THE THIRD ROME,1870-1950:AN INTRODUCTION

Demolitions at the Markets of Trajan, ca. 1930. [Museo di Roma, 0/104J.

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The Third Rome,1870-1950:An lntroductionSpiro Kostof

Porta Pia today, with the monument to the Bersaglieri by1. Mancini and P. Morbiducci (1932). This exterior facadeof the gate is by V. Vespignani, 1865; the tower behind itbelongs to the inner facade by Michelangelo. [F.Rigamonti].

The Walls at Porta Pia, with the breach to the right; takenby L. Tuminello on 21 September 1870. [Museo di Roma].

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PreambleRape ... The third sack ... Betrayal of historic patri­mony. For many who know and love Rome, whathas happened to it in the last one hundred yearscan only be characterized in such terms. After theGoths and the Vandals, after the mercenaries ofCharles V in 1527, the fateful city succumbed onefinal time to a spectacular ravaging. lt carne at thehands of its own people-politicians, landowners,speculators-who destroyed a third of its built en­vironment and more than half of its green in thename of progress and urban renewal.

For others, what has happened was necessary. Rometoo, despite the Colosseum and the imperial foraand St. Peter's and Piazza Navona, had to becomea modern city. lt had to cope with implosive popu­lation and the motor caro

This exhibition is not designed to justify the stanceof one side or the other. On this issue, it is tooeasy, too simple, to be polemical. Rome is every­body's city. lts monuments and its great _publicspaces ha ve been a staple of the Western experi­ence, like the Bible and the plays of Shakespeare.Man-handling this experience excites and angers usalI. Understandably so.

We are choosing not to be polemical. Our aim is torepresent and to explain what happened. The periodsince 1870, which saw the most extensive transfor­mation in the fabric of Rome, is also the leastknown period of its physical history-in this coun­try at any rate. This' lacuna deserves to be filledproperly, dispassionately. The story is interesting notonly for its own sake, but also because it condi­tions the historic Rome that is the object of ourreverence and pilgrimage. For what we see and studyof its architectural history has been pre-selected,edited, and staged for us by the rulers and plan­ners of modern Rome. The exhibition presents thedocuments, sets up the debate. Recrimination, com­passion, or praise-these are the viewer's privileges.The term Third Rome is a convenient way to refer tothe city as the capital of ltaly, following upon theRomes of the emperors and the popes. It has a neatbeginning: 20 September 1870, when the Royalltalian Army breached the classical Walls at Porta

Pia and put an end to the one-thousand-years-oldtemporal rule of the see of Peter. It was the crown­ing act of the unification of Italy that had been inthe making since the collapse of the Napoleonicorder. For Rome, it meant the rude awakening of apicturesque, backward, but immensely prestigioustown of some 230,000 people, through the influx ofa massive government apparatus; a new middle classofbureaucrats, bankers, and speculators; and work­ing people drawn to the capital of the young King­dom by the promise of unusual opportunity. Itmeant housing facilities for tens of thousands, ac­commodation for government offices, new roads,and 'public services. It meant, beyond alI this, thefashioning of a national image-the iconography ofunity.

Actually, at least for the physical history of Rome,the Breach of Porta Pia was not a brusque starting­point. The architectural and planning activity of thelast pope-king Pius IX constituted one of the moreprogressive elements of a notoriously reactionary

.- administration. This activity must be considered asthe exordium for the planning of the Third Rome.The expansion of the city toward the eastern hillsand the intent to do so north of the Vatican, in theflatland of Prati di Castello; the placement of themain railroad station on the Viminat by the Bathsof Diocletian; the attempt to link this reactivatedpart of town with the traditional core by means ofa major new artery (the precursor of Via Nazionale)-these and other initiatives of Pius' regime preju­diced planning decisions after 1870. This is why weopen the exhibition with the sunset years of papalRome. Our aim in the introductory section is notonly to recreate, by way of contrast, the image ofthe city at the time of the Breach, but to suggestconnections and continuities.

In the main, the theme of the exhibition is the up­dating of the historic fabric since 1870-its uses andabuses. This imposes an obvious and welcome cir­cumscription on the otherwise immodest subject,the planning history of modern Rome.

Geographically, the area within the Walls becomesour prime concerno The development of the distant

periphery, planless and undisciplined, occurred gen­erally .speaking on historically virgin land; it ha s,therefore, little bearing on the theme. Suburbanarchitecture is represented, for the most partI by theresidential typologies which are included in the sec­tion on housing. Only three extramural installationsreceive detailed treatrnent, due partly to their specialimportance, and also, at least in the case of two ofthem, for the conscious attempt in their design toemulate the forms and programs of classical Rome.These are: the university complex to the northeast,now called Città Universitaria; the Foro Mussolini,now Foro Italico, to the northwest, beyond Prati diCastello and Quartiere Mazzini; and, about five milessouth of the old center, the monumental complexof the Universal Exposition of 1942 (EUR) whichwas never held.

Chronologically, our story ends with the disintegrationof the Fascist regime. The city within the Walls hasbeen, on the whole, undisturbed since then, and thelatest Master PIan, approved finally in 1962, prohibitsany future changes. We have extended the terminusof the exhibition to 1950 only to be able to illustratethe execution of Via della Conciliazione leading toSt. Peters-a project started in 1937, in celebration ofthe earlier accord between the Vatican and Musso­lini's government, but completed only after WorldWar It in time for the Holy Year of 1950 which wasto celebrate his fallo

Rome, New and OldOn the 2,677th birthday of Rome, 21 Aprii 1924,when he wasimade honorary citizen at the Campi­doglio, Benito Mussolini pronounced his official viewon the physical future of the city he had conquered.

I should like to divide the problems of Rome,the Rome of this Twentieth Century, into twocategories: the problems of necessity and theproblems of grandeur. One cannot confrontthe latter unless the first have been resolved.The problems of necessity rise from thegrowth of Rome, and are encompassed in thisbinomial: housing and communications. Theproblems of grandeur are of another kind: we

Via XX Settembre (formerly Strada Pia) about 1868; fromFontana delI'Acqua Felice in the foreground to Michel­angelo's Porta Pia.

The building on the right-hand side of the street, just be­hind the fountain, is the Granarone of Urban VIII, demol­ished in 1937. Between it and Porta Pia, the Villa Bracciano.[Museo di Roma].

Aerial photograph, including this same stretch of Via XXSettembre as it appears today. On the right side of thestreet, the large mass of the Ministry of Finance by R.Canevari, 1877, the first major government building to bebuilt after the Breach. At the lower right-hand corner ofthe picture, Piazza dell'Esedra by G. Koch (1896-1902) andthe beginning of Via Nazionale. [Fotocielo].

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must liberate aH of ancient Rome from the

mediocre construction that disfigures it, butside by side ~ith the Rome of antiquity andChristianity we must also create the monu­mental Rome of the Twentieth Century. Romecannot, mustnot, be solely a modern city, in.the by now banal sense of that word; it mustbe a city worthy of its glory, and that glorymust be revivified tirelessly to pass it on asthe legacy of th~ Fascist era to generations tocome.l

This grandiloquent program encapsuiates the pIan­ning philosophy of nationalist Rome during the en­tire period reviewed by the exhibition. From thestart, the city's post-papai destiny was envisaged interms of expansion and modernist aggiornamenfo onthe one hand, and the conjuring of a new image onthe other, an image that would speak of Italianness,of unity, of grandeur. The two goals were, in fact,one. Residentiai quarters far a dramatically swellingpopuiation, roads to connect them to the oider cen­ter, improved means of communication throughoutthe expanded metropolis-these were at Once theproduct of the new exigencies and a conspicuouspart of the new image. They accommodated thedaiIy life of the capitai which embraced over 500,000peopie by 1900, more than twice the number at theBreach of Porta Pia; and they proved, in additiorl,that it was worthy of holding a pIace of distinctionamong the great cities of modern Europe.

The other part of the image was the past-and it toowas caught in the duai fury of progressivism andpride. Large chunks of it disappeared to make roomfor traffic and the monuments of the Third Rome.The rest served as show and foiI. Far the Third Rome

was competingnot only with its neighbors in Eu­rope but with itseIf: and the pastI in this earnestcontestI was an asset, a hindrance, and a challenge.

It is in this light that we must view the fatefui choiceto build the Third Rome on the carcass of the othertwo, to revive this carcass, revise it, and stretch outfrom it aiong predetermined paths. There were, fromthe outset, proposais such as that of Baron Hauss­mann to build the new Rome outside and at somedistance from the old; or, at the least, to set up anew monumental core of government buildings andother public institutions so as to dislocate the rituai

Piazza Venezia today with the Vittoriano, and Palazzetto Venezia moved to the west. [Courtesy of F.Quilici].

Piazza Venezia fram the Campidoglio, about 1870. The immediate foreground is the roof of Santa Maria Aracoeli, behindwhich, at center, Palazzetto Venezia. Left and right of the piazza, Palazzo Venezia and Palazzo Torlonia, the latter demolishedca. 1900 to make raom for the present PalaZizodelle Assicurazioni Generali di Venezia of.1911. [Museo di Roma, Parker series].

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center of the city and create a separate umbilicus.The east was favored. Quintino Sella, statesman andComptian positivist, soughtto demystify Rome andredefine it as a center of science and the intellectuallife, the brain of Italy. Re sawthe modern structuredevelop with Via XX Settembre as its backbone, astret=t that joined the Quirinal palace, now the offi­ciarì:esidence of the King, andthe Porta Pia whichhad already assumed the status of a nationalist mar­tyrium. TheMinistry of Finance, of which he wasfor a' timein charge, was installed in 1877 m a vasthe,w building along this artery, in' the hopes that itwould ad as ,architectural magnet far the momen­tous dislocation.

It did not work. The Third Rome preferred promis­cuity to independence, and did so once again bothfor the sake of expedience and for the sake of his­toricimagery. Expedience was two-pronged: economyand the pressure of time. Rome had to transform it­self into the capitill of Italy with frantic haste. (Theofficial transfer of the government from Florence tookpIace on 1 July 1871.) The finances of the city admin7istration' were quite unequal to the task, and the par­simoniousness of thefirstgavernments brought littlerelief. lt is conceivable'that a totally new city or a new .adillinistrative, bU5>iness,.anqcultural complex would,in the elld,.haveproved more economical, comparedto the vast ultimate cost, fihancial and human, entailedby the .~Ùggering. program'Of ~~propriation anddemolition. But under the immediaté' circumstancesof haste and penury, piecemeal adjustment seemedthe prudent thing to do. MiDi~!riesaI1d other gov-

King Vietor Emanuel II; a bust by Scipione Tadolini.[E Rigamonti].

ernmenLolfice.s''Yere.housedin older available build­iitgs/ existent streets were widened and straightened..-v . _._ .... __ ~' __ '._~'_' __ ' .. _ .... _ .... ~

up; new ones cut through by.meansof massive, de-struction-the so-ca,Iled sventramenti;Jhellewly deveJ-

-oped residential quarters werehooked up to thisamplified stJ;eet structure; and the suburban sprawlused the radiaI disposition ofthe consular highways'of antiquity for some semblance of order.'Butt1l1s' is -anIy one partof the argument. The otherwas the fact of Rome. Through the long struggle ofunification, Risorgimento rhetoric of every persuasionhad trumpeted thehistoric fatality of Rome. Mazzi:"nian republicans, Garibaldini, and the royalists ofPiedmont alI recognized that ltalian unity was im­possible without occupying Rome, and ineffectualwithout designating it the national capital. "Atter th~Rome of the emperors, atter the Rome of the popesjthere will come the Rome of the People;' GiuseppeMazzini declared. "Rome or death!" was the Garibal­dian battlecry. And the mastermind af unity, CamilloCavour, was honest enough to recognize the inevita­bility of Rome even when this meant thedemption ofhisnative Piedmont and its chief city Turin., "Ourfate .. .is to see to it that the Eternal City, inwhichtwenty-five centuries have accumulated every kindof gIory, becomes the splendid C"pital of the ltalianKingdom;' he said in 1860, a passage Mussofini wasfond of quoting in his own speeches? 'With this emotional background, ifwould hay'e beenremarkable indeed if, atter the Bn~àch of Porta Pia,the historic center was to be abandoned or down­graded. Qn th~ contrary, it was imperative to.take,

Marcello Piacentini project for a new metropolitan axis,1916. [From Capilolium, I, 1925, 419].

possession ai the city properly, to make visible thec~Qfiua~d=--()ut otfheinillermial administratio~-af Sto Peter a~d. lnto· thé sfeward.ship of King Vietor.,.-- ••u. __•.• •••••• _ .•• _ -,

Emanuel 11. Tne installation of the royal house at theQuirinal, th~ winter palace of the popes, cannot beexplained away in terms of its availability and size;the aet was symbolic of the shift of power. Nor is itmerely praetical that govemment offices commonlyoccupied church property expropriated under the billof 1866, app.li.e..d t()_RQme. in 1873, that abolisheqownershìp'prTvileges of ~eligious groups known col-:­fectìvely as the asse ecclesiastico~

To deemphasize the ritual centers of papal Rome andrepossess the spirit of the city, monuments to thenew saints of the Risorgimento flooded the tradi­tional iconography of the Roman empire and theChurch. Their placing was, more often than not, aconscious statement of new intentions._Jbe_ stonepile in memory of the arch-hero Victor Emanuel II

.. rose ln--Pi.iiia:' venezia, -against the Capitoline hill. which had for centuries been identified with the spo­

radic populist rule of the commune, as opposed tothe enduring absolutism of Peter's temporal power.Roundabout lay the most concentrated remains ofimperial Rome-the fora, the Palatine, the Colos­seum, and the theater of Marcellus-with which theyoung Kingdom was anxious to establish spiritualaffinity. I.beQ1)_e!ltI'Kof Via Nazionale and its west-

. ern extensioIl,Cor~o VJ:ttoTlO- Emamielè--ffitne-1870s-aria lS80s,turne_d Piazza Venezia into the prime tra.f­Tic nucleus of the Third Rome, as the presence of--trtl:Vitt.oriano, with the Altar of the Fatherland, hadturned it into a ritual nucleus.

Later, Mussolini's highways of grandezza, Viadell'Impero and Via del Mar~, reaffirmed this cen-'::­tralization and identified it with the famous orator of

the balcony at Palazzo Venezia-and this, despiteareturn since World War I to the philosophy of Sellaand the dislocation eastward of the urban center. In

1916, far example, Marcello Piacentini had proposeda monumental new backbone for the city, runningbetween the centraI railroad station (to be movedoutside the Walls, to the east of Porta Maggiore) anda northem station beyond Piazza del Popolo. Thisspina dorsale would pass through Piazza delle Terme(Baths of Diocletian) and Piazza Barberini, and along

the top of the Spanish stairs; it would siphon off alImajor traffic from the older town, and would serveas the setting for the ceremonial and administrativebuildings of the Third Rome. 'The old city wouldthus gradually lose its vitality and commerciaI value... and will remain as the Citadel, the Arx ... 1/5 A vari­ant of this idea was incorporated into the major revi­sion of the Master PIan of 1909, developed by a com­mission appointed in 1923 and never sanctioned bylaw. In a book of 1927, Oario Barbieri argued for dis­location from aI/scientificI/ viewpoint, presenting itas a geographical and topographical inevitability. Bar­bieri proposed to supersede the focal interest ofPiazza Venezia, and its rival Piazza Colonna-whichformed a secondary node as the public space of acluster of important buildings including the Parlia­ment (Palazzo di Montecitorio), newspaper offices,the stock exchange, and the late nineteenth-centurydepartment store Bocconi - with the establishment ofa large piazza around the Baths of Diocletian situatedmore equitably between the older city and the mod­em expansion outside the Walls.6 Again, during thepreparatory debate leading up to the Master PIan of1931, a group of architeets headed by Piacentini putforth anew his abiding pIan far the transplantationof the urban center.

But to no avail. Ibe Fascist arteries of Viadell'lmperoand Via del Mare were more or less completed by

, 1931, and the Master PIan could do no other but to-recognize the irrevocable centrality of Piazza Venezia.·Only atter World War II did the idea of abandoningthe older city for a new eastern nucleus return -andembodied formally in the ìy1aster PIan of 1962. Ihe ,spina dorsale was now called'--asse attrezzato. It was pro­fèeted some distance beyond the edge of the builtcity, in the open country, stretching between Pietra-

lata and Centocelle. The Master PIan is due to expirethis year; but there is as yet little evidence of theasse attrezzato, and the phenomenal post- War de­velopment of EUR in the south, securely strapped tothe old center by Via Cristoforo Colombo and thesubway, may well have preempted it forever.

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Monuments and Local ColarBuilding the mode m tissue of Rome and fashioningan iconography of national unity through the glori­fication of the statesmen and soldiers of the ItalianstruggI e had very quickly compelled municipal au­thorities to formulate attitudes toward the olderstructure of the city they inherited (attitudes-onecannot honestly calI them policy). One thing wasalways dear. OfficialIy, conservation}:vas viewed' asa'futÙ::tionofrrionumeI1taIity.HighIights in the built~hvironment of the past merited the effort to pre­serve them, Dothbecauseof their intiinslc value asmonuments and also because their visual fcirmcoùld

.'be manipulated to erihance mban perspectives. rnaddition, their presence would inspire the produc­tion of dignified modem neighbors that emulatedtheir scale and reflected-in materials, color, or somefeature of detail-the formaI cohesion of old andnew.

The rest, standard construction that surrounded oroverlay the monuments, had no daims to survival.To plead its case opened one to derisive charges ofsentimentality. Two statements, some fifty yearsapart, illustrate the tenacity of this official point ofview toward conservation. In 1886, in an open letterto the eminent historian of medieval Rome Ferdinand

Gregorovius, who had deplored the on-going de­struction of the older fabric of the city, the presi­dent of the Accademia Romana di San Luca, AndreaBusiri Vici, articulated the position of this venerablecongregation of humanists and artists in the folIow­ing terms. The old fabric had two aspects: that which

The so-called tempIe of Vesta, looking north, with the so­called tempIe of Fortuna Virilis and the house of theCrescentii immediately behind it; 1870s. [Gabinetto Foto­grafico Nazionale, EI16057].

was monumental, j"both in the strictly artisti c andarchaeological, as well as the historical sense"; andthat which was characteristic. The first was of uni­versaI value and must at alI costs be respected. Thesecond was only of momentary value.

lf [by characteristic] one means the characterof a given epoch, or a given period of-history,it is quite natural that this character will van­ish in time when the epoch itself comes to anend. If one means certain accidental peculi­arities, ... certain picturesque motifs dear topainters of cityscapes, to wàtercolorists and,in generaI, to lovers of art and poetry, I wouldnot deny that it hurts to see them disappear,and that it would be so much better if theycould somehow be preserved. But ... one can­not sacrifice to such peculiarities the con­venience, the health, the growth of a city likeRome.?

The later spokesman is no other than MussoIini. Heenunciated at every possible occasion that hisage"must respect to the l1ighest degree th<:itwhiChrep­rE~sen.tsthe'1!ving testimony of the glory of oldRome. But monuments, ruins, are one thing; the pic­turesque and so":called loeal color, another" (speech

"of 18 March 1932). And again: "The millennial mon­uments of om history must 100m gigantic in theirl1ecessary solitude" (speech of3TI5e-cember 1925).8

The defense for the contrary view became less out­spoken than wistful under Fascism but was neversilenced throughout the period under review. In

The same area in 1935, taken from the campanile of SantaMaria in Cosmedin. [Alinari,41787].

Gustavo Giovannoni, it found at least one eloquentvOlce thaTafguea~-15eyoÌld nostalgia, for thecor~c~ptofàmbTé;Ùisirio:';that entire sections of the old fabric

.~~re worthy of preservation because urban envi~0I"!­ment was a physica!, socia!, and cultural entity; thatmonuments derived their authority and scale· fromcoexistence with humbler construction.9 But BusiriViçfLmtionfl,li?:_Q._tiQns=.c01:lVenknçe, health, andgrowth --:-prevailed _tl1r.o),lgho_ut.Fascism added to"fhema-familiar argument: demolition and new con­struction made jobs for many hundreds.

The question of convenience usualIy amounted toeasy passage through the older city on a scale con­sistent with the steady increase in population and theimproving means of surface transportation. At firstthe problem was simple enough. A private companycalIed the Società Romana Omnibus operated a fewlines of public transit by horsedrawn carriages whicheasily negotiated the traditional network of streets.These vehicles were slowly replaced, beginning in1882, with a tramway system, also horsedrawn until1890, after which it shifted gradually to electric trac­tion. The fixed tracks for the streetcars encumbered

principal streets and squares, and became increas­ingly undesirable with the proliferation of motorvehicles. From 1920 onward the city converted itspublic transportation into a system of buses, relegat­ing streetcarsto the periphery. lO In 1930 Rome hadabout thirty thousand motor vehicles, with a noiseproblem notable enough to occupy Mussolini him­self. His solution for ending the noise: more cars! Ina rare miscalculation of the Italian character, theDuce asserted that when there .fire many more ve­hicles on the streets, "all must channel themselvesone after the other, and then there will no longer beany motive for annoying the public with uselesshonking" (speech of 18 March 1932). Il

Whatever the means of transportation, it was a fore­gone conclusion from the start that the older towncould not be traversed for long without cuttingthrough it some more direct and wider routes thanit had available. !n an east-west direction, the majorne~d un.til 1900was-effident èommunication be­tWeen the new quarters around the railroad station

Traffic on Via Nazionale in the early part of the century.[Gabinetto Fotografico Nazionale, G/566].

Scheme of major traffic routes, actual and projected,through the historic center.

,",,:'"

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Interior court of a tenement in the block bounded by Piazza della Conso­lazione, Via Monte Caprino, Foro Olitorio and Via della Consolazione;before its demolition ca. 1930. [Museo di Roma, C/2231].

on the one hand} and on the other} the Borgo onthe right bank with St. Peter's and the Vatican} theup-changed goal of pilgrims and tourists. Yia Nazion­aÌe and Corso Vittorio Emanuèlè joined' bv PiazzaVeneZIa}provided the answer. By then} however} two ­Sìg:rlhcantcievelopments. put pressure for east-westarteries fUrther north. Piazza Colonna} as we havementioned already} gained in stature (and traffic)with the decision to abandon projects for a new Par­liament building at Magnanapoli above the imperialfora, in favor of a remodeled and enlarged Palazzodi Montecitorio where the house of deputies hadbeen meeting on a temporary basis since the transferof the capita!. The new Galleria Colonna} in its formand location} acknowledged the growth of this piazzaas the major commerciaI and business node of theThird Rome. ?econdly1Prati di Castello} the flatlandnorth of the Borgo, had been developed through pri­vate initiative into a thriving guarter with à popula­tion of about thirty thousand by the end of the firstdecade of this century. To meet the needs of thesetwo foci} the Master PIan of 1909 proposed: (1) toextend the line of Via Tritone, a late nineteenth­century street, beyond Piazza Colonna toward theBorgo by means of a widened Via dei Coronari; and(2) to create still another east-west axis} from Piazza

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di Spagna to Prati} through the continuation of Viadella Croce in a straight line running by the Mau­soleum of Augustus. Neither artery was realized} butthe problems remained on the boards until the endof the Fascist era-and even beyond it.

The principal north-south thoroughfare continuedtoube Via del Corso. If anything, the placement oft~ Vittoriano on axis with it formalized this famousavenue that linked Piazza del Popolo} the ceremonialentrance to the city in pre-railroaddays; -Piazza'

'Colonna; àn:athé'now redési.gm~d PiaZza Venezia.What had to be solved was the extension of theCorso southward beyond Piazza Venezia. A directline was clearly out of the question: ideally both theCapitoline and the Palatine should be skirted. Mus­solini's Via del Mare and Via dell'Impero could bejustified} at one levet as having filled this need. Westof the Corso, lesser north-south outlets were con­stantly being searched. Among several daredevil so­lutions that were threatened in the course of thedecades} Via Arenula in the 1880s and Corso delRinascime;toin the mid-1930s are two disjointed'stretches that did get done. And of course the lung­

otevere proved of immense value for north-south t~af­Jic on either side of the river.

As for the question of health, it carne up in the ob­vious manner. Older rundown sections of town-theGhetto, the tenements along the Tiber, the west andsouth slopes of the Capitoline, the area around thetheater of Marcellus-were lived in by the poorerclasses. They were scenes of neglect and unseemlycongestion-and} by implication at least, of vice. Tobring light and air into alI parts of the city organismand improve the density quotient-not to mentionthe imperati ves of grandezza that dictated the libera­tion of historic monuments-the pick must have itsway.

At first the scope of this urban surgery tended tobe reasonable} if not exactly modest. Points of stressfor the traffic pattem were probed with some con­cem for curtailing destruction and coaxing the fabricinto shape. The Commission of Five set up by thecity council to review the final version of the MasterPian of 1873 cautioned, in its report, against hastyor extravagant cuts. lt recommended pulling downold and decrepit houses with no "interior passages:'

Aurelio MartineIli, master pian, 1871. [From Martinelli,Roma nuova nell'icnografia delle grande strade ... , fold-out pian].

':'.2;

Goffredo Narducci, alternate solution to Corso VittorioEmanuele, 1881. [From Narducci, Progello di una nuova viacentrale ... , fold-out pian].

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The new arteries need not be straight or uniformlywide, but could be irregular and discontinuous fQrthe sake of sparing bits of extant construction. 12 Bycontrast, the council was beset by insistent Hauss­manns advocating the logic of the straight-edge andthe "grand scheme~' An alternative design to the offi­cial PIan recreated and amplified the famous "star" ofSixtus V (1585-1590). Its author, Aurelio Martinelli,developed some years later a variant proposal forthe center-a swashbuckling array of connectionscelebrating the superiority of directness over devia­tion.13 To solve the problem of east-west passagethrough the Renaissance section of town, one Gof­fredo Narducci proposed a straight avenue of twentyto twenty-five meters width running singlemindedlyfrom the Campidoglio stairs to Ponte SantAngelo.14In comparison, the city's solution Cor<;o VittorioEmanuele, is a masterpiece of common sense-agraceful curve from Piazza Venezia to the river thathonors the course of the historic Via Papale andutilizes a string of great monuments in an eventfulsequence of revealing prospects and pleasant stops.The true Ha uss:rrElJJl1Lz~!ionof. the Third. Romecomes under the Fascists. Ii~o~i~g the~elatively fìex~

l5tepfec@erifonFLe'Hist MasteLPlans .•md. Gioyan.­noni' s unttriI1g aq,vocacy of diradamento in pIace of._s~entr.~mento, Le., the repair and regularization of the'èxisting fabric in preference for abstract surgery, theplanners of the new regime found the example ofthe Martinellis and the Narduccis more congenial tothe Fascist mentality. ~ccording to Fascist theory,straight and wide avenuis-wer-e:-lnaispensable. Yòu

-'couldnot reconcile tortuous narrow streets with ac­tive traffic and sufficient light and air. What is more,the street responded to a principle of public mor­ality of which the State was the interpreter. Thestraight line was the best, "the linear path thatdoes not lose itself in the meanders of Hamlet-like

thought:' There were, in sum, three principal lawsthat informed Fascist design, architecture, and ur­ban planning included: the law of health, the law ofspeed (prompt and fast f')(f'nJtion), "Dd thp Romanaw. This last was the insistence on the grandiose,

notin the sense of the spectacular but of the im­posing and powerful, imponente e possente.15.-------~---

Housing the DispossessedProviding for the d'isplaced population, the victims ofJ!lonymentality anci the PQlicy ofsventmmentçdidnot

'l1ave priority. In the ear1y decades of the Third Rome,_!bis_p.?.Ell!~!i?~vy~?absorbe4yvi.tl1~n the city! or else

ended up in shanty-towns at the edges, places likeMandrione and Porta Porte se; here, it had to com­pete with immigrant workers who arrived from alIparts of Italy by the thousands to provide the laborforce for the building boom. The city council, in itsdeliberations, touches on the subject almost casualIy,the mayor rendering ritual assurances that somethingis being done. To give one example: during the de­bate of 20 April 1885 for the demolition of theGhetto, there is a fervent pIea by one councilmanthat the Banca Tiberina, contracted to rebuild thisarea, be forced to include in its scheme some hous­ing for the four thousand inhabitants who were be­ing evicted. The administration cavalierly dismissesthis request by referring to some new residential de­velopments on the boards, and especialIy the onebetween Porta Pinciana and Porta Salaria ILWhich,in actuality, shaped up soon afterward as one of themost prestigious upper class districts of the ThirdRome.

Two official efforts supported by the council were,in the end, only of symbolic value. Neither was ex­clusively geared to the victims of the pick. Since1867 a non-profit organization called "Società anon­ima edificatrice di case per la classe pove,ra e labo­riosa" provided very limited low-rent housing. Thecouncil, perhaps with a guilty conscience, supportedits work through the cession of free land and theguaranteeing of bank loans. 17 In another responsiblemood, the council gave up 25,050 square meters ofits land on the Esquiline to Senator AlessandroRossi, who agreed to build upon it, at his own costand within a period of three years, a number of low­cost houses, mostly for single families. By 1885 thehigh-rise development of the surrounding area putextraordinary economic pressure on the fledglingcommunity. The touncil paid Rossi back for the costof the operation, and resold buildings and land tospeculators.18 For the rest, we might cite the experi­ment of a private firm to build a popular quarter atTestaccio in relation to developing an industriaI zone

here. The result, thirty years in the making, wauldnat be considered a madel community.

After the crash52f tb~:Ja.te_J~§_QsLtb~gemglitiQnf~Y~rsubsided. Cancurrently,a leftward shift in city goy-

" ernment, especiaily uÌ1der' thè adrrÌ.inistratian af the,~ar IrPisfÒ NatharqJ:90?~I9I3),-inspired -ari'oi~­

ggrly, sJlstained program af sUbsÌdized nousing.Naneth~!e~~, _a.ggI9EI}~r~!ionsor shacks or baracche

multipIied. Byi920 there were pernàps aver fiftY"thausand baraccanti an the main approaches ta Ramefar wham autharities expressed apen disdain. Andthen, with the advent af Fascism, urban surgery re­turnecl with a vengeance. Far twenty years demoli­tian af the alder sectians af tawn went an at anunprecedented scale, rendering hameless thausandsaf lawer class Romans. The apening af Via dell'Im­pe~9_?:laIle,ina ruthl~ss:straight linef_rom théTol­osseum ta Piazza Venezia,aèsti"oYèdS;SQOhaQga.pleuniti>.The projectÉar the isalatiau..oLth.e_M.al.lsQle.umòf Augustus cleared,in the mid-1930s,28,OOO squaremeters'ofbuiit"'èriviranmeilt c~ntaining 'at -least 120

"""-- ,,_ . o', _ ,__ ~ o.. m_ ,~' ._._ •• ,.. .-.'_~'_~_. _,~._,~,~._,,_m. - .. , '.- --- -,- '< •. --,', •• ••__ "··.h· - •. .-""'r ~ •• "_

multi:':starIid tÈ~nements.

The refugees af the~,~"?.Qf1:!lm~e!!tL~er:~ll()""JJ()1JseJiJjy,the.regLm~ in~'ieries ()f ersatzcail1mu!lities called

- pprgate, built rapidly in the apen country té;thé'èast,ten miles or more away fram the city praper andtied ta it anly by railroad lines. They cansisted afrows af plain single-family dwellings which, at leastin the beginning, shared cammunal services such aswater and sanitatian facilities. Administratively theborgate, literaIly "scraps af city;' did nat fit in any afthe faur regians inta which greater Rome had beendivided since 1924. These were: The rioni af the aldercity; the immediately adjacent quartieri, bath withinand withaut the classical Walls, that embraced thenewer past-1870 Rome; the more distant peripheryaf the suburbi; ancl finally, the Raman cauntryside orAgro romano. Neither arganically incorparated intathe urban structure nar true agricultural settlers, theresidents af the borgate led an ambivalent existencebetween city and country, living in one and com­muting ta the first for their livelihaad. 19

Fascist ratianaIe for this massive transplantatian suf­fered fram paradax. Dispersement agreed, an the

Group of low-cost houses with shops designed for SenatorAlessandro Rossi, 1877. [Archivio di Stato di Roma, 30Notai Capito lini, Ufficio 39, voI. CLXXXVIII,236ff.].

Detail of frieze on east building of Piazzale Augusto Im­peratore, 1940. [M. Treib].

19

------~----._-~-------------------- . __ ~. ·--··-0 __ ,_ ._~_ ..._._. ..__."., .__ , ~~ ,~ .. . . _

20

one hand, with the party's urban philosophy: to thinout the population of the congested centers, and stopthe flow into the major cities, by systematically re­settling the countryside. Borgate were extolled fartheir benefits to physical well-being and their prom­ise of bucolic bliss-the Virgilian plough tilling thesacred land. But at the same time, population growth,far Rome at any rate, was a basic tenet of Musso­lini's revival of the Augustan age. Fecundif:y_W51~n~­warded byth~ regim~, ,as it had been under the firstemperor of ancient Rome, and celibacy was frownedupon. By 1930, the one million mark had beenrea ched, which was probably dose to the populationof ancient Rome at its height, under Trajan andHadrian if not earlier under Augustus. But Musso­lini had a different figure: He spoke of the Augustancity with its population of four million! (speech of11 March 1923). al Living in borgate could thereforebe justified as positive support for the aims of theregime, in that it encouraged child-begetting. Thetheory was that unhealthy, cramped living conditionsadversely affected the birth rate by forcing fathers tostay away and neglect their family duties. And whatthe pick brought down was, unarguably, unhealthyand cramped. So it seemed that the sventramenti

which could be advocated far reducing density andairing the city organism also helped to increase thepopulation by giving rise to the fecund environmentof the borgate.

How Safe Is a Monument?Having opted far the monumental approach to con­servation, the authorities found themselves agàinst athomier issue. What characteristics made a particu­lar structure a monument worthy of preservation;and who decided the case? On the whole, the morerecent the structure in question, the less likely it wasto be respected. Many buildings of substance fromthe eighteenth and nineteenth centuriés disappeareèlwilliauYmuch fuss in the first decade"s ofthe ThirdRome. We might cite the gracious stairs of the Portof Ripetta 1?uilLunder Clement XI in 1704, and theTeatroMetastasio grandly rebuilt in 1840 accordingtò the designs of Nicola Carnevali. Later, it becameFascist policy to deprecate what was built sin ce 1870.

Masterworks of the period-for example, GaetanoKoch' s Palazzi;Ì'Amici next to Santa Susanna, andMuseo Baracca on Corso Vittorio Emanuele; Fran­cesco Azzurri's Hotel Bristol in Piazza Barberini, andtheTeatro Drammatico Nazionale to the east ofPiazza Venezia, also by him-were condemned afterbarely half a century of existence, an uncommonlyshort life far a public building of Rome.

Beyond the vulnerability of the recent pastI no, pe­riod was generally disparaged. Church architecturepresented something of a dilemma in the beginning.The pope as temporal ruler had, after all, been theenemy. The abolition of the asse ecclesiastico led to theseizure of much church property, as we have said,induding a number of well-known monasteries andpalaces. But by and large·these were merely remod­eled and pressed into service far 5tate and city func­tions. Many small churches succumbed, it is true, inthe first wave of demolitions, and some anti-dericalmalice was demonstrably at work. One antiderical­ist submitted a proposal to the city council far thewholesale liberation of antiquity in the Romàn Fo­rum and the Capitoline, which joyfully called farthe sacrifice of S. Francesca Romana, SS. Cosma eDamiano, S. Adriano and 55. Martina e Luca, andMichelangelo's ramp to the Campidoglio. 21 Whatwas established by all this, however, was only theprincipI e that all churches did not, by definition asit were, qualify as monuments.

The most blatant expression of anti-Church feelingcarne in the form of statues intended to antagonizethe Vatican. Whole sections of town like the Giani­colo were consecrated as memorials to the struggleagainst papal forces; there, the city set up an im­pressive monument to Garibaldi and rows of bustsof lesser Risorgimento heroes, in plain view of thedame of St. Peter's. But more pointedly, renownedsinners against the. authority of the Church wereallowed to claim in triumph the stages of theirdisgrace. On the slope of ground between Michel­angelo's ramp and the stairs of Santa Maria Aracoeli,Cola di Rienzo's image was raised in 1887 in me m­ory of his brief defiance of papal dominion aver thecity in the mid-fourteenth century, and his inaugur­ation of the ill-fated Roman Republic. At Campo deiFiori, scene of his burning at the stake in 1600,

Giordano Bruno was now honored with an eloquentstatue, hooded and standing on a base decoratedwith reliefs celebrating other famous heretics. AI­though financed by private donations, the agreementof the city council to provide public space for it inthe heart of papal Rome and the decision of themayor to attend the unveiling ceremony caused vio­lent riots between modem guelphs and ghibellines.

Th~xa,pprochemeI).t.oLChurchand .State was. slo~and difficult;it was also inescapable. When it finaUy

-'came, {nthe historic Lateran accords of 1929, the-extraterritoriality of the Vatican and (conditionally)ototner"prlnC1pàl CithoIic installations was formally·'

. rècognized, as it had been by Napoleon the Great'in 1809 during his occupation of Italy. Through its

custody of these monuments, and through newbuildings for its own use and heavy surrogate spec­ulation, the Church continued its active part in theshaping of the Roman environment. The"statues ofBruno and Garibaldi held their ground. Not onlythat, but next to the great knight rose the exuberantequestrian monument to his wife Anita Garibaldi,as Mussolini had promised in his report to Parlia­ment on the Lateran accords (14 May 1929).22

The following year, in seating a commission to drawup the new Master PIan of Fascist Rome, the gov­ernor Principe Boncompagni conveyed to the mem­bers this prescription of the Duce. Rome was to be

.s;.QD$idereçlin three vast categoriesof-e;'~ironmeili(1) Roma monumentale, subdivided into Roma anticaand Roma cristiana-rinascimentale; (2) Roma moderna,

. from 1870 to the start of the regime; and (3) Romà

·_.m~dernissimao'(Jf:l:;c.ista. The commission was in--- structed, in relation to the first C)fthese, to revive

the monuments of the classical phase and restorethose of the Christian-Renaissance phase. Tl1e..sec.­0Il4, modern Rome, should be brought clown. As

'-for the third, the new Master PIan must accommo­date what it safeguarded of the past to present traf­ficneeds. 23

By and large, then, it was officiallyagreed since 1870that the historically significantarchitecture of Romeextended from antiquity to the end of the seven­teenth century. The problem was to decide whichamong the hundreds of monuments that survivedfrom this vast period had precedence. In the case of

The inauguration of the monument to Giordano Bruno atCampo dei Fiori, 9 June 1889. The sculptor is Ettore Fer­rari. [Photograph by T. Fabbri; in Museo di Roma].

Passeggiata del Gianicolo, busts to Risorgimento heroes;18805. [F.Rigamonti].

21

classical remains, an articulate and impassionedlobby of archaelogists exerted considerable pressureon public opinion and, through the CommissioneArcheologica, also on the city administration. TheCommission was formed in 1870 to repIace the oldCommissariato delle Antichità e BelleArti, and soonafterward merged with the separately instituted Con­siglio d1\rte. The State had its own apparatus withinthe Ministry of Public Instruction, and large-scaleprograms of conservation-e.g~, the birth of the Pas­seggiata Archeologica in 1887 (realized only in1911), a park that embraced the area south of thePalatine and the Colosseum-reguired, additionally,the approvaI of Parliament.

Theoretically, ancient ruins belonged to the city andthe State. But control over them became nebulouswhen they happened to reside in private property.For everyconservational victory against entrepre­neurs in the first decades-the saving of a stretch ofthe so-called Servian Wall whose demolition wassought by the Società delle Ferrovie Romane for ex­tending the railroad station; the rejection of a pro­posaI to run a tramway line down the ancient ViaAppia; the insistence on the inviolability of the clas­sical Walls during the development of the QuartiereLudovisi north of Piazza Barberini-the city councilcould be held accountable in tens of other caseswhere inadeguate legislation or reluctant enforce­ment of it worked against the glory that was Rome.Even on property disposed of by the city, checkswere halfhearted. The buyer of municipal land wascontractually obliged to recognize the city's proprie­tary rights over alI objects of historical or artisticvalue found upon it. But of non-portable finds, usu­ally nothing was said. Major contracts with devel­opers sometimes provided for work stoppage in thecase of the unearthing of "vestiges of monumentswhich should be preserved"-two months for theproject to rebuild the land of the demolishedGhetto.24 It should be evident that the developermight, on occasion, be tempted not to report suchvestiges. When he did, he would at most be obligedto shelter them in a basement or to build aroundthem.

Only withthe establishment of centralized govern­ment after the War could the battle against the de-

veloper be won uneguivocally. One of the first actsof Mussolini in POWE;,r,again in emulation of Augus­tus, was to abolish the elective nature of city officesand appoint a Governar responsible directly to theMinister of the Interior and through him to the headof State.The Governatorato consolidated in itself thesurveillance of Roman patrimony, and the ideolog­ical dedication of the Duce to the classical pastassured it of effective backing. The change is dra­matically illustrated by the case of Largo Argentina.In 1911 remains of two Republican temples carne tolight during excavationsundertaken by the Superin­tendency of Monuments. A modern building wasbeing projected for this site, and the owners werenow reguested to agree to preserve these remains ina cortile of their building. Soon afterward, duringthe clearing of the site, two more temples turned up.Archaeologists clamored that the work be stopped.But the city was committed to private enterprise,land acguisition had been legaI,and a sum of aboutfifteen million lire would be needed by the city torenounce building plans and isolate the ruins..Thetemples appeared doomed when, on 28 October1928, the anniversary of the FascistMarch on Rome,Mussolini appeared on the site, expansive of mood;heard claims like a modern Solomon; and declared:"I would feel dishonored if it is allowed to erecteven one meter of new construction on this site:'And that was that. Back several years later to inau­gurate the Foro di Largo Argentina, the Duce com­mented (through righteous anger and not meaningit literally, we are assured): "I should like to havebrought to me here those who opposed this work,to have them shot on the SpOt:'25

The license to preserve unimpeded has, as obverse,the license to destroy unimpeded. The law of speedand the mentality of the straight line encouragedliberties, effacing ~nd distorting as much of theancient fabric as was revealed.The pace of the gre4,tsventramen,. ti of the twenties ~ thir,tieswas so .fre-

--neti~ that, commonly, to photograph or sketch whatobstructed the path of grandeur was allone hadtime for; one couldsimply ncitafford careful archae­

'ological record. Even that which gualified, in accord­ance with "the Roman law;' for a definite pIace inthe new urban scenography might be maimed in

View of the temples of Largo Argentina, ca. 1930. [Museodi Roma, D/1046].

Demolition of historic building at the corner of Via Mar­Forio and Via Chiavi d'Oro, during the building of theVittoriano. [Gabinetto Fotografico Nazionale, C/4103].

___________________ o._. n__._-

the process of its exhumation. The case of the im­perial fora is instructive. The straight line of Viadell'Impero knowingly drove a diagonal slashthrough the right-angle layout of this monumentalcore of antiquity. The thoroughfare that. razed anentire residential nucrèus to display the imperialforafor posterity now divided this complex into'fwo incongruous parts, in defiance of the logic of

...its originaI composition. Furthermore, anywherefrom one-half to three-quarters of what was exca­vated carne to be buried again, this time under theintractable coat of asphalt that paved the thirty­meter-wide thoroughfare.

Two more aspects of the monumental approachshould be underscored. Monument, to the authori­ties of the Third Rome, did not imply only the high­style; and, at the same time, not every high-stylebuilding enjoyed the immunity of a monument.From the distant past, an imperial apartment-block(insula), a medieval house or inn, may be spareddespite the humble nature of their program. Theywould be isolated nonetheless-and thereby monu­mentalized. Examples of this vernacular monument­ality, so to call it, are: the insula at the foot of theCapitoline, wedged between the giant flank of theVittoriano and the Aracoeli stairs; the Albergo dellaCatena near the theater of Marcellus; and across theway, next to the classical remains sometimes identi­fied with the porticus Minucia, a medieval house ofthe twelfth-thirteenth centuries.

The main impediment to the conservation of high­style buildings was, of course, private ownership.Renaissance and post-Renaissance palaces and villas,ancestral homes of patrician families, continued tobe lived in beyond 1870. Their disposition couldnot be regulated unless they were officially desig-

24

nated as monuments and so rendered untouchable.Requests that the city take precisely this course weremet with cries about the sanctity of property rights.Not unti! the mid-1880s do we hear of a list of"private edificeswith monumental character, artisticand historical:' And even then what could be pro­hibited was exterior transformation, not remodel­ing within.26

Ih~ laissez-faire proved advantageous both to thecity and the owners. The city could expropriate high----

- styJe buildings when its own plans required it. nie6wners could transform their property or liquidate.it altogether for their own gain. The most lamented10ss carne in the first two decades after the Breachof Porta Pia. A string of patrician villas on the east­ern hills that "createda continuous green belt beyond ..the residential center of papal Rome, from PortaPinciana to Porta San Giovanni, disappeared underthe grids of speculative housing.27And with it van­ished the chance fo control the city's promiscuousgrowth by interposing a natural barrier between theolder town and the suburbs.

But even with monuments under its sole jurisdic­tion, the city showed no consistent reserve. TheTower of Paul III and the cloister of Santa MariaAracoeli were allowed to be felled in the mammothoperation that prepared the north slope of the Capi­toline to receive the substructures of the Vittoriano­but not the church itself. Thè arguments in thesecases are uniformly unedifying. They boil down tothis: that those who are against demolition assertthe hTstorical or architectural importance of the

.building in question; those who favor demolitiontry to downgrade it. 0tt~I1,acompromise is reachedwhen it is decided tO save the building by movinglt elsewhere. If the structure is brick, moving means5imply reconstmction ex nODO. With masonry struc­tures a method had been developed, and used suc­cessfully in the transplantation oJ Santa Rita daCascia, among others, whereby the blocks wouldbe numbered during the dismantling, and then reas­sembled on the new site. The section called theWanderers in the exhibition documents some sam­pIe cases; a somewhat more thorough, but by nomeans exhaustive, list is appended to this catalogue.

subsidized housing for the lower classes; a new taxon the land of speculative building that forced theentrepreneur to acknowledge that developing a cer­tain urban area constituted a privilege for which hemust pay; a Master PIan that advocated the con­servation of green space and introduced zoning, atleast to the extent of distinguishing between areasof low and high density. But it is too glib to equateanticlericalism or populism' with the public interest.At any rate, democracy at the Capitoline also foundit impossible to resolve the housing problem andthe financial difficulties of the city. And on the sub­ject of sventramenti, the PIan of 1909 was not exem­plary in its restraint.

La Grande RomaWith the dismissal of the elected city administrationand the institution of the governorship of Rome in1925, the identities of the State and the city coin­2ldedfor the firsttimé: The Fascist regimehad atleast two motives for its intense concentration on therefurbishing of Rome. One was practical. The capitalmust be the showplace of the great public worksprogTilmlaunched ìn 1926 to alleviate a serious crisis

'of unemployment. The State poured vast sums into'the early projects such as Via del Mare and Via

dell'Impero. Manuallabor was exalted, and mechani­zation spurned. The program was much àdrnired

··abroad. In 1930, Kenneth M. Murchison wrote inthe Architectural Forum (October, pp. 407-408):

Mussolini and his lieutenants have made amarvelIous change in Italy. Everything thereis under the jurisdiction of a most intelligentleadershi p, Everything is regulated. Everybodyis at work ... They are pursuing the work ofexcavating ruins with great fervor aboutRome ... But I didn't see a steam shovel or asucking dredge or anything else of that kindat work. AlI hand labor, and that seems to bethe principle of the Mussolini government­work for everybody even though it has to bethinned out in the operation.

The prohibition of strikes and virtual disappearanceof labor unrest began to encourage private invest­ment in the building of la grande Roma, as it wasnow called. Corporative economy, officially em-

braced by the mid-thirties, put building tradessquarely under State control, as one of twenty-twocorporations, and simultaneously coerced major in­stitutions into supporting public works. Monies werepooled into credit foundations, such as the Consor­zio di Credito per le Opere Pubbliche or the Istitutodi Credito per le Imprese di Pubblica Utilità. Therewards were commensurate with loyalty to the re­gime. Building contracts, expropriation programs,the construction of streets and residential complexeswent to selected firms of proven faithfulness­Tudini Talenti, Vaselli, Speroni. To.have a chanceat major commissions, it was obligatory for an ar-

'~chìteat6l)e affiliated withhis professional syndi­cate (tantamount to being a party member), and,begt.nning ..with..1232,_to.express_puhlic disaPPIQvalJO~the "transalpine ~~ti2n,ali?J!l'.'9f the InternationalStyle. The' perrnissiveness of form which had pro­duced some public buildings of note in the progres­sive idiom of the Modern Movement, the latestexample being Giuseppe Pagano's physic-;j;uildi~gat the new University compIe x (1933ff.), was over­whelmedby'the triumph ofthe neo-imperial style.In competitions for major building programs, j~ri~swere now invariably ~tacked in favor of this rhet-- .

'oi:Ìcal'alld lnflationary formallanguage. Often, com-petitions were dispensed with, and the architectshand-picked. Marcello Piacentini was appointedprincipal architecÙoiihemonumental project of the

,,1J..I.li'l~E?i!Yby no less an authority than Mussolinil:1imself, because, we are told, the Duce "knows the

?ifiic.llit art of judgi!lg IIlen~orrectlY:'31The second motive for the Roman ventur~.!Y.s.~icje­~l()g!ç~LWe have touched on this subject already,"

March of Fascist troops under the Arch of Constantine,1935. [International PhotosJ.

2<;

but should now particularize it further since it per­tains to the main concern of the exhibition-the use" .of the past environment of Rome in the making ofthe modern metropolis.The idea of Rome obsessedMussolini's mind sincethe end of World War I, notonly because it was the seat of government hesought to capture but ,also because of its mysticpower around which the' new order could be forged.On this issue Futurists and Fascists, closely linked atfirst, parted ways. For Filippo P. Marinetti, Rome,like Venice and Florence, reeked of passatismo. Thenew ltaly was Milan, Genoa-cities of velocity andthe Kingdom of the Machine?2 For Mussolini, Rome"is the name that contains ali of history for twentycenturies ... Rome that traces streets, indicates bound­aries; and gives to the world the eternallaws of itsimmutable destiny" (speech at Trieste, 20 September1920). lt is "eternal Rome, the city that has giventwo civilizations to the world and will yet give athird" (Bologna, 3 ApriI 1921).33

Once instalied in the city of his ambitions, the Duceset about, single-mindedly and passionately, to makethe mystic manifest, "to show Rome to theRomans" 34 and through them to the rest of ltalyand the world. The classical spirit had been invokedbefore: in the court of Renaissance popes, in Risorgi­mento battlegrounds, political and military, in shor­ing up the confidence of the young Kingdom afterthe Breach of Porta Pia. Much the same holds truefor the projects of la grande Roma: most of them hadbeen proposed, in one form or another, before theadvent of Fascism. The point is that Mussolini suc­ceeded in having them realized, and imbuing them

with a programmatic fervor that transcended beauti­fication and the reviyal of forms. Ancient Rome wasnot being mechanically resurrected. lt had, in afundamental sense, never died: it had merely beendiverted from its destiny. Mussolini's task lay inreadjusting the course and carrying ono By the sametoken, the living reality of the ancient fabric mustbe disengaged from the environmental obfuscationof the irrelevant years and made to breathe andfunction again.

And the conjuring worked. lt was not ltalians alonewho were dazzled by the Roman legions marchingagain in triumph under the Arch of Constantine andpast the fora of Caesar, Augustus, Nerva; the Mar­kets of Trajan humming, after eighteen centuries,with the activity of a trade fair; the mausoleum ofAugustus recovering its originaI circular form whichhad been encrusted and buried since antiquity. Romewas a universal tonico The West marveled andexulted. In a feature article in the New York Times

(25 August 1935), a reporter describes a moonlitconcert under the great barrel-vaults of thè Basilicaof Maxentius. The strains of the Eroica pour outtoward the deep hollow of the Roman Forum which

... at night Cis]restored to a semblance of theCivic Centre it used to be when disputatiousgentlemen in togas paced the pavement ofthe Sacred Way ... We sat close together,mostly on backless benches, black shirts,white shirts, workers' blouses, soldiers' tunics,light frocks of Roman girls, alI part of thepageant of the Rome of Mussolini, in whichthe past is not only unearthed, magnificentlyframe d, but used, made to work, tapped to

feed the national pride and energy as literallyas the sources of the Tiber and the Arno aretransmuted into electric power for modernindustry.

The faith beyond the form does not escape theseobservers from the outside.

Mussolini wishes to resuscitate the materialvestiges of ancient Rome because they arebeautiful and invaluable, but also, and main­Iy, because in so doing he hopes to revive theold virtues of the rugged men who under irondiscipline once fashioned Roman power.35

In approving of the material theater and the pageant,the observers, perhaps unwittingly, adrnire the moralcontent as well.

In .this magisterial program of urba!1 rehabil.itation,archaeologists and historians of architecture assumeda position of erninence, alongside the _a~·ch~t.e~r~.Their role in the past had been advisory. The domi­nant discipline since 1870 had been engineering.Sventramenti, the colossal work of establishing newwater and sewage systems, bridges across the Tiber,and embankments against floods, delicate operationssuch as the tunnel undemeath the Quirinal hill­these were considered outside the competence ofthe academically-trained architect whose domaincontinued to be the single building, the singlepiazza. It would be inaccurate to imply a polariza­tion between engineering as a science and architec­ture as a fine art, and to ally the historian and thearchaeologist with the secondo The Istituto di BelleArti did provide technical education for its architec­turaI students by reqùiring that the program be com­pleted with coursework at the E.egia Scuola di Appli­cazione per gli Ingegneri; and the engineers, hereas elsewhere in Europe, occupied themselves, withstylistic matters. Neither could afford to be innocentof history since the concept of style was locked inthe dialectic of historicism, and since, in Rome morethan anywhere else, past buildings were the rawmateria! of the process of urban renewal.

The two professions were, nonetheless, distinctenough in education and outlook; and in the firstphase of the planning history of the Third Rorrie,it is clear that the engineer dominated the councilsof decision-making. Sella and mayor Ruspoli, two

rnen whose political lives had a lasting impact. onJl:ljs Jlistory, started .Qut as engineers. Several depart­

ments within city hall-water, roads, public works,and edilità-were the natural provinceof men witha background in engineering. For the first twodecades of the Third Rome, the Ufficio Tecnico washeaded by the engineer Alessandro Viviani who, exofficio, g.r9ited. the MasterJ?laIls of 1873 and 188~,_élswell as numerous working plans "for specificurban projects (piani particolareggiati). The Mast~rpIan of 1909 was also drawn up by aI" engineer­tpe Milanese Edrnondo Sanjust di Teulada. Evenin the architect's traditional domain, the engineersmade substantial inroads. To design and supervisethe first major govemment building, the Ministryof Finance on Via :xx Settembre, Sella selected ahydraulics engineer, Raffaele Canevari, who is alsoresponsible for the museum of agriculture (nowUfficio Geologico) nearby, one of the earliest ironbuildings in the city. The competition for restoringthe Piccola Famesina (Famesina dei Baullari) on theCorso Vittorio was won by Enrico Guj, who taught"technical architecture" at the Scuola di Applica­zione. And finally, perhaps one of the main reasonswhy the influential conservation society, the Asso­ciazione Artistica tra i CuI tori di Architettura, couldcompete seriously before World War I with theofficial planning organs of city government mayhave been the fact that its guiding spirit, Giovan­noni, derived his stand on the transformation ofhistoric fabric from a thorough grounding in bothengineering and architecture.

Now the priorities of Fascist planning were differ­.ent and as a consequence credit was distributedaccording to a different order of responsibility. Notthat the problems of engineering were any less acutein the projects of Mussolinian grandezza. On the con­trary, the isolation of the Capitoline, the constructionof Via dell'Impero which involved earth removal ona vast scale and retaining walls for the part that cutthrough the eminence called Velia, the projection ofa subway system, and other problems of this nature,required the supervision of gifted engineers. But

.they were no Ionger the stars. For one thing, uì-banplanning, at least insofar as it was equated withcivic and landscape design, carne to be identified

32

as a branch of architecture. In the new Scuola

Superiore di Architettura founded in 1921, a chairwas created for this subject revealingly called"Edilizia cittadina ed arte dei giardini:' The first tohold it was Piacentini, who will later prove soubiguitous as to qualify for the role of Mussolini'sSpeer. It is this notion of the street as a total designof architecture that makes possible the attachment ofspecific names to Fascist-initiated arteries-Foschinifor Corso del Rinascimento, Piacentini for Via dellaConciliazione-in a way that post-1870 arteries likeVia Arenula or Corso Vittorio, conceived as the col­lective effort of private clients and public enterprise,could not be attributed to an individuaI designer.

In these early modem streets of the capitat monu­ments were single episodes of historical and visualinterest. No cohesive program of iconographybonded them contextually except in the most gen­eric sense.Fascist planning is more pedagogica l. At

_its.Jeast dogmatic, il regìsters""as"historica:lscenog­\ raphy. But it can also "undertake to convey moreinvolved meaning, such as the parallelism betweenthe deeds of the regime and its classical precedent.

~ince monuments acguire thereby narrative weight!he archaeologist and the historian òfarchitecturè, 'asthe recorders and interpreters of monumental topog­"i-àphy, enter the planning process in a primary role.Thu5 Roberto Paribeni and Antonio Munoz figureprominently in the commission that prepared the.Master PIan of 1931, alorig with the architects Ces'ireBazzani, Armando Brasini, ai"id ()f course Piacentini.Sometimes the architect would be made to play sec­ond fiddle to the historian or archaeologist, or beabsorbed in their identity. It is Corrado Ricci andMunoz we recall first for Via dell'Impero and Viadel Mare respectively, not the engineers and archi­tects who were also involved. The scholar embracesthe chance to become the man of action. Ricci can

now supervise in eamest the unearthing of the im­perial fora, a project that he worked out on paperin 1911 and had an architect named Lodovico Pog-

liaghi "translate it into design:'36 Another archaeolo­gist, G. Q. Giglioli, in the process of excavatingwithin the heavily built up area of the mausoleumof Augustus, poses a challenge to the regime whichhe knows will be heeded.

We have faith that on September 23, 1938 theDuce of the new Italy could, on the bimillen­nial of the birth of Augustus, admire the greatruin [of the mausoleum l completely isolatedand surrounded anew by those groves thatAugustus bequeathed to his good people ofRome?7

The year was 1930. Four years later, on 22 October1934 which marked the beginning of celebrationsfor the twelfth anniversary of the Fascist March onRome, the Duce climbed on the roof of a buildingon Vicolo Soderini and raised a ceremonial pick tostart the demolition that would liberate the greatmausoleum from the accretions of centuries. When

the pick had don e its work, an open space largerthan Piazza del Popolo had been carved out ofdense urban fabric around the mausoleum of. the

first emperor of Rome, freestanding again after atleast twelve hundred years. The bimillennial of hisbirth was brilliantly honored, with Giglioli in chargeof the eventful pageant and the elaborate memorialexhibition.

Only the groves of Augustus, the sylvae et ambula­

tiones in Suetonius' description, never materialized .Here and everywhere else in the planning of FascistRome, the apotheosis of history was thwarted onlyby the traffic expert. He was present by grace ofMussolini's directive that projects such as the liber­ation of the mausoleum were not mere havens farchaeology but modem urban spaces "where flowsthe imposing and continuallife of the city;' namelytraffic?8 With typical Fascist cussedness reminiscentof Walt Whitman' s /'00 I contradict myself? Verywell then I contradict myselt (I am large, I containmultitudes.);' the giant bones of antiquity whichwere to stand "in their necessary solitude" in fact

carne to be nodes of clamorous traffic at the con­fluence of major arteries. In the case of the mauso­leum, the unfinished work of opening these arteriesdoomed the new piazza to. the fate of a parking lotoIn other cases, the marriage of traffic and glory suc­ceeded too well, as the now threatened structure ofthe Colosseum, victimized for forty years by thetremors of furious Roman driving, will testify.

But in the end, when credit has been apportionedamong architects, historians, archaeologists, engi­neers, and traffic experts, th~gj?Q:n:e.?.':lpremepla~­!l~r_.9f~qgrandeRoma:Benito Mussolini. ~'Ìconsidermyself without false modesty the spiritual father ofthe Master PIan of Rome;' he said in 1932; and hewas right:'l It was his vision that was being concret­ized: that misery and mediocrity will be made todisappear from Rome, grandezza returned, Rome ex­tended once more to the utmost limits of its physi­cal size and imperial power.· It was his decision tomove his office from Palazzo Chigi on Piazza Co­lonna to Palazzo Venezia that made the urban spacein Front of the Vittoriano the indisputable heart ofFascistRome, and diverted toward it the energies ofall the major routes into the city. And it was hispower,-'Centralizedand unequivocaI, that made pos­sible staggering urban operations concluded in amatter of a year or two, paths of glory cut throughthe most recalcitrant of urban tissue according toschemes that previously would have languished inthe familiar Roman thicket of special interests andinvolved legislation.

In the planning of his city, we might distinguishthree successive attitudes of the Duce toward his-

tory:Thefiist is évident' in' the opening decadé ofFascistpower: a reverence for the classicalpast; con­

lerItJor itsexhumation and pro per display; the de­termination, confused and misguided in hindsight,to be authentically ancient. Demographically as wellas physically, the city must recapture its former self.1he population must match that of anci~.ntRorpe.

The .area of the Mausoleum of Augustus at the start ofdemolitions in 1934. [Courtesy of G. SantoroJ.

Aerial view of the same area today. [Fototeca Unione, 4371].F"

33

Aerial view of Piazza Venezia, Via dell'Impero, Via delMare.

34

The built environment must spread out to touch theoutposts of its originaI myth, to make contact withthe Alban hills and the sea. Archaeology and mod­em construction both assisted in this romantic viewof regenerating history. As early as 1925, Mussoliniwas saying:

Rome has already a different aspect. Tens ofnew guarters have sprung up in the peripheryof the city which has thus hurled its advanceguard of houses toward the healthy hill, to­ward the reconsecrated sea ... In five yearsRome must appear marvellous to all the peo­pIe of the world: vast, ordered, powerful as itwas in the time of the first emperor Augustus.tWe] will continue to free the trunk of thegreat oak from everything that stains it stilI. ..The Third Rome must spread onto other hillsalong the shores of the sacred river until thebeaches of the Thyrrhenian Sea... A straighthighway which must be the longest and thewidest in the world will move the incentiveof mare nostrum [the Mediterranean] from theresurrected port of Ostia to the very heart ofthe city~O

An aeriai view of southem Rome conveys well theimage of this expansive vision. Qn one side, Viadell'Impero shot out of Piazza Venezia toward theColosseum like a straight arrow. Beyond this firstpoint of arrest it forked into Via dei Trionfi andVia dei Monti. The first started out with the Arch

of Constantine and a redesigned Via San Gregorio,heading south along the Ieft bank of the Tiber; thesecondI never executed, was to reach the Walls bymeans of a widened and monumentalized Via di

San Giovanni Laterano and spill into the open coun­try to the southeast, in the direction of the Albanhills. 6.t the opposite end, Via del Mare Ieft PiazzaVenezia and skirted the liberatèd flank of the Cap­itoline, wenfpastfhe theater of Marcellus and the

so=called TempIe of Fortuna Virilis ("This is mytempIe;' Mussolini said, thinking of the duai bless-ings of itsputative dedication, manliness and goodIuck), and Iinked up with Via dei Trionfi for itsdash to Ostia and the sea.

The idea of a maritime port had been around since1870. lt formed an integraI part of projects for theTiber embankments and the taming of its course.

By the end of World War l there was a royal decreefor the creation of the port and the promise of forty­seven Ìnillion lire in State aid.41The site varied, andOstia was not the favorite. Cesare Cipolletti, in 1905,proposed abandoning Ostia and moving the mouthof the Tiber to Coccia di Morto to' the north, withport facilities developed just south of this new pointat Fiumicino.42Dario Carbone preferred Fregene onthe mouth of the Arrone.43 There was even an elab­orate scheme to create a long Iand canal that wouldfollow the coast northward for some sixty miles, withthe major port in the promontory at the foot ofMonte Argentario, site of the ancient Portus Her­CUliS.44But for Mussolini the choice had to be Ostia,

. the porttrom- which tIle fleets of ancient Rome hadconductE~d 1he' business of its overseas empire. Atthe time of the Fascist March on Rome, a smallcommunity of one hundred and twenty-fishermenand their families-constituted the town of Ostia.This resident population rose to 3,500 within a dec­ade, and a master pIan was drawn up for its futuregrowth. But the beaches drew many more thousandsof Romans every summer. They carne by train onthe line opened in 1924, or by car on the new auto­

strada of Via del Mare. Beyond the basilica of St.PauI' s outside the Walls, Via del Mare tumed intoa fourteen-meter-wide tree-lined highway that ranparallei to the ancient Via Ostiense unti! the portoIt was inaugurated with great fanfare in 1928. "Ofone thing l am proud;' Mussolini would say; "tohave reconducted Romans to the sea:'45

The second attitude develops around 1933.Jtdrnani­fests itself in the emulative juxtaposition of Classical'and Fascist monuments. This is not to say that mod­em buildings did not rise on the newly carved arteriesbefore. The urban section of Via del Mare, for exam­pk had a series of them at the end toward Piazzadella Bocca della Verità. But these innocuous officeblocks pretend to Iittle more than defining a streetwhose planes suffer badly from the discontinuitycaused by the practice of isolating the historic monu­ments on alI sides. Suggestions of encroaching for­mally upon antiquity would be turned down. A 1907proposai for the liberation of the Capitoline hadenvisaged replacing the sordid tenements along theslopes with upper class villas and terraced gardens.46

3

fhe theater oi Marcellus before restoration. [Museo di Roma, D/553].

Munoz' executed scheme merely landscaped theseslopes after the demolitions, and added the melo­dramatic detail of two cages at the foot of theTarpeian Rock with a she-wolf in one of them inmemory of the she-wolf that had suckled Romulusand Remus (a practice that goesback to 1818), andin the other, an eagle to represent the Roman legionsof antiquity. Again, tll~__idea of erectingrn()g.ernR.a}~zi .on Via dell'Impero, next to the fora of theemp~rors<lnd the Basilica of Maxentius, was rejected.

"''The liberated monuments could be used on occasion

for activities approximating their initial functions,but could not be regularly occupied. The Marketsof Trajan would house weekly shows of books, toys,or peasant embroideries, but the humble shops thatfor centuries had foundshelter in the ground-storyarcade of the theater of Marcellus were deemed in­sulting to the noble frame and torn down.

Now, however, !l1 this. secoIlduphase, a competiti\(eor even combativesprrit takes hold. It was decidedtoconstiilct a nE'Wbuilding onVia: dell'Impero across-g()m the Basilica of Maxentius, to serve as head-quarters for the Fascist party. This Palazzo della Rivo­luzione, or Palazzo del Littorio, was to equal theçOlòsseum in size and height, and cQnj:aintwehLehundred rooms on nine floors. A widely publicizedc'ompetition in 1934 yielded sev~nty-one spectacul?Tentries which, at one leve!, illustrated the millenni al'strtiggle of thè modern against the ancient, and at.another the specific confrontation of the two mode.s

36

of architecture in the thirties-the InternatiQnal ~e=:rnd--the rreo:.:imperi~l or nationalist style. The win­'ning designs prove that, at least for the latter of thesecontests the outcome, in thé eyes of the regime, wasr\ot indoubt: That the palaé'e of Fascism never stoodwhere it was intended to may be taken as the some­what circumstantial triumph of neighboring antiquityin the other contest. In the Piazzale Augusto Impera­tore around the liberated mausoleum, shortly there­after, not only did the modern buildings of the

; Istituto Nazionale Fascista della Previdenza Socialeenclose the north and east sides, but there was talkof setting up on the hollowed interior of the monu­ment, which had been in continuaI use since theMiddle Ages as fort, hanging garden, bullring, andconcert hall, a Torre della Littoria, the triumphantstandard of Fàscist dominion that was projected for"thecenters of manyltalian cities.47 That tower, too,was never raised.

The iconography of Fascist architecture has not asyet been studied. The Piazzale Augusto Imperatorewould be an excellent starting point. Mosaics, sculp­ture panels, and inscriptions underline here the pro­gressively irnperial charaçter of this iconogrélphysince 1935, ~hen Mussolini acquired an empire,of"his ()VJn;and the parallelisrrl between Augustus andthe Duce. They are the material equivalent of con­temporary tracts, such as Emilio Balbo' s Protagonisti

dell'Impero di Roma, where the two men are repre­sented as "heroes of the same story, the Oioscuri ofthe same constitutional and political crisis:' Bothestablished authoritarian mIe after years of civil strife;abolished elected offices; retained the Senate as asymbolic institution; ennobled labor, and recognizedthe benefits of public works; disapproved of celibacy,and rewarded productive marriages; strengthenedthe moral and religious fiber of the State, Augustusby reviving the cults of ancestral gods and the respectthat is due them, Mussolini by appeasing the Vati­can. The presence of three churches on the PiazzaleAugusto Imperatore assisted in weaving this Chris­tian content into the marriage of Fascism and antiq­uity, and the fact that one of the three was 55.Ambrogio e Carlo al Corso, the "national" churchof Lombardy in honor of the two great saints ofMilan, sharpened the program of interfused mean-

ings. For Pius XI who signed the Lateran Accordswas once Achille Ratti, archbishop of Milan and anearly supporter of the Fascist cause.

In an ultimate hubristic chapter of his extraordinary'_career, Mussolini resolved to supplant the past.Tradition carne to cramp his will: he spoke of tl1eChurch as a Durden, and his retai.n.ing of the mon­~rchy as a mistaKé. The standing on the shouldersof illustriousancestors, uplifting and inspirational atfinitI seemed to hamper now his historical progress;the Roman emperors turned surrogates of his owngreatness. To display the achievement of the Romeof Mussolini, it was tempting to go outside thetheaters of past grandeur, which he had used andamen.ded, and to fashion pristine theaters or Fascistgrandeur. The Master PIan of 1931 did not meetthe image of an imperial capital which Rome hadonce again become . .fE~shproj~ct?IllUstproduce th~Fascistenvironment, and the world must be asked

, !o compare. The idea of an international audiencesuggested an exposition which would bring the worldtoRome. In June 1935 he gave the order Uto obtaina concrete international adherence to [the] idea [ofan exposition]. Victory in Abyssinia, the affirmationof the Italian will in the world, the Foundation ofthe Empire, are alI certainties for him, so that he isable to anticipate the celebration of them withmathematical security.ff48

Turning down sites in the immediate periphery, andrejecting plans to disperse the exposition into variousparts of the city where space and facilities were avail­able, the Duce approved of a hilltop five miles south=east ofPiazza Venezia, at Abbazia delle Tre Fontane.Word carne down that over au area of about onethousand acres a small city was to materialize by1942, the date of the universal exposition. This cityof permanent buildings would house ffthe OlympicGames of Civilization:'~? ,the Esposizione Universaledi Roma or EUR was to be m6w1i. AIld ai the closeofthe festivities the city would be transformed intothe new monumental core of Rome, a concrete stepin its march toward the sea. EUR ffis above alI anact of faith in the destiny and constructive capacityof the Italian Nation, a solemn affirmation of its willto act. .. ff49

A highway called Via Imperiale would connect EUR

The competition for Palazzo del Littorio, 1934. [From Archi­tettura, 1934, specialissue].

Project by E. Del Debbio, A. Foschini, and V. Morpurgo.

Project by B, Del Giudice, G. Errera, A. Folin.

with Piazza Venezia, and would form one half of avastly extended new north-south axis. Jhe other half

.9f this cardo would terminate exactly five miles awayfrornPiazza V~nezia to the north, at the Foro Musso­li.ni. Under construction since 1927, thi:>.forum was'an imposing compIe x of stadia and' cultur~rbuild­'ings foc:used by an obellsk anCl decked with dozens-Of heroic male nudes representing the spring oJFascist youth. Qverl()Qking the Forum, the whitemass of the Palazzo del Uttorio, moved here from

-its intendèd site across the way from theColosseum,-beàconed the Duèe' s newfound goal to set up the-unadulterateCl'Rome of his own empire. An enor-mous model was now built of this Rome, inclusiveof the two emerging anchors of the Foro Mussoliniand EUR. Its whereabouts have been unknown sincethe end of the War; Piacentini said that it was de­stroyed.;J At any rate, it was to be the companion

37

Foro Mussolini, during construction, 1934. [Vasari].

Stadio dei Marmi.

The mechanism devised by Costantino Costantini far theerection of the obelisk.

piece to a model of ancient Rome which survives.

From 1937 on, EUR started to take form in the opencountry, a formal city of marble and travertine. Eatlyphotographs of it show a spectral image of gleam-

38

ing frigid masses, like the embodiment of someghostly classical ved(Jta by De Chirico. The prototypewas of course the Greco-Roman city, but not a rigid .grido "The exceptional character of this new arm ofRome has been kept in mind, [and] the guidingconception has always been lo see it grandly and as a

single whole."51 The grand axis of Via Imperiale en­tered the city at the Porta Imperiale, the main propy­lon of the Exposition; it was framed at the oppositeend by an enormous semicircular arch of reinforcedconcrete, with a span of two hundred meters and aheight of one hundred. The cross-axis climbed thesides of the valley and terminated with a group ofcommunications museums to the east, on the riseoverlooking Via Laurentina, and with a church tothe west, overlooking the Tiber valley. A secondaryeast-west axis was framed by the Palace of Laborand the Palace of Congresses. There was, in addi­tion, a residential section, with an artificiallake serv­ing as its focus.

The world did not have the chance to compare. TheOlympics of Civilization were never held. me dreamtumed nightmare and soon was over. On 19 July1943 the first Allied bombs fell over Rome. Theyhit the suburb of Tiburtino, the church of St. Law­rence outside the Walls, and the new University. On25 July, after the Grand Council had voted for hisresignation, the Duce appeared at the Villa Savoia,the private residence of Victor Emanuel IIt for con­sultations: he was arrested and shipped off to theisland of Ponza. The rest is a familiar story.

For our purposes what is important is that, after theend of the hostilities, municipal govemment was~reinstituted in Rome. A planning commission ap=-­pointed in 1946 formally renounced thè remainingprojects of sventramenti in the historic center; but theMaster PIan of 1931 remained otherwise in effect,until the new one was adopted fifteen years later.EUR, following a polite lult continued to grow. Ithad been planned from the start outside the jur~s­diction of the Master Plan, and the autonomous cor­poration which directed it could therefore resumetheir development of it, now as a controlled resi­dential community. The Foro Mussolini, renamedForo Italico, fell into disuse for a time. Then theOlympics of 1960, held in Rome, brought it back

to life, and also reactivated the great cardo of theFascist city, from here to EUR.The Duce's damnatio memoriae was halfhearted. Hisname disappeared from most inscriptions, and thefasces chiseled or painted out. But his imprint uponthe Eternal City was ineradicable. He had said thatRome's glory would be revivified by him "to passit on as the legacy of the Fascist era to generationsto come:' And this, for better or for worse, he haddone.

PostludeThe story of the Fourth Rome is not ours. The urbanbattles ofthe post-War decades are fought essentiallyoutside the Walls. !t is unlikely that anything dras~tic or flamboyant will be lmposed upon the historicc:ity by future planners. The Master PIan of 1962,as we mentioned at the beginning, has providedcategorically for the conservation of this city, in which

_~lSmduaed,- wiselyind inevitably, the fabfit- of the ­ThirdRome. A recent scheme by Leonardo Benevoloto pull down much of the Third Rome in order tocreate a green belt around the pre-1870 city, insulat­ing it forever against the encroachment of the suburbsand destroying the centripetal dependence of theirstreet structure upon it, seems destined to remainat the theoretical plane.52

Some form of extraurban relief, like the asse attrezc

- z~to of the latest Master PIan, is the more probablealternative. This may dry up the native life of theèity, and turn the center into a ghost town for touristsand pilgrims. But that is what it is already, in a fun­damental way. The Rome of the"Romans is the peri­phery; it swamps the nugget within the WalIs, nowa tiny fraction of the untidily sprawled metropolis.

The immediate and modest hopes of most of usextend no further than a ban on cars within theolder city and vigilance in the restoration of thehistoric buildings. The law is lenient about interiorremodeling, and externalIy the skin can be demol­ished provided that it is reconstructed in the originaIformo We may end up with an urban illusion, akind of Roman Williamsburg.

But in our age even that may stilI prove plenty tobe thankful for.

----------------------------------- ...-... - ---...

EUR, twoviews taken in 1968. [R. Tobias].

Museo della Civiltà Romana, principal entrance (architects:Aschieri, Bernardini, Pascoletti, and Peressutti).Palazzo della Civiltà del Lavoro, detail (architects: Guerrini,La Padula, Romano).

3S

52

SOMEPRINCIPALEXHIBITS

Via NazionaleThe inception of this first modern ar­tery of Rome is due. t9_._Monsignor.Francesco Saveri o De Merode, pro­minister of arms under the administra­tion of Pius IX. Ijaving acquired exten­slv.~ ..territorY- arouncl-Ùie 'iailròadstation, De Mer()de laid ou~. a.,g~jd2fseveral blocks depenclent on a main~fieeCc'aned Via Nuova PLI'affertftl~reigning J'ope"which p~gaIl..at Piazz,a'di Teiinini, a part of the ancient'l:,athsÒfDlocletian, and extended in a straightLine.until it ITl~T:\11aar:siij1.~,?:!!~le:"Ttswidth was twenty-two meters. In Aprii1867, De Merode reached an agreementwith the city whereby he vvould cedefree' of charge the land of this and ad­jacent streets and the eity would buythe land within the exedra at the startof Via Nuova Pia. The first building ofthe new artery rose at the corner of thepresent Via Torino, between 1868 and1870.

After the Breach of Porta Pia, the cityreturned to the agreement and ratifiedit, agreeing furthermore to build thestreets and maintain them ..,l2.yAI?~il.1872 Via Nuova Pia, now baptized Via­Nazionale, . was completed until Viadelle Quattro·Fontane. The Ufficio Tec­nico under Alessandro Viviani nowdrew up a proposal to continue theartery up to Via del Quirinale, andthen divert it northward to the Trevifountain and from here west until itmet Via del Corso at Piazza sciarra(south of Piazza Colonna, along thepresent Via Marco Minghetti), with theoption for a future extension until thePantheon. The Viviani proposal was ap­proved by the city 'couneil on 5 July1872. f-. subs,!;quent variant to end ViaNazionale at Piazza Venezia instead,offered by the Ministry of PublicV'{~!:k.s,was turned do""n. on.9 ..Ma~

-:j.873. On IS'September the Vivianipròjeet was proclaimed in the publieinterest by royal deeree and expropria­tion began. In 1874 a first hotel, theAlbergo Quirinale, was inaugurated.And two years later G. E. street's HighVictorian ehurch, st. Paul's, oceupiedthe eorner of Via Napoli, its alien

striped patterns and non-Catholic affili- ;>'

ation testifying the tolerant interna­tionalism of the young Kingdom ofltaly.

Then, unaeeountably, the city couneildecided to reopen the issue. On 22Aprii 1875 it took under submissionprojeets by Luigi Gabet, Mario Moretti,and others advoeating the PiazzaVen€­zia alternative;' thi;~itèrn~tive was nowaoopTéduln.'amajor reversal, and itsfinal ratification by the governmentcarne on 9 July 1876. In 1882 the Pal..azzo delle Esposizioni by the arehitectPio Piacentini, under construetion sinee1878, was eompleted. By then Via Na­zionale was already a busy thorough­fare, earrying traffie from the railroadstation into the heart of the eity.

The area at 1860, before the laying outof Via Nazionale; detail of the offidaleensus map of 1860.

Two alternate solutions; Via Nazionaleterminated at Piazza Sciarra and atPiazza Venezia.

Corso Vittorio EmanueleThis avenue was envisaged from thestart as the western extension of theline of Via Nazionale until the river.Unlike Via Nazionale, however, whichcould be straight and uncomplicatedfor most of its length because it wasbeing driven through what was, in1870, an essentially countrylike area offields and 'lilla gardens, Corso Vittoriohad to traverse the densest residential

-section of papal Rome, rich in historicmonuments of the first order.

The expressed goals of the early cityproposals were to keep down the dam­age to this fabric, and use the monu­ments to piduresque advantage. ThePIan of 1873 charted a modest course .

.Starting at the point where Via Nazion­'aIe made its sharp northward turn toréach the Trevi fountain, it passedthrough Piazza SS. Apostoli and PiazzaVenezia, and then employed the exist­ing Via del Plebiscito (formerly Via delGesù) to arrive at the church of theGesù. From here te, Piazza SanPanta­leo, the -averlUefolIowed the path of theold Via Papale, a patchwork of narrowStreets which had served as the mainceremonial thoroughfare through thepapal city. Along this stretch stood thepalace of the Massimi with its elegantconvex facade, and the splendid Bar­oque pile of Santi\ndrea della Valle.Between San Pantaleo and Banco diSanto Spirito, the papal mint since thesixteenth century, the new avenue cutthrough urban tissue in a line designedto assimilate the Piccola Farnesina, thefIank of Palazzo della Cancelleria, Pa­lazzo Sora, the complex of ChiesaNuova and the adjacent oratory of St.Philip Neri by Francesco Borromini,and Palazzo Sforza Cesarini. At the oldmint, the avenue forked. One branchfollowed a widened Via de'Cimatoriuntil the iron suspension bridge atSan Giovanni dei Fiorentini; the ,otherreached Ponte Santi\ngelo by meansof the extant Via Banco di Santo Spirito.

The projed was shelved, along withthe rest of the PIan of 1873, because ofthe financial hardship of the city. Then

54

on 31 May 1880, in anticipation ofmassive State aid, the council approvedanew the segment from the Gesù toSan Pantaleo. The State aid bilI of 14May 1881 sp~~ifi~d' that the avenu~was to be completed until the river, andthat its width increased from sixteerÌmeters, provided for by the PIan of1873, to twenty meters.

Two decisions, in the meantime, hadimproved the status of Corso Vittorio.The northern jog of Via Nazionale hadbeen abandoned in 1876, in favor ofresolving the street in Piazza Venezia.Corso Vittorio was thereby transformedinto the principal western line of com­munication and, joined to Via Nazion­ale, the main east-west axis or decu­

manus of the city with a total length of3,500 meters, interseding the north­south axis or cardo (Via del Corso) atPiazza Venezia. Secondly, the choice ofthis piazza for the monument to VidorEmanuel II supplied the monumentalaccent for this crossing.

The PIan of 1883 incorporated CorsoVittorio. The path, aside from beingwider, was essentially that of the PIanof 1873. Three alternate projects wererejeded. They were: (1) a projed byGoffredo Narducci calling for an. un­compromisingly straight line from thestairs of the Campidoglio to PonteSanti\ngelo; (2) a project by AugustoMarchesi and Sante Bacciarelli, with aneven longer direct connedion, betweenthe royal residence at the Quirinal andthe monument to Victor Emanuelwhich they placed on the Gianicolo;and (3) Aurelio Martinelli's scheme ofshort cuts hom Piazza Venezia toCampo dei Fiori to Chiesa Nuova.

Exprop~iation began on 1 February'1-_~84.But within a year city authoritiespropos!;d a variant fodhe west erid of'Corso Vittorio; this was approved by'the council in the sessions of 23 Febru­ary and 5 July 1886, and made officialby a royal decree dated 9 December1886. The variant took cognizance ofthe fact that the forked solution withthe two termini of Ponte San Giovanni

and Po~te Sant'Angelo was impractical.The first bridge lay too far south to beuseful in the passage to the Borgo; thesecond, a mere eight meters wide,would create a bottleneck for the trafficarriving on the amplified Via Banco diSanto Spirito. To expand the roadwayof this famous bridge would do harmto its historic formoThe variant resolvedthese problems by a direct single routeham the olci mint to the river and pas­sage across by means of a new bridgecalled Ponte Vittorio Emanuele.

By now the crash had settIed in, andwork on the new avenue was slow. TheBaedeker of 1904 describes it as "al­ways crowded and busy, but, especiallytoward the end, it still presents an un­finished appearance:' Ponte Vittorio,designed by Paolo Emilio De Santis,was not opened until 1910. Of the newbuildings which define the avenue oneither side, we might mention PalazzoPacelli and Museo Baracco by GaetanoKoch, and Palazzo Venturi by GiulioPodesti.

The Quartiere del Rinascimento beforethe Breach; detai! of the census map of1860.

Map of 1870 with 1883 solution forCorso Vittorio.

Variant of 1886.

5S

6

Map of 1870 overlaid with present linesof Piazza Venezia and the Vittoriano.

The Vittorianoand Piazza VeneziaThe first king of Italy, Vietor EmanuelIl, died on 9 January 1878, only amonth ahead of his illustrious rival forthe sovereignty of Rome, Pope Pius IX.In May, a Royal Commission was ere­ated to oversee the ereetion of a mon­ument in honor of the gallant King, theFather of the Country, and within twoyears it had raised nearly two millionlire through private donations. TheState undertook to eontribute an addi­tional eight million, and authorized aninternational eompetition (bili of 25

July 1880). The siteand f()IIll, of thernonument were'ie-ft' open. The large

n1.Ìmber òrentries', .;?'2JJn~11were ex­hibited in December -1881 at the newMuseo Agrario next to Santa Susanna.Ali major monumental types-tri­umphal columns, arches, equestrianstatue s, towers-were represented,often in superlative or mad combina­tion. Two sites predominated: the ex­edra ofthe Biths of Diocletian, andPìa:Ùii Venezia. The French architectPii'ul-Henri Nénot placed first, followedby the project of Pio Piacentini and Et-tore Ferrari, and the sculptor StefanoGalletti in third pIace.In the furor that ensued, it was vari­ously asserted that Nénot had basedhis project too obviously on his 1877Grand Prix design for an atheneum,and that the award was made for po­litical reasons at the insistence of PrimeMinister Depretis, to appease Francefor the anti-French riots over Tuni­sia. The Royal Commission now an­nounèed asecond international'coÌTl'"

petiti~~'~on'-iT'J5~S'eii1ber~:~,88T-fb.e. /'2è.,~çZ_. site _':':.a,di~.~,d~,th~,P...9E!b_?lQI2~.QfJ:heCapitoline, in dose ~roximity to ~~,~}Z0n:1arl.' Foruman,ct MicJi.é)~DgEjo'~Campidoglio, a sité,cDOsenby.the,

-Piacentini-Ferrari project fo}: the fiI:~.t'competition: The program calied for

~Nah equestrian statue with an architec-turaI backdrop and suitable stairs:' Ofabout ~eve.nty entries, those of CountGiuseppe Sacconi of Montalto, _Brune;>

"S-chmitzd Diisseldorf, and ManfredoManfredi were singled out, and thesemen were asked to subinit revised proj-

Palazzetto Venezia being eonstructedon its new site, and the last stages ofbuilding of the Vittoriano, ca. 1910.[Gabinetto Fotografico Nazionale,E/3314].

Periphery of the Vittoriano in 1929.[Alinari, 41229].

57

ects for a final run-off. The winner wa~Sacconi, who was officially appointeg"Direttore sopraintendente" of thework on 30 December 1884. The lay­ing of the cornerstone took pIace on 22

'March 1885, and demolition startedsoon thereafter. Meanwhile, a separatecompetition for the equestrian statuewas woa by Enrico Chiaradia.

The Vittoriano required digging intothe slope of the Capitoline and reorgan­izing the area between it and PiazzaVenezia. At this time the piazza had along and narrow shape, enclosed bythe fifteenth-century Palazzo Veneziato the west, its adjunct the PalazzettoVenezia to the south, and on the eastside the later pile of Palazzo Torlonia.Via del Corso from the north enteredit at this eastern corner. According tothe PIan of 1873, the Corso was to bewidened in part, and its eastern pIanelined up with the facade of Palazzo Tor­lonia. The PIan of 1883 went further .AltI-lough its approvaI preceded the de­cision to pIace the. Vittoriano againstthe Capitoline, the piazza was to benearly doubled with the destruction ofthePalazzo Torlonia, so that the space,cçmld be symmetrically disposed in re­lation to the Corso.

By the time of the PIan of 1909, themonument was still unfinished. Sitedifficulties and the choice of the whitestone which had to be brought in atgreat expense from quarries at Bresciapushed the estimated budget to 26.5million lire by 1891. A large area hadbeen cleared around the construction;

.streets and buildings of consequencesuch, a~ the Tower of Paul III, the clois:.­!€r--òfSanta'Maria Aracoeli, and the so­called house of Giulio Romano, disap~

'peared. But mounting costs and thedisastrous ltalian venture in Africa in-terrupted all activity throughout thelast decade of the century. The RoyalCommission was dissolved in 1900, andby a special bill of 21 February themonument was placed under the juris­diction of the Ministry of Public Works.

58

In the fall of 1905, shortly after the re­sumption of building, Sacconi died. Atrinity of well-known architects-PioPiacentini, Gaetano Koch, and Man­fredi-was appointed to supervise theremaining work. A variant pIan, sanc­tioned on 6 ApriI 1908, proposed toput up a modernpalazzo reflectingthe

-form oLPalazzo Venezia on the eastside, thus rendering the piazza bilatl;r­'ally uriiform. The PIan of 1909 incor­'porated this idea, as well as a projectby the engineers G. Crimini and A.Testa for the reordering of the neigh­borhood, A competition was held in1913 to decide on a final designo Thevictorious scheme, by Pio and MarcelloPiacentini, was laid aside, however, be­cause of the War. What did go throughwas the proposal of the PIan of 1909.fO!,;ull-down the Palazzetto Venezia and'rebuild it further to the east, so as to'open up the south end of Piazza Vene­zi~ toward the monumento The Vitto­

. riano was inaugurated during theUniversal Exposition of 1911 (4 June)but work on it continued sporadicallyuntil 1930 when the quadrigas werehoisted into pIace.The PIan of 1931 returned to the ques­tion of the periphery. Additional de­molition cleared the two flanks of theVittoriano, and the PIan proposed toset up two framing columnar exedraethat would echo the order of the topstory colonnade of the monument. Butan alternative solution of landscaping,by Raffaele De Vico, prevailed instead,and executed in time for the inaugura­tion of Via dell'Impero (28 October1932). Later projects, including one byM. Piacentini to redesign the flankingblocks to the Corso, and one by V. Civ­ico and R. Lavagnino to create a tridentof streets at Piazza Venezia recallingthe trident at the other end of theCorso, remained on the boards,

The same view today, after the demoIi­tions of the early 1930s. (Courtesy of F.QuiIici].

Via dell'Impero(Via dei Fori Imperiali)The effort to ameliorate circulation be­tween Piazza Venezia and the Colos­seum antedates the Breach of Porta Pia:It should be sufficient to cite the tree­lined avenues and parks projected inthe early nineteenth century during theNapoleonic interlude, and the 1857scheme by the Anglo-French firm Yorkand Co., under Pius IX, for a direct ar­tery that would extend Via del Corsounti I the Colosseum. There were ar­chaeological and topographical impedi­ments to any solution. The imperialfora of antiquity were known to lie be­neath a dense neighborhood boundedby the RomanForum, the southernslope of the Quirinal (Via Magnana­poli), Piazza Venezia, and the Basilicaof Maxentius. The area between theBasilica and the Colosseum was not asbuilt up, but passage was nonethelessdifficult because of the presence of theVelia, an eminence occupied by villasanci fields.

The Commissione per gli Abbellimentidi Roma, created by the Napoleonic ad­ministration in 1811, started the excava­tions at the Forum of Trajan that un­covered the Basilica Ulpia. In 1828 partof the hemicycle of the Markets of Tra­jan came to view, but the magnitudeand identity of this splendid edifice re­mained unsuspected. After the Breach,excavations in the area of the Forum ofAugustus revealed its south exedra(1888-1889). No further excavationcould be undertaken without destruc­tion of the overlying post-Renaissancetissue,

Two principal streets ran lengthwisethrough this tissue: Via Cremona andVia Alessandrina. The Plans of 1873and 1883, concerned more with trafficthan the exposing of history, advocatedthe enlargement of Via Cremona andits extension Via Salara Vecchia up tothe tempie of Antoninus and Faustina.From this point, a major artery (ViaCavour) would climb in the directionof Santa Maria Maggiore and the rail­road station, while a briefer stretchwould take off for the Colosseum along

60

the north flanks of the Basilica of Max­entius and the tempie of Venus andRome. The Pian of 1909 reiterated thisscheme. In the meantime, it was alsoenvisaged that Via Cavour would crossthe Roman Forum by means of a via­duct, an iron suspension bridge in form,and head toward the river and Traste­vere. Independent projects, e.g., by theengineers Missiroli and Monaco, pre­ferred a system of tunnels under theCapitoline.Unofficial alternatives to the Via Cre­mona solution were of two kinds. Eithera route between Via Cremona and ViaAlessandrina was favored, ostensiblyto minimize damage to the fora and toallow the continued use of these streetsas tramways (Francesco Mora, 1907);or else the route was made to pass be­hind the Forum of Augustus and diag­onally across that of Trajan (ArnaldoTolomei, 1903). A commission namedby the Ministry of Public Works (inaccordance with the Ministry of PublicInstruction and the city) in 1919 tostudy the systematization of the Cap­itoline adopted the widening of ViaCremona and Via Alessandrina, withthe residential buildings in betweenleft intact. At first, the Variante Gen­erale of 1925 agreed with this latter so­lution, but a year later a second versionof it came around to the total razing ofthese buildings.With the advent of Fascism, the revela­tion of the fora became the paramountconcerno Corrado Ricci was entrustedwith this project, and work was begunin 1924. By 1932, when the Forum ofCaesar had been excavated in part,nearly the entire span of the fora (over80,000 square meters) had been dugup. But according to one estimate, asmuch as 84% of this was covered overin the end by the modern roadway,called Via dei Colli and Via dei Montiat first, and then Via dell'Impero.Against the recommendation of thePian of 1931 to have the road V-shapedfor half its length, as finally executedVia dell'Impero was a straight line, nine

,.hundred meters long and thirty wide,from the eastern flank of the Vittorianoto the Colosseum. By the time it wasinaugurate d, on 28 October 1932,280,000 cubic meters of earth and50,000 of rock had to be moved; 5,500units of housing demolished; and12,000 cubic meters of retaining wallserected to shore up what remained ofthe Velia on the two sides of the road.Three churches - Santa Maria in Macello

Marlyrum, Sant'Urbano dei Pantani,and San Lorenzuolo ai Monti-werepulled down, as well as the base of thecolossus of Nero and the ancient foun­tain called Meta Sudans which im­peded the viewof the Arch of ConsJan­tine.

At the orders of the Duce, bronzestatues of the emperors associated withthe fora were lined up along the newroad, and stone maps of the growth ofRoman power, from antiquity to theFascist present, were affixed to thenorthern wall of the Basilica of Maxen­tius.

Via dell'Impero as seen through asecond-story arch of the Colosseum.[Gabinetto Fotografico Nazionale,E/ 41220].

61

Aerial photograph of the region be­tween the Vittoriano (extreme right)and the Colosseum in 1929, before theconstruction of Via dell'Impero.[Alinari,41242].

The Tolomei project, 1903. [From A.Tolomei, La Via Cavour e i fori imperiali].

62

The York Company project, 1857.[Archivio di Stato di Roma, Disegni eMappe I, Cartella 82, no. 369].

The arteries of Via dell'Impero and Viadel Mare cut through existing urbanfabric, pIan. [Museo di Roma].

63

Via del Mare(Via del Teatro di Marcello)There were three historical nodes ofimportance which thi§ Fascist avenuewas designed to bring into harmony:·the Capitoline; the theater of Marcel­lus; and a group of rrionum~nts sur­IQunding Piazza della Bocca della Ver­ità, i.e., the so-calledtemples or For­'tuna Virilis and of Vesta, the medievalhouse of the Crescentii immediatelyto their north, the medieval churchesof Santa Maria in Cosmedin and SanGiorgio in Velabro, and next to SanGiorgio, the arches of the Argentariiand of Janus Quadrifons.Since the first Master PIan, the libera­tion of the theater of Marcellus fromencroaching structures was steadfastlypromulgated. The project was relatedto the demolition of the adjacent Ghettoarea and its transformation into a mod­ern quarter, which was accomplishedin the 1880s. The Bocca della Verità en­semble figured in the plans for the im­provement of the Tiber banks. Duringthe last decade of the century, SantaMaria in Cosmedin was restored bythe Associazione Artistica tra i Cultoridi Architettura (1894-1899, with G. B.Giovenale as director), and, in the spiritof authenticity current at the time, itsBaroque facade by Giuseppe Sardi wasripped off in order to re-establish theRomanesque prospect. Finally, the iso­lation of the Capitoline was includedin alI efforts to open up circulationroutes south of Piazza Venezia. Sincethe presence of the Roman Forum alongthe east slope of the hill severely cir­cumscribed the scope of anytraffic sol­ution there, the west slope, with itsmore demotic and therefore more dis­pensable fabric, was favored.

The PIan of 1873 prescribed the wid­ening of Via della Pedacchia (later ViaGiulio Romano) and Via Tor de' Specchithat ran along the base of this westernslope. By contrast, the PIan of 1883chose a route more to the west, begin­ning between the church of the Gesùand Palazzo Venezia and swooping to­ward the renovated Ghetto past PiazzaMargana and Piazza Campitelli. The

64

last of these, opened up at either end,became merely a section of this route,which peeled off to the right, past thetheater of Marcellus, and headed to­ward Piazza della Bocca della Veritàby means of an amplified Via dellaBocca della Verità.

The PIan of 1909 returned to the initialsolution of 1873; but by this time theVittoriano was in irreversible progress,a large built area around it slowly su c­cumbed to its devouring agoraphilia,and so the need to skirt the hill nowbecame more urgent and its scope moreambitious.

Immediately after the War, the com­mittee named by the Ministry of Pub­lic Works to study the problem of theCapitoline and its vicinity modified thisproposed artery along the westernslope, with a view toward sparing SantaRita da Cascia between the Aracoelistairs and the flank of the Vittoriano,as well as the string of Renaissancehouses and churches (SS. Orsola eCaterina and Sant'Andrea in Vincis mostespecially) that defined the side of ViaTor de' Specchi toward the hill. Butthe Variante Generale of 1925 -1926adopted a bolder scheme-proposed in­dependently also by the engineer T.Mora-that would clear the hillside ofalI recent structures. The enlargedPiazza Montanara before the theater ofMarcellus was to be monumentallyframed, and a grand staircase with ter­racing was to provide a formaI ascentto the arx terrarum of the Capitolineand the city offices at the top.For Bocca della Verità, the VarianteGenerale embraced a study by Giovan­noni, commissioned by the city in 1924.Three of the ancient monuments-thearch of Janus; and the temples of Vestaand Fortuna Virilis-were to be freedof accretions, and set in an open spacelowered to the originaI classical leveland landscaped. The arch and the tem­pIe of Vesta were to form a lateral axisfor the new artery from the north, andthis axis riveted, at the crossing of theartery with Via dei Cerchi, by means

of tw; modern buildings acting as pro­pylaea. Next to Santa Maria in Cos­medin, the rude mass of the pasta

factory called Pantanella had been ac­quired by the city with the intention ofremodeling it for use as a museum.Giovannoni proposed for it a strippedserial facade inspired by ancient ware­houses or horrea, as these were becom­ing known from the excavations at Os­tia. Instead, it was soon transformedinto a palace front.The Variante Generale was never offi­cially approved, but nevertheless from1926 onward work started on alI partsof Via del Mare. Alberto Calza Binitook charge of the restoration of thetheater of Marcellus (completed by1932). A modified version of the Gio­vannoni pIan for Bocca della Verità wasexecuted under the generaI supervisionof Clemente Busiri Vici, while GiovanBattista Milani directed the restorationof the tempIe of Vesta, and AntonioMunoz, the city's Inspector GeneraI forAntiquities, the tempIe of Fortuna Viri­lis and San Giorgio.Munoz wa,s also entrusted with thecomplex task of the isolation of theCapitoline. Between 1929 and 1931 thewest slope was completely cleared ofthe modern fabric of tenements andchurches, and the ground levelloweredby as much as eight meters to reach thetuffa core. AlI previous projects for ter­races, ramps, porticoes, and the like(see, for example, the contemporarydesigns by V. Fasolo) were rejected infavor of understated landscaping basedon classical trees such as the pine, thelaurei, and the cypress. Next carne thesouthern slope, with the renovation ofVia della Consolazione (the ancientvicus ]ugarius), and the clearing of thechurch of Sant'Omobono (1931-1933).And last of all, the eastern side towardthe Roman Forum received some atten­tion between 1941 and 1943.

T~~. ancient ag:9P()li.~..oLRQme . .nQWstoo(rFiee Ior the first time, with .!b"~Viff6fÌano built agaj~st itsn·ortfi~.!'~~c~,and Santa Maria Aracoeli, Michel-

The embankments and the 'lungo/evere

today: stretch along Castel Sant'Angelo,Palazzo di Giustizia, and the neo-Gothicchurch of S. Cuore del Suffragio (1890).[F.Rigamonti].

Vescovali project for embankments andthe lungo/evere; detail at Castel Sant'Angelo, 1875. [From O. P. Conti, Sis/e­

mazione del Tevere, Rome, 1876].

Ripa Giudea, the left bank at theGhetto; as seen from Ponte Fabrizio(Quattro Capi), before the lungo/evere.[Museo di Roma].

67

Piazzale AugustaImperatoreIf we discount a proposal of limitedscope by Giuseppe Valadier in the earlynineteenth century, the freeing of themausoleum of Augustus from parasiticconstruction that concealed its circularform was first advanced in the PIan of1909. The project was viewed as a sidebenefit of the new artery provided forin the Pian that would link Piazza diSpagna and the quarters above with thethriving residential area north of theBorgo. Starting east of Via del Corsowith a widened Via della Croce, theartery continued in a straight line un~til the river.

At the time the mausoleum was func-tioningas a·còncert haìl, the last of aseries of designations that had kept itin continuai use since the Middle Ages.It had been a fort of the Colonna andthe Orsini; laid out as a hanging gar­den by the Soderini who had acquiredit in 1546; transformed into a bull-ringin the eighteenth century; taken overby the State in the late nineteenth cen­tury, and occupied for some years bythe sculptor Enrico Chiaradia as work­space for his equestrian of the Vitto­riano; .and finally ceded to thecity in1907, which had it remodeled as a con­cert hall. The Pian of 1909 did not pro­pose to end this latest activity. Onlythe exterior form of themausoleuinwould be revealed by freeing the cir­cumference wall along most of its orig­

~~al line, except for Palazzo Correaabuttlng' ohthe north, and a smaIlpolygonal piazza opened around it.

After the War, the commission set upto revise the PIan retained and im­proved upon this scheme (VarianteGenerale 1925-1926). In additioI1 tothe mausoleum, now to be completelydisengaged from surrounding construc­tion including Palazzo Correa, three '"churches roundabout, San Carlo al

C5r'so;ancf 5an Girolamo degli Schia:vani and San Rocco fronting on Via dìRipetta; were also substantially to befreed. Azone of silence around thesemonuments was to be ensured by bury­ing the existing tramlines underground.

68

Furthermore, the commlSSlon advocatedthe formaI planning of the lungoteverefrom the Accademia di Belle Arti alithe way down to Piazza Nicosia, andwork on this part of their proposal wasactually begun shortly thereafter basedon designs by Carlo Grazioli for thenorthem section until Ponte Cavour,and Felice Nori for the southem sec­tion. Also in 1926 the first serious ex­cavations within the mausoleum wereundertaken under the direction of G.Q. Giglioli.

In 1927, two rival projects for the piazzaarolin'd the mausoleum were being cir­culated; Bothaltered the odd-shaped'polygonal piazza with exedrae, speci­fied in the Variante Generale, into acircle that echoed the monument'sformo But whereas the project of theUfficio Tecnico of the govematorate de­fined the circle by a ring of modembuildings, Enrico Del Debbio's projectfor theFedt:Iazione Fas'cista dell'Urbe

~vVasconcemed with showing off themausoleum to best advantage, in har­mony with the three churches and with­out competitiori from large-scalenew

.§tructures. The eastem approach intothe piazza was still through a widenedVia della Croce, but a V-shaped open­ing west of the Corso guaranteed a bet­ter view of the mausoleum from thatside. Matching this northeastern fea­ture of the piazza, a diagonal avenuetook ofE from the northwest cornermerging with the traffic along the river.

The Pian of 1931 enlarged the area ofthe piazza, and gave it a rectangiilarformo ]t was to be limited by Via deiPontefici to the north; Vicolo del Grot­tino to the south; Via di Ripetta to thewest, with a line of building betweenit and the mausoleum and the newblock by Grazioli beyond, between Viadi Ripetta and the river; ~d to thlòeast,

_by a line that passed aIong-iEe west~ae~CifPiazza degli Otto Cantoni. Every­thing except the mausoleum withinthese boundaries was to be leveled.The eastern approach from the direc­tion of Piazza di Spagna was shifted

from Via della Croce to a widened ViaVittoria, and an action pIan (piano par­

ticolareggiato) in agreement with theseprovisions was approved on 2 May1932.

At this point, the decision to make amajor pageant out of the upcomingbimillennial of Augustus' birth suggest­ed further changes. The mausoleum ofthe emperor should be returned to itsoriginai state within as well, by pullingdown the concert hall; the piazza shouldbe enlarged stili further to unite themausoleum more firmly with the massesof the three churches. Vittorio BalloMorpurgo was appointed architect incharge. His revision of the action pianproceeded in two stages. The initialdesign of 1934 retained the V of thenortheast corner. New porticoed build­ings of the National Fascist Institute ofSocial Insurance (Istituto NazionaleFascista della Previdenza Sociale) wereto define the piazza on the north andeast sides, but the projected buildingto the west was cancelled, so the mau­soleum could be viewed directly fromVia di Ripetta. A wide "street-piazza"passed between the churches of SanGirolamo and San Rocco, and endedwith the splendid tribune of San Carloal Corso now freed of ali attachments.The mausoleum was provided with twopropylaea-blocks on the south side,serving as a museum for Augustan artincluding the fragments of the Ara Pacis.

The final Morpurgo project of 1935 didaway with the propylaea-blocks, andsettlèd for an underground museum.San Girolamo and San Rocco, joine,dby a twO-part bridge,became the newpropylaea along Via di Ripetta. What'is mare, the. Grazioli block along the'lungotevere was now slated for demoÌi­tion, at the express orders of MussO­lini, so that the piazza could be reori­ented and opened up toward the river.One last change was the rejection ofthe northeastern V in favor of a gentI econvex curve that would continue theline of the widened Via Vittoria intothe piazza.

Demolition began on 22 October 193L,Land-proceeded from th~ periphery ~n­ward. The last concert was held in themausoleum on 13 May 1936.Soon af­terward the foundations far the LN.F.P.s.buildings were laid. In ]anuary 1937,Palazzo Valdambrini (Soderini), builtby Cardinal Riminaldi in 1774, wasbrought down; Palazzo Correa followedsuit in March. The last to be c1earedwere the buildings along Via Tomacelliand Via di Ripetta. When the bimil­l~l1nial celebrations startèdeJn 23 Sep~tember 1937, a final décision was madeto set up the Ara Pacis in a glass cagepn the river side of Piazzale AugustoImperatore; at the c10sing of the cere­monies, exactly one year later, this toowas done. By 1940 the building of thePiazzale was complete d, with the lastmajor structure to rise being the Col­legio degli IlIirici on Via Tomacelli ina line with San Girolamo. But Via Vit­toria was never enlarged and the circu­lation rationale of this vast and costlysquare was thus thwarted.

PIan over pre-existing urban fabric.

•. First Morpurgo project, 1934. [Courtesyof G. Santoro].

69

Via della ConciliazioneThe idea of creating an open axis to'the complex of St. Peter's had beenaround since the time of Bemini, andthe way to achieve this was'a maÙei:­of consensus. Between the river andthe piazza of St. Peter's the axis wasoccupied by four irregular blocks form­ing a narrow V with Borgo Nuovo andBorgo Vecchio for its two arrns-the 50­called spina. Toward St. Peter's thespina started with Piazza Rusticucci, andhalfway down another piazza, Scossa­cavalli, interrupted the solid mass ofbuilding. Two important palaces stoodback to back between these piazze: Pal­azzo Rusticucci of the late sixteenthcentury, and Palazzo dei Convertendi,fronting on Piazza Scossacavalli, attrib­uted to Bramante.

The spina would have to be demolished-that much there was agreement onoBeyond this, the projects differed. Theso-called "open" solution, representedby the projects of Cosimo Morelli (1776)and Valadier-Camporesi-Stern (earlynineteenth century), would leave theaxis as this demolition exposed it, Le.,with unparallel sides and slightly off­axis with St. Peter's. Others would cor­rect this axis and block the wider endof the V, toward the Piazza of St. Peter'swith a cross wing, usually along theeast side of Piazza Rusticucci (CarloFontana, 1694). One post-1870 solu­tion, by Andrea Busiri Vici, employedtwo large portico-buildings lined upone behind the other along the demol­ished spina, obstructing the view of St.Peter's from the river.

The demolition of the spJna wasGlcTude,nri "the Plahòf1.873 ,butdisà.i?~,.pèàrea 'tram all subsequent Plans in­dÙding that of 1931. But the reconcilia-

.tion of the Church and the Italian gov-ernment encouraged fresh thinking onthe issue; symbolically, the opening up

.of St. Peter'~; toward the city seemed.now most appropriate. In 1934 two sep­arate projects by Marcello Piacentiniand Attilio Spaccarelli were presented.to the governor of Rome, Boncompagni,and the Duce respectively.,The follow-

70

ing year the two architects were chargedby the new governor Giuseppe Bottaito collaJ?or<iteon a joint scheme, andin aTIÙle morethana yiar it was ready

"T6-rpréséntatio~. , ..According to Piacentini and Spaccarelli,the "open" solution was feasible, if atall, only with the two sides of the de­molished spina made parallel, to correctthe inverse perspective of the V. Theirown preference was for the closed solu­tion. Of two alternatives within thissolution, one, the construction of twomodest blocks that would redefinePiazza Scossacavalli and Piazza Rusti­cucci, was rejected on the grounds thatit isolated St. Peter's from the city andobstructed the view of the church fa­cade except for the dome. The churchcOmplex must be separated from itsnew axis but not isolated from it. Sothe final project, approved by the Duceon 20 June 1936 and by Pope Pius XI

a week later, )?rescribed a doublepor­tico across the demolished spina, ataboutthe eastend of Piazza Rusticucci,1hrough which the facadè of-St. Peter'scouId be seen ali the way from the river.Within three months expropriationproceedings were completed and onthe first day of 1937 the Duce lifted hispick to signal the start of the demolition.

The new street, called Via della Con­ciliazione in memory of the rapproche­ment between Church and State, wasunder construction during the Waryears, with the. final stages of the workconcluded between 1945 and the HolyJubilee year of 1950. As executed, thedouble portico was left out. The con­vergent sides of the street were broughtcloser to a parallel alignment, and de­fined by a combination of new buildingblocks and alder buildings such asPalazzo Torlonia and Santa Maria inTraspontina on the north side andPalazzo dei Penitenzieri on the southside. Two rows of obelisks serving aslampposts conceal the irregular line ofthese two sides, and slow down theperspective view towàrd the church.The palazzi Rusticucci and Convertendi

were rECç9!lst.ructedon the north .side~f fFie street. The generarwidth is àboutfitty"fiÙiFers;/bùttoward St. Peter's it{so i::6nshicféd by twa projecting blocksthat introduce the secondary Piazza 1"io

.XII before one enters. the piazza of. St.Peter's. Toward the river end, the line

'of Ponte Vittorio Emanuele is continuedby the straight line of Via San Pio X

emerging obliquely in front of thefacade of Santa Maria in Traspontina.

Aerial view of Via della Conciliazione

today. [Courtesy of F. Quilici].

View of the spina, before the openingof the artery. [Gabinetto FotograficoNazionale, B/741].

-----------_._--._ .._--~-------~_._----

71

Foro Mussolini

(Foro Italico )The origin of this monumental complexon the right bank, between the riverand the hills of Monte Mario andMacchia Madama, is linked to the in­stitution of the Opera Nazionale Balilla,the Fascist party's system for the train­ing of Italian youth. The planning ofthis area for the Rome Balilla beganmodestly. Enrico Del Debbio's firstproject of 1927 consisted of an Acad­emy for Physical Education, meant forthe instructors of this emerging na­tional program, with adjacent fields.The notion for a grander scheme shouldbe attributed to Renato Ricci, Under­secretary of National Education andhead of the O.N.B. In 1928 a secondproject by Del Debbio already encom­passed most of the major elements ofthe later complex: two stadia, one largeand one small, swimming pools, educa­tional facilities, and an obelisk. At thisstage the ceremonial entrance along theriver was not as yet linked with the leftbank by means of an axial bridge; in­stead, a bridge was projected furthersouth, in line with the swimming poolsand the open-air theater. The ceremo­nial entrance was roughly equidistantto this new bridge and the ancient PonteMilvio to the north. The axial bridgemakes its first appearance in the 1930version of the scheme, which also re­tains the southern bridge. The entranceto the complex at this southern pointwas now formalized with a piazza anda reception building that would alsoaccommodate the three hundred stu­dents of the biennial fencing course.(Assigned to the architect Luigi Morettiin 1932, this building, known as Casadelle Armi, was completed in 1934­1936.) The theater was moved north ofthe stadia.

More peripheral modifications were in­troduced in 1932. This version extendedthe area of the Foro Mussolini ali theway from Ponte Milvio to the edges ofthe residential quarter of Piazza d'Armi,for a total of 850,000 square meters. InpIace of the open-air theater, a train sta­tion was now projected.

72

By 1934 the originaI core building ofthe Academy, the small stadium calledStadio Mussolini or Stadio dei Marmi,the larger stadium (Stadio dei Cipressi)whose seating grades consisted of land­scaped terracing, and the obelisk wereali completed. In contrast to the sober

.underplayed Academy, made largely ofexposed brick, the rest was of shiningCarrara marble. The seventeen-meter­high monolith of the obelisk stood to­ward the river, between the Academyand the covered swimming pool by Cos­tantino Costantini. It was Costantiniwho was also responsible for the featof erecting the obelisk. The StadioMussolini, with a capacity of 20,000,had ten rows of marble seats toppedby sixty statues of male nudes, eachfour meters high, contributed by indi­viduaI Italian cities. Its long axis ranthrough the two symmetrical wings ofthe Academy building.

In 1935, a fountain comprised of amonolithic sphere three meters in di­ameter set in a sunken circular basin,was placed behind the obelisk, in thespace between this stadium and theStadio dei Cipressi. Its designers wereMario Pani coni and Giulio Pediconi.The same year a competition was held,under the sponsorship of the Ministryof Public Works, for the bridge on axiswith the fountain, the obelisk, and theceremonial entrance. Eighteen projectswere submittèd, and the winning designby Vincenzo Fasolo and the engineerAntonio Aureliwas built in 1938-1939(Ponte Duca d'Aosta). The southernbridge wasnever built.

·AIso in 1935, the decision was takento move the site of the Palazzo del Lit­torio, headquarters of the Fascist party,from the corher of Via dell'Imperoacross the Colosseum, as specified inthe competition of 1934, to the ForoMussolini. The building by Del Debbio,Arnaldo Foschini, and Vittorio Mor­purgo, was now designed to stand northof the two stadia, in a vast rectangularpiazza one hundred and fifty by two

?

hundred meters, capable of holding600,000 people. In the middle a Fascisttower, the Torre Littoria, was to beerected. Stili another bridge, betweenPonte Milvio and the new Ponte Ducad'Aosta, was to connect this piazza withthe left bank. Groundbreaking was on28 October 1937, but the building, nowdestined for the Ministry of ForeignAffairs, was finished only in the latefifties-minus the tower and the bridge.

Esposizione Universaledi Roma (EUR)In the introductory essay we have out­lined the circumstances that led to theconceptionof EUR',The initial decisionto hold a universal exposition wasreached in the spring of 1935, and ne­gotiations with participating nations be­gan in June 1936.The theme was to be"The Olympics- of Civilization;' eachnation displaying its own share in theprogress of humanity, ifs special con­tribution to the field of art and science.For Mussolini's own purposes the a~j1lof tlie project was three-pronged: (1)to show how Italy, through the twenty­sèven centuries of its histQry, had li~.the way in ali efforts of human knowl­edge and action; (2) to celebrate wìthah international audience the twentiethanniversary of the Fascist regime in arnonumental theater that would refIectthe scope and splendor of its accom­plishment; and (3) to provide the per­m a n e n t m a t?ìx-foranewè:'enfer Ci f

Rom~, both cerem~nial and residenti~I,that would rival the physical greatnessof the historic city and act as the stag-.ìng area for the extensio'n of Rometoward the sea, a major objective ofMussoIini's program.

The preliminary master pIan for EURwas drawn up in ~il.~:IyI937bya teamconsisting of Giuseppe Pagano,Mar:cello Piacentini, Ettore Rossi, and LuigiVietti. It was approved by the Duce on­8, 'Aprii, and groundbreaking ceremo­nies were held on 28 ApriI. The pIanwas a mixture of picturesque and formaIdesign, marrying the possibilities of anirregular site with the rigor of a hier­archical grido The basic scheme wascross-axiaI. Major buildings c10sed offthe main north-south axis at either end-the grand hall for receptions and con­gresses and the pala ce of Italian CiviIi­zation, respectively. Both were set onhigh ground. In front of the palace, aglass structure called the Palace of LightoverIooked an artificial lake of pictur­esque outline which the axis crossedby a bridge. The grand hall fronted along piazza focused by the obeIisk ofAxum brought from this holy city of

Ethiopia in 1937. This Piazza Axumopened into a stìII larger Piazza Impe­riale, surrounded by museums and atheater and leading out into the twoarms of the main cross-axis.

In the subsequent revision of this pIan,the picturesque elements disappearedin favor of a rigidly orthogonallayout.The inspiration carne, of course, fromthe cross-axial arrangement of ancientRoman castra and colonial foundations,and the generaI c1assical grid of Hippo­damian towns Iike Miletus and Priene.The grouping of major buildings emu­lated openly the monumental com­plexes of Rome itself, specifically theimperial fora at the other end of ViaImperiale, the great. highway that wasto Iink Piazza Venezia with EUR andhead on to Ostia and the sea.

In recognition of the fact that the north­south axis of EUR was only one stretchof this highway, its ends were. openedup in the revised pIan. The grand hall(palazzo dei Ricevimenti e dei Congressi),and the pala ce of Italian Civilization(Iater Palace of Labor) were now set upas terminaI features of a secondarycross-axis immediately within the northentrance, the Porta Imperiale. The maincross-axis carne halfway between PiazzaImperiale and the now formaI lake,and was framed by a complex of com­munications museums to the east andthe church to the west. The obeliskwas moved to Piazza Imperiale. It wasnot to be that ofAxum,.which hadmeanwhile been slated for erection atthesouthern en-dof Via dei Trionfi, bal­ancing the Arch of Constantine at theopposite end; instead, a marble slabwas to be dedicated to the memory ofGuglielmo Marconi, and covered withreIiefs ì1Iustrating the theme of com­munication history.

This revised pIan was the brainchildof Piacentini, named Superintendent ofArchitecture by the corporation whichhad been created through a special bìIIof 26 December 1936 to direct the de­velopment of EUR. The corporation,

calle dEnte Autonomo Esposizione Uni­versale di Roma, was overseen by anadvisory Commissariat with senatorVittorio Cini as its president; otherwise,it functioned completely independentlyof the administrative and juridical con­trol of the Pian of 1931, even thoughit was heavily subsidized by the State.Dìrectly under Piacentini carne GaetanoMinnucci, in charge of the execution ofparks, gardens, and individuaI structures.

Some of the buildings more or less com­pleted between 1937 and 1943 were as­signed to specific architects by the EnteAutonomo. Minnucci himself did theoffices of the Ente; Arnaldo Foschini,the church of Saints Peter and PauI. Forothers, the Ente held competitions. Ofthese, the most important are the fol­lowing: Palazzo dei Ricevimenti e deiCongressi, Adalberto Libera the win­ning architect; Palazzo della Civiltà Ita­liana, Giovanni Guerrini, Ern~sto LaPadula, Mario Romano, the winrringteam; Piazza Imperiale, and surround­ing buildings, executed according to afinaI design by the two projects thatplaced first, that by Luigi Moretti andthat by the team of Francesco Fariello,Saverio Muratori, and Lodovico Qua~roni; and finally, Piazza delle ForzeArmate, with two winning designs byMario De Renzi and Gino Pollini (notexecuted).

The post- War activity of the Ente, self­supporting since 1951, is outside thescope of this exhibition.

Aeria! view of centra! EUR today. [Courtesy of F.Quilici).

Final PIan, 1938. [From

GeneraI view from the air.

Construction photograph of the Acad­emy for Physicai Education, 1934.[Vasari).