificent frieze, which depicts, in allegorical images, the history of the people and civilisation of Italy. The frieze is a dynamic, energetic and unitary composition that is exceptional also for its size and for the painting technique used in its making. Curving around the room in a strip measuring 105 metres in length, it contains fifty panels, each almost four metres high, which Sartorio painted using cold- and hot-wax mediums, both to ensure the work’s detail was visible from distance and to accelerate the speed of its execution.