Title: From Iconoclasm to Museum: Mussolini’s Villa in Rome as a Dictatorial Heritage Site Author: Flaminia Bartolini How to cite this article: Bartolini, Flaminia. 2018. “From Iconoclasm to Museum: Mussolini’s Villa in Rome as a Dictatorial Heritage Site.” Martor 23: 163-173. Published by: Editura MARTOR (MARTOR Publishing House), Muzeul Ţăranului Român (The Museum of the Romanian Peasant) URL: http://martor.muzeultaranuluiroman.ro/archive/martor-23-2018/ Martor (The Museum of the Romanian Peasant Anthropology Journal) is a peer-reviewed academic journal established in 1996, with a focus on cultural and visual anthropology, ethnology, museum studies and the dialogue among these disciplines. Martor Journal is published by the Museum of the Romanian Peasant. Interdisciplinary and international in scope, it provides a rich content at the highest academic and editorial standards for academic and non-academic readership. 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From Iconoclasm to Museum: Mussolini’s Villa in Rome as a Dictatorial Heritage Site Flaminia Bartolini PhD Candidate, McDonald Institute for Archeological Research, University of Cambridge [email protected] ABSTRACT KEYWORDS In the last couple of years, public attitudes towards Fascist material legacies in Italian Dictatorship, Fascist legacies, Italy have been at the centre of a heated debate in the academic world, which Villa Torlonia, Difficult Heritage, has by now grown to involve the press and social media. This paper will look Mussolini. specifically at how this is reflected in a museum display at a heritage site that was once Mussolini’s residence in Rome. The underlying question of this paper is what role museums as heritage sites play in the renegotiation of a problematic past, and whether they can also have an active role in either supporting or challenging the official narrative. As heritage is socially constructed and defined through present circumstances, the narratives of this particular museum reveal a conflicting past as mirrored by the national narrative. The paper also questions whether public perception of this site has changed over time and considers how the recent transformation into a museum signifies a shift from the post-war interpretation, which may or may not reflect a high- level political agenda. ........ 2 renegotiation of Italy’s Fascist past. 1) For details of a Heritage of the dictatorship in Italy The results of the pilot study shed light privately owned collection of Mussolini not only on how the museum has decided iconography, see his research, which began as a pilot to remember Mussolini’s life, but also on G. Pieri (2013: 235). study for the author’s doctorate the public perception of the place: far from carried out in 2016, focuses on being a place of negative emotions, this site is TMussolini’s residence in Rome—Villa today a leisure place for Romans and tourists 2) The city of Bolzano was the first to Torlonia—which will be analysed as alike. From damnatio memoriae in the post- display a permanent a dictatorial heritage site using visual war period, followed by abandonment and exhibition on the Italian dictatorship in and textual analysis and ethnographic neglect, to full rehabilitation, it becomes the basement of the interviews. This site is today a museum clear that the dark memories once attached Monument to Victory, a Fascist memorial to the with a dual function: 1) it showcases the to Villa Torlonia have been removed, which annexation of South Tyrol by Italy in World original eighteenth-century property raises questions regarding the role and War I. For details about formerly owned by the Torlonia family; and shift of emotions in relation to a dictatorial the Fascist dictatorship exhibition, see BZ ’18- 2) it is the only state-owned museum with heritage site. ’45. Un monumento, a display on Mussolini.1 To this day, Italy This paper will be divided in three parts. una città, due dittature. Un percorso espositivo lacks both a national museum providing an Firstly, I will discuss the current political nel Monumento alla Vittoria (Vienna/ interpretation of the country’s Fascist past debate around Mussolini’s material legacies, Bolzano: Folio; Milano: and a War Museum debating Italy’s role in and how the decision to open a museum Morellini, 2016). World War II, which makes Villa Torlonia inside Mussolini’s residence fits within that a crucial case study in understanding the debate. Secondly, I will describe the museum 163 Flaminia Bartolini display and how Mussolini’s life at the Villa attempt to present Mussolini as a historical is depicted, along with the contemporary figure, but one which spoke of a national perception of the place as revealed by difficulty in dealing with the Fascist past. interviews with staff and visitors. Thirdly, I will present some concluding remarks on the role of museums in showcasing ........ difficult histories and the impact that these interpretations have on public debate. Mussolini’s cult of personality The theoretical framework of this article starts from and challenges Sharon The cult of Mussolini was at the core Macdonald’s book on Nazi heritage in of the strategies implemented through Germany. According to Macdonald, propaganda to build consensus among “difficult heritage” arises when a past is re- Italians; this pervaded not only the twenty cognised as worth remembering but at the years of his dictatorship but continues to same time creates difficulties in the present, be present in popular culture today in a as it generates conflict in dealing with diluted form (Gundle et al. 2013). The cult of contemporary identity (Macdonald 2009: Mussolini opened a direct communication 7). Similarly, the “difficult” Fascist heritage channel between the leader and Italians in generated a fear of perpetuating social a way which polarised sympathies toward division and fuelling divided memories in Il Duce but not necessarily the Fascist party the post-war period, so a process of removal (Bosworth 2005). This division has also of Fascist symbols from public buildings allowed the cult of Mussolini’s personality was put into place (Arthurs 2014). to survive in the post-war period, regardless When, after a global or civil war, a of criticism of Fascism itself. country needs to rebuild its identity, Mussolini’s memory in popular culture negotiating a dictatorial past creates is today preserved in Predappio, Il Duce’s tremendous tensions around the concept birthplace. Regarded as a place sacred of “shared memory.” Aside from national to the cult of the leader, it has been a site memorials to the victims—which might of pilgrimage since the foundation of also reveal some contested memories— the modern town in 1925. The regime other places associated with the dictatorship encouraged people to pay tribute to the may be “forgotten” and therefore be an “Dux” by making an almost mandatory expression of taboo, amnesia or denial (Carr visit to the house where Mussolini was born, 2014; Connerton 1989, 2008). Given that the church where he was baptised, and the the ideologies conveyed by such heritage school were his mother worked (Serenelli produce dissonance, contested memory and 2013). From 1957, when Mussolini’s body social division (Tunbridge and Ashworth was buried in Predappio, neo-fascist 1996), this paper will show how the display gatherings started again to pay tribute to on Mussolini is an example of a national their mythical leader. At present, thousands struggle to come to terms with a particular of neo-fascists visit Predappio three times a regime. year—to celebrate Mussolini’s birth, death, The transformation of places associated and the March on Rome —, giving rise to with the dictatorship and the way they have a new, disturbing form of “dark tourism” or have not been reused, testifies to the shift (Luzzatto 2014). However, despite plans in meaning attributed to these places. The for building a museum of the History of creation of a museum can serve both to Totalitarian Italy, which should open in remember or forget a difficult past, or even Predappio in 2020, places in Predappio provide a selective narrative of the dictatorial directly linked to Mussolini have not past. As we shall see, Villa Torlonia was an undergone a process of heritage-making: 164 From Iconoclasm to Museum: Mussolini’s Villa in Rome as a Dictatorial Heritage Site Fig. 1 Rome, Villa Torlonia: façade of the Villino Nobile. Photo credit: Flami- nia Bartolini. Fig. 2 Rome, Villa Torlonia: rear façade of the neglected Villino Nobile in 1977. Photo credit: Archivio Storico Capitolino none of his properties has been transformed into a state-owned interpretation site, nor have any been destroyed (Bartolini 2018). They simply stand there as places of nostalgic worshipping, an expression of the Italian state’s impasse over dealing with the dictator’s material legacies. ........ to it are decorated with flowers and grottoes Villa Torlonia: historical background with neoclassical copies of Roman murals. A description of the Villa made at the Located on the Via Nomentana, Villa time by Giuseppe Checchetelli shows how Torlonia is an eighteenth-century Villa, the inspiration for this work was in fact formerly owned by the Torlonia family from Adriano’s Villa at Tivoli (Agati 2010: 12).