The impossible capital: monumental rome under liberal and fascist regimes, 1870‐1943

Abstract

Every nation‐state has a capital city from where the central government's institutions operate and where the past of the nation is remembered monumentally. Following unification in 1870 Rome became the capital of the new Italy. Turning it into a singular site to represent the aspirations of the regimes that came to power, however, proved an impossible task. Not only did the Liberal and Fascist regimes of the period 1870‐1943 have contradictory intentions and goals, they also ran up against the complexities of Rome's own history in trying to establish their own. This paper contends that there are important similarities between the two regimes in their approaches to making Rome a capital for the new state and that contemporary cultural analysis of the Fascist regime misses this continuity when it takes the regime's claims to aesthetic novelty and architectural innovation at face value. In the end, Rome resisted attempts at using its monumental space to symbolically unify a country that remained materially and culturally divided.

Settlement Planning and Urban Symbology in Syro-Anatolian Cities

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Rome's Pasts and the Creation of New Urban Spaces: Brecciation, Matter, and the Play of Surfaces and Depths

“…The ways in which remnants have been promoted or forgotten throughout the city's existence contribute to shaping Rome's fabric as it stands today. Although the past is revered and marketed, it also poses a challenge to the planning of Rome. Whilst geographers and anthropologists interested in the materiality of Rome and its effects on the city's socioeconomic life have persuasively commented on the jumbled nature of its architecture, the focus of these studies has mainly concerned the observable juxtapositions that are found on the surface (Agnew, 1995;1998;Atkinson and Cosgrove, 1998;Herzfeld, 2009). Conversely, studies that explore Rome's underground emphasise the archaeological and historical significance hidden below the city (Della Portella, 2002;Pavia, 2000).…”

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