MUSSOLINI'S ITALIAN AND ITALIAN AMERICAN STUDIES Stanislao G. Pugliese Hofstra University Series Editor This publishing initiative seeks to bring the latest scholarship in Italian and Ital­ ian American history, literature, cinema, and cultural studies to a large audience of specialists, general readers, and students. I&IAS will feature works on mod­ ern Italy (Renaissance to the present) and Italian American culture and society by established scholars as well as new voices in the academy. This endeavor will help to shape the evolving fields of Italian and Italian American Studies by re­ emphasizing the connection between the two. The following editorial board of esteemed senior scholars are advisors to the series editor. REBECCA WEST JOHN A. DAVIS University of Chicago University of Connecticut FRED GARDAPHE PHILIP V. CANNISTRARO Stony Brook University Queens College and the Graduate School, CUNY JOSEPHINE GATTUSO HENDIN VICTORIA DeGRAZIA New York University Columbia University Queer Italia: Same-Sex Desire in Italian Literature and Film edited by Gary P. Cestaro July 2004 Frank Sinatra: History, Identity, and Italian American Culture edited by Stanislao G. Pugliese October 2004 The Legacy ofPrimo Levi edited by Stanislao G. Pugliese December 2004 Italian Colonialism edited by Ruth Ben-Ghiat and Mia Fuller July 2005 Mussolini's Rome: Rebuilding the Eternal City Borden W Painter Jr. July 2005 Representing Sacco and Vanzetti edited by Jerome A. Delamater and Mary Ann Trasciatti forthcoming, September 2005 Carlo Tresca: Portrait ofa Rebel Nunzio Pernicone forthcoming, October 2005 MUSSOLINI'S Rebuilding the Eternal City BORDEN W. PAINTER, JR. MUSSOLINI'S ROME Copyright © Borden Painter, 2005. Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2005 978-1-4039-6604-9 All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in * critical articles or reviews. First published 2005 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN™ 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010 and Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire, England RG21 6XS. Companies and representatives throughout the world. PALGRAVE MACMILLAN IS THE GWBAL ACADEMIC IMPRINT OF THE PALGRAVE MACMillAN division of St. Martin's Press, LLC and of Palgrave Macmillan Ltd. Macmillan® is a registered trademark in the United States, United Kingdom and other countries. Palgrave is a registered trademark in the European Union and other countries. ISBN 978-1-4039-8002-1 ISBN 978-1-4039-7691-8 (eBook) DOI 10.1007/978-1-4039-7691-8 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Painter, Borden W. Mussolini's Rome : rebuilding the Eternal City / Borden W. Painter, Jr. p. cm.-(Italian and Italian American studies) Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. Rome (Italy)-History-1870-1945. 2. City planning-Italy-Rome--­ History-20th century. 3. Fascism and culture-Italy-Rome. 4. Mussolini, Benito, 1883-1945. I. litle. II. Italian and Italian American studies (Palgrave Macmillan (Firm)) DG813.P28 2005 945'.632091-dc22 2004043153 A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Design by Letta Libre, Inc. First edition: July 2005 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Transferred to digital printing in 2006 CONTENTS Preface and Acknowledgments Vll List ofMaps and Illustrations Xl Introduction xv 1. Mussolini's Obsession with Rome 1 2. Celebration and Construction, 1932-1934 21 3. Sports, Education, and the New Italians 39 4. Architecture, Propaganda, and the Fascist Revolution 59 5. Population, Neighborhoods, and Housing 91 6. Axis and Empire 115 7. War and Resistance 141 Appendix I Chronology 163 Appendix II Fascist Place and Street Names 167 Notes 169 Bibliography 185 Index 193 PREFACE AND ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I developed the idea for writing this book during numerous trips to Rome over the past three decades. Trinity College's undergraduate program in Rome, founded in 1970, afforded me the opportunity to return to Rome often as teacher, administrator, and researcher. In 1971 I taught in the summer program and began to explore Rome from our site in a convent on the Aventine Hill. How glorious it was to discover the ancient, medieval, Renaissance, and baroque sites of the city! From the Aventine I could look over the Circus Maximus to the Palatine Hill. Just to the left was the Capitoline and to the right the Arch of Constantine and the Colosseum. Around the corner from our campus was the fifth-century church of Santa Sabina, and just down the street the Knights of Malta with Pi­ ranesi's famous keyhole view of St. Peter's Dome. I discovered the word palimpsest as an apt description of Rome as one layer of history upon another. As I explored the neighborhood and the city, I began to notice the remnants of a more recent layer of Rome's history, the fascist period. There on the mod­ ern retaining wall of the ancient Theater of Marcellus was the fascio, the bundle of sticks with a protruding ax that gave fascism its name and its symbol. The Theater of Marcellus looks out on a wide street that is obviously modern. In fact, it is dearly of fascist origin, for there are large fascist-era office buildings on both sides of the street. The largest one, now the Anagrafe, Rome's hall of records, bears the plaque with Mussolini's name still quite legible. In the early 1980s I began to read articles about architecture during the fas­ cist period and about many of the buildings erected by the regime in Rome. Fas­ cist architecture, art, and culture had begun attracting scholarly attention on a large scale for the first time since World War II. Then in 1982 I organized a con­ ference on "Mussolini and Italian Fascism'' at Trinity College with papers given by an international group of historians, including Renzo De Felice and Denis Mack Smith. An archivist from the Archivio Centrale dello Stato in Rome pre­ sented a paper that caught my interest. He described the ACS's efforts to orga­ nize its collections of documents relating to the Exhibition of the Fascist Revolution, the Mostra della Rivoluzione Fascista (MRF) of 1932. A few years VIII MUSSOLINI'S ROME later, I commenced reading about the MRF at the archives and thus began re­ search on Rome during the fascist period. The research on the Mostra led to a wider study of Rome's transformation by Mussolini. I began to think about this book in the fall of 1996 while teach­ ing in Trinity College's Rome program, especially while taking students on sev­ eral walking tours of "Mussolini's Rome." I returned for another semester in 2000. This time I had more information to share with my students and hun­ dreds of slides to use in showing them how the fascist regime had transformed the city. In between these two semesters in Rome, several colleagues in modern Italian history encouraged me to write a book about Mussolini's transformation of Rome that would be both comprehensive and concise. I also began to give slide lectures on the subject to both academic and more general audiences. The enthusiastic reception of these lectures further convinced me that a book on fas­ cist Rome would appeal to a variety of readers. Rome is, after all, one of the great cites of the world, attracting millions of readers and visitors every year. Such a book would open up a new way to see and understand the city. The scholarly interest that began in the early 1980s has borne fruit in many articles and monographs on various aspects of fascist art, architecture, culture, and propaganda. This book combines a synthesis of much of that scholarly work with my own research. I trust that the result will be of interest to scholars, stu­ dents, and general readers. There are many friends and colleagues to thank for the help, inspiration, and advice I received over the years. The late George Cooper encouraged me to begin teaching courses on modern Italy in the early 1970s. Michael Campo founded Trinity's Rome program in 1970, which opened up opportunities for teaching and research in Italy and continues to this day to inspire and inform me in countless ways. More recently my colleagues John Alcorn and Dario Del Puppo provided support for this subject through the Barbieri Endowment for Italian Culture at Trinity. I am grateful to Kristin Triff for her enthusiastic sup­ port and her perspective as an architectural historian. Colleagues at the Rome program, especially Livio Pestilli, Francesco Lombardi, and Patricia Osmond, have helped me literally find my way around Rome as well as offered help and advice that could come only from natives and residents of the city. The list of fellow historians of modern Italy whose work, example, and friendship have been so important to me includes Philip Cannistraro, Alexan­ der De Grand, Frank Coppa, Joel Blatt, Ruth Ben-Ghiat, Marla Stone, Mary Gibson, Roy Domenico, John Davis, Mark Seymour, Alice Kelikian, Andy Canepa, Spencer Di Scala, Roland Sarti, Alexander Stille, and the late Claudio Segre. Some were regulars at the Columbia University Seminar on Modern Italy, PREFACE AND ACKNOWLEDGMENTS IX which provides a wonderful forum for those of us close enough to New York to attend. Special thanks to Stan Pugliese, whose interest in my presentation on "Mussolini's Rome" to the seminar in March 2003 led to the contract with Pal­ grave Macmillan. I did the research for this book in a number of places. The Yale libraries con­ tain many books and periodicals from the 1930s. A trip to the Wolfsonian In­ stitution in Miami Beach allowed me to read a number of difficult-to-find Italian publications from the period.