Figure 1 Post Office (Center) and Hotel (Right), Gondar, 1936–41 (Author’S Photo)
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Figure 1 Post office (center) and hotel (right), Gondar, 1936–41 (author’s photo) Figure 2 One of numerous villas built after 1936 in the administrative district on the north side of Gondar (author’s photo) Gondar Architecture and Urbanism for Italy’s Fascist Empire david rifkind Florida International University “Empire is our goal—to found cities, to found colonies.” 1 and aspired to use urban design to foster mass identity on the —Benito Mussolini2 part of the citizenry, in accord with the fascist regime’s insis- tence on obedience and sacrifice. Italian planners and their rban design was a key tool of Italian colonial policy patrons saw urbanism as one of many tools for reforming the during the occupation of Ethiopia between 1936 everyday life of the public.6 Uand 1941. Italian urbanism throughout the fascist Gondar expanded dramatically after the conquest of era illustrates the disquieting compatibility between progres- Ethiopia in 1936, for it served as a colonial administrative sive planning practices and authoritarian politics.3 Cities center for Italian East Africa.7 The city bears witness to the built in Italian-occupied East Africa further demonstrate the ways colonial authorities and their planners used urban extent to which modern urban design could participate in the design to reconcile the fascist regime’s demands for ideo- coercive project of constructing imperial identities, among logical representation with the practical needs of everyday both Italian settlers and African colonial subjects.4 Gondar life (Figure 2). Gondar exhibits a striking sensitivity to displays the themes of identity formation and ideological topography and historical preservation, yet exploits these representation that animated urbanism in Italy’s African local conditions to reinforce the colonial authorities’ policies empire (Figure 1).5 of racial and class segregation. The city also demonstrates Italian architects had long recognized that the modern the diversity of Italian architecture in Ethiopia, as state, practice of architecture was inseparable from the rational party, institutional, and private interests sought appropriate design of cities, and that urban planning was integral to solv- formal expression for their facilities, sometimes employing ing the problem of housing the working class. City planners, experimental construction techniques in response to the whether Sitte-esque traditionalists from the Roman school logistical difficulties of building in such a remote location. of Gustavo Giovannoni or CIAM-affiliated modernists from Altogether, Gondar offers a valuable example of the form and the Quadrante circle, committed themselves to strengthen- development of cities throughout Ethiopia and other former ing the city as the site of civic gathering and collective action, Italian colonies in Africa. Part of the difficulty in understanding Italian urban Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 70, no. 4 (December 2011), 492–511. planning in East Africa stems from the fact that the Italians ISSN 0037-9808, electronic ISSN 2150-5926. © 2011 by the Society of Architectural Histo- were never quite sure why they had conquered Ethiopia and rians. All rights reserved. Please direct all requests for permission to photocopy or repro- duce article content through the University of California Press’s Rights and Permissions declared it to be the center of their new empire, and they had website, http://www.ucpressjournals.com/reprintInfo.asp. DOI: 10.1525/jsah.2011.70.4.492. many, not always complementary objectives. Officially, the Figure 3 Fasil Ghebbi (castle complex), Gondar, seventeenth century (author’s photo) state sought unification of domestic consensus in support of city, and numerous private companies—among them such the regime through military adventure, the resettlement (and transport-related firms as FIAT, AGIP, and Pirelli—built reform) of unemployed urban Italians as farmers in East offices, garages, workshops, and depots.10 Africa, the stabilization of African subjects under colonial Gondar sits at an elevation of roughly 2,200 meters, and rule, the cultivation of the Ethiopian highlands to supply is surrounded on three sides by a ring of 3,000-meter-high Italy with needed agricultural products, and raising foreign mountains. To the south, the landscape opens to a valley and capital through the export of surplus goods.8 All of these distant views of Lake Tana, source of the Blue Nile. The city concerns impacted the design of Italian colonial cities. And stretches along a ridge centered on a complex of castles built like the new towns built throughout Italy during the fascist during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, when period, the settlements of East Africa were constructed Gondar was the imperial capital of Ethiopia (Figure 3). It with an eye toward their role in state propaganda and an expanded significantly around 1635 under the rule of Fasi- emphasis on their ability to instill in their inhabitants a ladàs, the son of the city’s founder, Suseniòs.11 To build his uniquely fascist identity. Given the importance of urban castle, he employed Indian, and possibly Turkish, craftsmen planning and architecture to Italian colonialism, the analysis working under Portuguese supervision (Figure 4).12 French of these building practices provides important insights into ambassador Charles Poncet described a resplendent city the aspirations and anxieties that propelled fascist imperial after his visit in 1699, but by the time James Bruce came to policy. Gondar in 1771, it had begun to fall into ruin.13 Gondar once had as many as 80,000 inhabitants, and forty-four of its historic orthodox churches survived into the twentieth A Provincial Capital century.14 Gondar served as the capital of Amhara, one of the six prov- The Italians saw great propaganda value in the city’s inces created by the Ministry of Italian Africa to administer status as a former imperial capital, and they sought to Ethiopia, Eritrea, and Somalia.9 The city, sited at a key cross - appropriate its symbolic importance in support of its use as roads in the northern Ethiopian highlands, functioned as the a regional capital in their own empire. Yet they denigrated administrative, legal, military, transportation, communica- the contemporary town as “presenting only small and miser- tions, and distribution center for northern Ethiopia under able tukuls grouped around the ruins of the castles,” thus Italian rule. As the provincial capital, the city included requiring the new conquerors “to build ex novo a city worthy offices and residences for the governorship’s civilian admin- of the civilization of Rome.”15 (Figure 5) The Italians fre- istration and courts, as well as a major military installation. quently stressed that the castles could only have been built Gondar hosted facilities for the Fascist National Party (PNF) by Portuguese craftsmen, or under their supervision, as a way and a range of state and party social service organizations. of further justifying their “civilizing mission” among the Major banks and insurance companies built branches in the “technologically deprived” Ethiopians.16 494 JSAH / 70:4, DECEMBER 2011 Figure 4 Castle of Fasiladàs, Gondar, ca.1635 (author’s photo) Figure 5 Fasil Ghebbi (castle complex), Gondar, aerial view, ca.1936 (Gli annali dell’Africa Italiana 2, no. 4 [1939]) Italian troops occupied Gondar on 1 April 1936, and views and marked the center of power in the new Gondar. within two years 2,000 Europeans lived in the city.17 Most The Italians exploited the dramatic change in elevation of Gondar’s 14,000 Ethiopian inhabitants lived south of between the two areas to establish a clear hierarchy between the main castle complex—called the Fasil Ghebbi—where the quotidian functions of the commercial district and the the ridge slopes gently down toward the major market at the ceremonial functions of the governmental district. southern edge of town. The Italians concentrated their The Italian authorities and the city’s chief designer, building activity north of the Fasil Ghebbi on two adjacent Florentine architect Gherardo Bosio, recognized that the level areas, but separated by a twenty-meter change in eleva- castle complex, which divided the ridge in half, served as an tion.18 The lower area served as a commercial district, with effective barrier between the city’s neighborhoods.19 The a wide, tree-lined street running north from the castles, past Italians restored numerous monuments throughout the city the cinema to the prominently sited post office (Figure 6). and used these structures and Gondar’s existing topography The higher area immediately to the east comprised the gov- within a complex zoning plan that distinguished sectors ernmental district, centered on two monumental buildings according to programmatic use and restricted access accord- for the military authorities, whose towers commanded distant ing to race and class. Ethiopian residents, whose numbers GONR D A 495 Figure 6 Post and telegraph office, Gondar, 1936–37 (author’s photo) included large Yemeni and Sudanese expatriate communities, city, along with storage facilities for food, fuel, and ammuni- were restricted to the existing districts between the Ghebbi tion. This redoubt would be the last site of Italian resistance and market. Italians lived in the more elevated areas north when Axis troops were routed from East Africa by Ethiopian and west of the Ghebbi, around the commercial and admin- and British forces in 1941. istrative precincts. The colonial authorities justified their In addition to its roles as a center for administration, race-based zoning policy in historical terms, noting that communications, and transportation, Gondar organized Gondar’s quarters had been segregated by ethnicity and agricultural production throughout the two-million- religion (including separate areas for Orthodox Christians, square-kilometer region of Amhara. Agricultural coloniza- Muslims, and Jews) since at least 1669.20 tion was a central goal for the Italians, who argued that grain The use of zoning to manifest social and political divi- production in their African colonies would eliminate the sions was not restricted to town planning in the colonies.