Report on heritage practices concerning far-right movements
Introduction
This research is based on the analysis of Italian places and monuments as symbols of celebration of the fascist regime and built mostly under the regime: it will also provide an overview on Italian far-right movements’ narratives on these heritage, along with the use of this latter in the Italian political discourse.
A new Italian debate recalls the past fascist history in the last decades due to a growing presence of neofascist groups in the society. According to the historian G. Albanese1, this is the result of the implicit idea of counterposing fascism to liberal democracy: this means that fascism schemes and practices are used in a critical phase of Italian society as a means to deny and detach from the current “democratic institutions”.
While in Germany, a law enacted in 1949 against apologia for Nazism, which prohibited saluting Hitler and other public rituals, facilitated the suppression of symbols of the Third Reich. On the other hand, Italy did not undergo a comparable re-education programme. After the war, the Italian republican governments limited themselves to forcing the destruction of monuments and decorations considered to be of obvious fascist reference, such as the bust of Mussolini. There was therefore no law to rid Italy of thousands of fascist monuments. The immobility of an apparently necessary initiative was justified by the impracticability of the operation; it would also have been politically unwise for the Allied forces, whose priority was to stabilise the unstable country and limit the power of the growing Communist Party. Therefore, non-explicit fascist buildings and monuments survived either by being transferred to museums or simply covered with tarpaulins and plywood.
In this regard it is important to remember that the Scelba Law enacted in Italy in 1953 was designed to prevent the reconstitution of the Fascist Party and was notoriously vague on everything else. The ruling Christian Democratic bloc, which included many former fascists, did not see the numerous material remnants of the regime as a problem and therefore a more proactive policy was never implemented.
Heritage and memory
In the first place, a definition of ‘monument’ given by J. LeGoff could be useful to highlight the link between the physical monument and memory itself: the historian has explained with great clarity the link between a monument and a document: one is the reflection or the result of the other, in the entry on Documento/Monumento, written for the Enciclopedia Einaudi (1978). The definition cites:
The Latin word monumentum comes from the indo european root men which is a form of expression of one of the fundamental functions of the mind (mens), the memory (memini). The verb monere means “make remember”, then “illuminate”, up to “teach”. The monumentum is a sign of the past. When dating back to its philological origins, the term monument addresses anything recalling the past, or anything perpetuating the memory.2
So, the presence of a monument is directly linked to the concept of imagining, to the link with memory and past, and linked to the power of history of transmitting a message supposed to have a collective impact, both visually and tangibly. The current debate tries to question these monuments and their role in relation to the past or to the present. It is recommended to distinguish between those symbols built in the past and those monuments erected in the present to bring back to light historical occurrences.
Monuments as instrument of affirmation of fascist regime
When Mussolini, at the head of a new political movement, came to power in 1922, he was aware that he had to give a fascist stamp to a country with an enviable heritage. Public buildings such as the Foro Mussolini sports complex in Rome had to contrast with the Medici and the Vatican, while statues of the Duce, photos in offices, posters at tram stops and even prints on swimming costumes kept Italians on their toes. It was not difficult to feel that fascism had invaded public space, that is what Calvino stated.3
The famous Italian writer, who has been also a partisan, wrote “’You could say that the first twenty years of my life were spent with Mussolini’s face always in sight, as his portrait was hung in all classrooms, as well as in all offices and public places. […] I entered first elementary school in 1929 and I have distinct memories of Mussolini’s portraits from that era […]. I remember him […] in the small colour lithograph hanging in the classroom […] and in a black photograph between the last pages of the antiquated syllabary […]. Outside the classroom the image of Mussolini could still be seen in portraits, in statues, in “Luce” films (the newsreels of the time), in “illustrated newspapers”. They were images that, Calvino notes, communicated “a discipline without contingencies”.4
Thereby, on one hand the monument is built to celebrate someone or something in order to leave traces for future generations; on the other hand it is the subjective interpretation of that symbol from the society that builds upon a collective memory and a shared belief. What happens with these fascist monuments is that they are given a significance coming from a reconstruction of the past: a specific society has its specific characteristics which influence the reconstruction of the history, known as “symbolic significance”, a form of reification.
Therefore, a deeper analysis of the phases of fascism will show the growth of consensus and power of the party, by virtue of propagandistic intervention, then the violent repression, to end up with the total conquest of the power. The strategy included either the construction of structures and buildings, with a particular accent on symbols integrated in the public architecture, becoming integrated part of the collective imaginary of Italian society.
In addition to this, the ascent of fascism put its roots on solid narrative including concepts such as vigour, modernisation, a moment of change compared to the Liberal regime, military power, family, populism, the defence of the Roman Italian identity. A new symbolism was required with the new party: the fasces for the state iconography recalled the Roman variation meant as the idea of unity, strength, discipline, justice.
Since the twenties and the thirties of the 20th century saw a true diarchy between the totalitarian power and the Savoy monarchy, there was a twofold push for a modernisation of the urban and architectural planning of the country. Among the initiatives to consolidate these two powers and to celebrate them were the monument to king Emanuele Filiberto dutch of Aosta (1937) in Turin and the Bridge Dutch of Aosta (1939) in Rome.
Nevertheless, a crucial monument is the Altar of the Fatherland in Rome that nowadays hosts the remains of the “unknown soldier”: it was important for fascism as living proof of a sort of “religion of the fatherland”. The Altar was built in honour of king Vittorio Emanuele II at the end of the 19th century, under the name of The Vittoriano. The remains of the Unknown soldier were brought there in 1921 with the aim of celebrating soldiers who died on the battlefield during World War I: this element changed the value of the monument in a vivid commemoration of the entire Italian population and so the State. Later in 1922 Mussolini went kneeling down the altar as a formalisation of his new power: the fascistisation of the State took place finally.
Furthermore, architecture is necessary to have an object for the masses to self-recognise themselves, a place that includes values of an entire community. The urban processes were in the agenda of Mussolini because he caught the centrality of these elements in the ambition of “anthropologic reshaping of the italian men”5regarding profound changes of Italian customs and mentality. The insertion of signs and structures was the turning point to deeply act into Italians’ consciousness, be it an everlasting effect on society.
Prominent, yet mostly ignored, Italy’s Fascist heritage is hidden in plain sight. The colonisation of the plain of Agro Pontino to the south of Rome and the reclamation of the notorious Pontine Marshes is the most ambitious program and grandest display of fascist power in Italy. Known as Latina Province, but then as Littoria, the region is a potent symbol of Mussolini’s ambition to build Italy’s future based on Roman ideology and the ‘Myth of Rome’. This case is peculiar because still nowadays the locals maintain a living memory of the regime which is brought to the surface in daily life.6
Some scholars state that these elements of legacy of fascism definitely are not perceived as symbols of the regime, and they entered the society’s imaginary: in fact it should be proper to talk about an actual representation of the fascist era, but the normalisation of this latter does not make it possible a critical analysis of the phenomenon. That is how the normalisation of certain practices become part of people’s lives, it is a consequence of a removal and at the same time a re-elaboration of history.
Narratives of far-right movements
Neofascist movements
The emergence and evolution of neo-fascist parties in Italy, exemplified by the Movimento Sociale Italiano (MSI) and its later iteration, the Movimento Sociale Italiano – Destra Nazionale (MSI-DN), mark significant chapters in the country’s political landscape. Stemming from the legacy of Benito Mussolini’s Republican Fascist Party, the MSI initially espoused overtly fascist ideologies. However, in a strategic move reflective of broader societal shifts, the party underwent a transformation, rebranding itself as post-fascist. At the Fiuggi Conference, in 1993, Fini, leader ot the party, announced that the Italian Social Movement, a neo-fascist party, would be disbanded to make way for Alleanza Nazionale, the new political entity that would overcome neo-fascism, to make way for a new more modern entity capable of making it a true party of government from then on.7
This repositioning involved embracing a diverse array of ideologies, including anti-globalism, pro-Europeanism, and corporatism. Notably, the MSI-DN exhibited scepticism towards the principles of the free market, particularly evident during critical junctures such as Italy’s accession to the Maastricht Treaty and the privatisation initiatives under the Amato government. This ideological stance underscored the party’s commitment to preserving national identity, sovereignty, and economic interests amidst the forces of globalisation and liberalisation. Such ideological flexibility enabled the MSI-DN to navigate the complexities of contemporary politics while maintaining its core principles of national unity and strength.
Thus, Fini, in 1993, in Fiuggi, stated “We are no longer neo-fascists, but post-fascists…. In the National Alliance there is no liberal-democratic involution: we are in the groove of our traditions of advanced and modern sociality.”
Moreover, a turning point it has been the the election of Berlusconi in 1994, leader of a far right party, Forza Italia, that forged agreements with Umberto Bossi’s Northern League in the northern constituencies and with Gianfranco Fini’s MSI-Alleanza Nazionale in those of the centre-south.. This means that, “when Berlusconi brought the right-wing Italian Social Movement Party to power, his rehabilitation of Fascism was aided by an existing network of pilgrimage sites and monuments”.8 Moreover, a great legacy of the fascist past of the country will recur again in the 2000s until nowadays far-right parties such as Fratelli d’Italia9, that is actually running the country, together with the Lega per Salvini Premier10 and Forza Italia11.
Heritage places linked to Fascism in Italy
As previously stated, Mussolini’s strategy constituted a set of public projects to imprint the ideology in the landscape: that is how the fascist ideology colonised the public realm in all domains of life and public spaces in general since it was a totalitarianism, and it was possible also through a monumental intervention.
Among the oeuvres erected there were: Foro Mussolini sports complex, the Palazzo della Civiltà Italiana and the Square Colosseum in Rome. Lots of fascist memorials which are a controversial presence in Italian towns, and which are difficult to get rid of. As an example, the Scelba Law was promulgated in 1953 to block the reconstitution of the Fascist Party and was famously vague about everything else, later on the Allied Forces Commission decided that the most ‘unaesthetic’ decorations and monuments could be destroyed, while the rest moved to museums or covered up with cloth.
No other policies were put into place until the ascent of Berlusconi: a real normalisation and rehabilitation of fascism with a network of pilgrimage sites and monuments.
Recently, there have been occasions of public debates in Italy concerning the questioning of the heritage of the twenty-year fascist period, an example being in 2015, when centre-left politician Laura Boldrini, hinted at the appropriateness of removing the inscription ‘Mussolini Dux’ on the obelisk in the Foro Italico. The politician was the victim of attacks by the then secretary of the neo-fascist party CasaPound, Simone Di Stefano, and Forza Nuova leader Roberto Fiore. These were joined by polemics from other exponents of Italian politics, such as Alessandro Cattaneo, a member of the presidential committee of Forza Italia, and the then president of the Democratic Party Matteo Orfini, in the name of confused calls for the duty not to erase the ‘memory of fascism’ by tearing down its material legacies or, in other cases, in defence of the undisputed aesthetic value of certain works created by the regime.12
However, for the topic to gain more media value, it took the intervention of the American historian, an expert on the twenty-year fascist period, who on 5 October 2017 published an article in “The New Yorker”, Ruth Ben-Ghiat, posing the question Why Are So Many Fascist Monuments Still Standing in Italy?13
The debate on “difficult heritages” was central at the time and will be even more so in 2020 following the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis, as the fascist heritage that dominates public spaces, conveys identity values, memories, and political perspectives deemed irreconcilable with the political and cultural fabric of today’s societies.14
E.U.R.
The American scholar Ruth Ben-Ghia, in her article for the New Yorker, begins her reflection on the heritage of Italy’s twenty-year fascist period by contesting the official status of “place of cultural interest” granted to the Palazzo della Civiltà Italiana in EUR in 2004.
The Palazzo della Civiltà Italiana, also known as the “Palace of Italian Civilisation” or Colosseo Quadrato for the repetition of its arches, is an imposing monumental structure located in Rome’s EUR district. Built between 1936 and 1953, it was to be part of the urbanisation project in view of the Universal Exhibition of 1942. The choice of the area, south-west of the capital, demonstrated the interest in developing the city towards the sea, redeveloping the district that would be renamed E.U.R. (Esposizione Universale Roma). Work stopped in 1943 due to the war, first becoming an encampment for German troops and then a refuge for post-war evacuees. They resumed in 1951 and finished two years later for the International Agricultural Exhibition. Conceived as a tribute to the twenty years of the fascist regime, this building was to bear witness to the greatness of Italy and its people.
Designed by architects Giovanni Guerrini, Ernesto La Padula and Mario Romano, winners of the public competition (under the jury of Marcello Piacentini), the Palazzo della Civiltà Italiana is a six-storey parallelepiped, 68 metres high and 51 metres wide. What characterises the building is the perfect symmetry visible to the naked eye, with 54 arches (nine in a line and six in a column) distributed along each of its façades. The nine (9) and six (6) do not appear to be random numbers, but were to correspond to the number of letters in the Duce’s name and surname, Benito (6) Mussolini (9), as per his request. Initially, in fact, the design envisaged a higher number of arcs. In the custody of the Ministry of Cultural Heritage and Activities since 2004, the building has also become a place of celebration of Italian craftsmanship thanks to the concession (from 2013 until 2028) to the Italian fashion brand Fendi, which has opened a permanent exhibition on the ground floor of the building.15
The phrase carved on the monumental building (“a people of poets, of artists, of heroes, of saints, of thinkers, of scientists, of navigators, of transmigration”), taken from the speech with which Mussolini announced the invasion of Ethiopia in 1935, constituted, according to Ben-Ghiat, a brand of original infamy that nullified its cultural value at the root.16
Predappio
“Predappio is like the New Mecca of fascism because it is not only its cradle but also its creation. Without Predappio the little Benito or the great Mussolini would have been born anyway, but without Mussolini there would be no Predappio. A short walk is enough to convince oneself. There are more public buildings than inhabited ones. Each one represents a fascist idea.”17
Predappio is a small mediaeval town in Emilia Romagna, Mussolini’s birthplace, where his burial crypt is situated and where shops sell Fascist and Nazi-themed shirts and other merchandise. The Mancino Law, passed in 1993, had responded to the resurgent right by sanctioning the propagation of “racial and ethnic hatred,” but it was unevenly enforced. Nevertheless, under Berlusconi places like Predappio received popularity and began being considered as an integral part of Italy’s cultural heritage.18
Predappio began to become popular already during Mussolini’s rise to power, the recipient of public money for the construction of buildings and monuments, the small town was a place to be reached for an excursion, which has a small cost, so that anyone could afford to visit the birthplace of the new man. Many people with a low level of education, in addition to the use of force, were attracted through simple language and strong emotions: sharing, listening, and faith. The structure of the visits aimed to create consensus, thus it encompassed many places, staying in each one for a short time, with the ultimate aim of accommodating as many people as possible. From the point of view of receptivity, that is, of what was designed to welcome visitors, two structures should be highlighted. The first one was the imposing Casa del fascio e dell’ospitalità (designed by engineer Arnaldo Fuzzi, a former federalist from Forlì), which was inaugurated in April 1937 and housed not only the party offices but also a day hotel, rooms for ceremonies and meetings, and spaces for serving groups. The second was the building of the National Insurance Institute, built between 1938 and 1939 with, inside, the only ordinary structure in terms of incoming: the Hotel Appennino.19
After the liberation of Predappio, the town began to fall back, to remain isolated in the region. From 28 April 1945 (the day of the killing of the Duce) until the summer of 1957, the body of Benito Mussolini remained in hiding. In 1960, the Christian Democratic government, with President Zoli, decided to return the wooden box with the remains of Mussollini’s body to the cemetery in Predappio. In 1971, the Italian extreme right announced a demonstration in Predappio to coincide with the anniversary of the Duce’s death, so a new annual calendar of Mussolini pilgrimages took shape, structured around three key dates: 28 October (anniversary of the march on Rome), 28 April (anniversary of the Duce’s death), 29 July (anniversary of Mussolini’s birth). Naturally, nostalgics, Mussolini loyalists and militants of the Italian Social Movement (MSI) came to visit the tomb at various times of the year, but in a hurry. Rallies attended by thousands of people were organised instead on the Sunday closest to the three symbolic dates.
In the political programmes of the centre-left municipal administrations, a central role was assigned in the last decade to the “Predappio project”, a town of contemporary memory and confrontation. In addition to restoring the birthplace, the efforts of local institutions led to the restoration of the Rocca delle Caminate castle (now owned by the Province of Forlì-Cesena), which, together with the Ciclope scientific laboratory for turbulence studies set up in the hangars of the former Caproni factory, it became the headquarters of the Technopole for aerospace studies. These results come from an internationally important project, carried out by the municipality, together with the Emilia Romagna Region, the University of Bologna and the American and Swedish universities.
Furthermore, the most ambitious project is the construction of a museum to collect the memory of fascism, which would be housed in the Casa del Fascio, a proposal promoted by the left-wing mayor of the town of Predappio, Giorgio Frassinetti, PD, to recover the former Casa del Fascio in a state of total abandonment and come to terms with the past, without being celebratory. The project is much debated among artists, art critics and politicians who fear different political drifts. The idea stubbornly pursued by the mayor is to create a documentation centre, so that Predappio is not just a pilgrimage destination for neo-fascists.
The reconstruction project of the Casa Del Fascio over the past 10 years has involved an authoritative scientific committee chaired by Marcello Flores, and was underway, but a number of unknowns have come to light on its future that seem to have put it at a standstill at the moment. One is related to the completion of the collection of funding for the investment, setting up and management, which has been largely found but not exhaustively.20
As underlined by the historian Marcello Flores, “In this way Predappio can undergo a profound transformation, from a place of celebration of a dictatorial regime to an international context of reaffirmation of the values of democracy.”21
Bolzen
Bolzen, is an Italian city that has a far connection with the fascism. The Fascist presence in South Tyrol is closely connected with the history of the urban and architectural development of the city of Bolzano, which therefore proves to be an extraordinary lens through which to read both the colonialist and Fascist discourse.
Fascism’s attention to South Tyrol was extremely precocious. It began a year and a half before the March on Rome, on 24 April 1921. That day, known as Bozner Bluttsonttag (Bloody Sunday in Bolzano), squads from all parts of Italy descended on Bolzano, terrorising the population and killing the teacher Franz Innerhofer inside the walls of Stillendorf Palace.
Thus began the Italian takeover of the city that wanted to limit and curb German traditions.
In addition, the city of Bolzen has been traced back to Roman times, Fascism then took up this foundation that has historical roots in the roman times, and archaeological excavations were launched to find remains that testified to the Roman origin of the Bolzano area. Thereby, Marcello Piacentini was not only responsible for the urban planning of the ‘Italian Bolzano’, the Roman architect was also the author of the Victory Monument, the shrine on whose pediment the phrase “Hic patriae fines siste signa. Hinc ceteros excoluimus lingua, legibus, artibus”, surmounted by the ominous statue of the “Victory Lightning” stretching its arc northwards, towards hostile Austria and Germany.
In addition to the Victory Monument, there is another Fascist-era work in Bolzano with an openly colonialist character: the frieze created by sculptor Giovanni Piffrader on the gable of the former Casa Littoria, today the Palazzo degli Uffici Finanziari (Financial Office Building).
The figures in the frieze of the building represent “the upward march of Fascist Italy, from the grey and glorious times of the revolutionary eve, to the conquest of the Empire, the Spanish War, and the liberation of the Mare Nostrum”. In practice, a 36 by 5.5 metre narration of the Fascist epic released in the style of Trajan’s Column in the centre of which, in the place historically reserved by iconography for sovereigns and emperors, towers the figure of the Duce on horseback. There are some scholars that go so far as to speculate that this figure of the Duce on horseback may refer to the episode of the sword of Islam22.
The monument remained intact until a 2011 directive from the national government formally requested the city administration to take action. Faced with requests to “destroy” and “preserve” the monument, the city opted for a strategy that, in retrospect, appears much smarter.
A public tender was launched to gather ideas on how to “defuse and contextualise” the politically motivated frieze. Open to artists, architects, historians and anyone involved in the cultural sphere, the tender explicitly stated that the intention was to “transform the bas-relief into a place of memory, so that it is no longer directly visible, but reflexively accessible, within an appropriately explanatory context”.
Nearly 500 proposals were submitted and evaluated by a jury of local civil society personalities, including a history professor, a museum curator, an architect, an artist and a journalist. The jury recommended five proposals, which were voted on by the city council. All proposals and procedures were documented online and open to the public. The winning proposal is as powerful as it is simple. The bas-relief was superimposed with a LED-lit inscription of a quote by the German Jewish philosopher Hannah Arendt that reads “No one has the right to obey” in the three local languages: Italian, German and Ladin.
Thus, Bolzen is a unique example in the country of a transformation of the heritage in a constructive way, to preserve the monuments while providing a specific attention to the power of the memory that the buildings might have. Indeed, in the article “A small Italian town can teach the world how to defuse controversial monuments”, Carlo Invernizzi-Accetti23 wrote about the monument in Bolzen as a good example on how to keep the history alive, but deciding which message is better and more important to pass.
According to the author of the article, in opposition to the Virginian case that decided to remove the statue of Robert E. Lee in Charlottesville, the town of Bolzano has resolutely taken a stand in favour of freedom and civic courage. It is only to be hoped that other administrations facing similar problems around the world can live up to this model.
Statue to Graziani
Not aligned with the previous example, Italy does not only have to deal with past monuments and buildings, but there are also new ones built in recent times. In 2012, Ettore Viri, the right-wing mayor of Affile, included a memorial to General Rodolfo Graziani, a Nazi collaborator and an accused war criminal, in a park built with funds approved by the centre-left regional government. After a public outcry, the government rescinded the funds. Recently, Viri was charged with Fascist apologism.24
While awaiting the conclusion of the trial, Graziani continues to be the symbol of a nation that has never closed accounts with its past, so much so that on the Affile municipality’s website, in the section dedicated to the town’s “illustrious personalities”25, it is still possible to read that “Graziani was able to direct his every action to the good of his country, through the inflexible moral rigour and punctilious loyalty to his duty as a soldier that distinguished him from belonging to the ranks of the ignoble or the large category of many who only pursued the logic of self-interest” and that “his mortal remains, transported to Affile amidst an immense crowd of people, rest in the in the tomb of the old cemetery, together with his family, perhaps too forgotten, as forgotten he was during his life despite his entire existence spent for the good and greatness of the Fatherland”.26
However, if it is true, as has been observed, that Italy has lacked “a public debate on the colonial past” and that Italian war crimes committed in both Africa and the Balkans, although widely studied by historiographers, are not a matter of public debate.
However, it also seems fair to observe that against the construction of the mausoleum to Graziani there was a mobilisation by the political world and the mass media, which showed serious interest in the issue.27
Resistance initiatives
A nationwide map of Italy’s fascist monuments
In the not exhaustive list done in this paper of the fascist monuments it is understandable that there are many places, buildings and entire cities that has memories embedded in the Fascism and their different political and cultural currents, at the end most of the times, the places stay were they first have been constructed.
In fact, it was above all the debate on the Predappio museum that prompted the Ferruccio Parri National Institute, with its network of institutes throughout the peninsula, to open up a specific area of research on the construction of the memory of fascism in the history of republican Italy. It then seemed wise to reconstruct this memory also through an analytical study of the relationship that Italians established with the material legacies referable to the regime. With this in mind, the Institute launched, starting in 2018, a project to map the places that, in Italy, are the subject of more or less conscious commemoration of fascism.
The research led to the collection of an initial nucleus of information on odonomastics, symbols, monuments dedicated to personalities and events connected to the history of fascism, which can be consulted online at www.luoghifascismo.it: “a platform designed as a work to be expanded in the light of further contributions. In order to deepen, also from an international perspective, the results of ongoing research and categories of analysis, between 2019 and 2020, five seminars were organised and the need emerged for a volume that would go beyond impressionistic readings in order to historicise the forms, times, and geographies of the way in which, in republican Italy, the monumental and artistic traces of fascism were related.”28
These monuments and places dedicated to Mussolini are an obscure heritage still existing up and down the country. The website is in continuous development, the staff of the National Institute Parri contribute to the adjustment of the map in order to add as many places as possible. In addition, the selection of the monuments can also come from public suggestions from Italian citizens, then the experts will examine the proposal and decide whether to add it or not to their records.
Conclusions
Italy has a complicated relationship with its fascist past, and though these last 40 – 50 years it occurred a normalisation of fascism. It happened on a political level, as previously discussed, when a reliable ally of Silvio Berlusconi’s, AN joined the rightwing party Forza Italia, it started the political legitimation. In this regard, Ben-Ghiat says “the people in the fringe became the center, [in] a mainstreaming of the right.” AN’s mainstreaming was also enabled by a tolerant public and media that shifted to accept the presence of known former fascists in government.29
The debate that arose after the publication of the article in “The New Yorker” led to many violent accusations towards the professor of history and Italian studies at New York university. Beyond the accusations, it is interesting what Roberto Saviano wrote in L’Espresso, an italian weekly news magazine, “Ruth Ben-Ghiat, a profound connoisseur of Italian history, raises a question about which we rarely ask ourselves: how much do the symbols that surround us condition our lives? And how much do those symbols whose message we are no longer able to grasp condition it? What do the remaining fascist symbols in Italy represent today, a warning or memory to be dusted off?”30
Notes
1 Giulia Albanese, professor at University of Padova. One of her publications is: “I luoghi del fascismo. Memoria, politica, rimozione”, Giulia Albanese e Lucia Ceci, Viella 2022.
2 Jacques Le Goff, “Documento/Monumento” Enciclopedia Einaudi, eds Ruggiero Romano et al., Torino, Einaudi, 1978, 5, 38.
3 Calvino,” I ritratti del Duce” cit., p. 2880 (cited in “Raccontare la guerra I conflitti bellici e la modernità”, a cura di Nicola Turi, Firenze University Press, 2017. https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/1574694/1/BSica%20-%20Calvino%20e%20uomo%20a%20cavallo.pdf
4Idem.
5 Nicoloso, Architetture per un’identità italiana, Gaspari Editore, 2012, p. 9.
6 Dr Robert Harland, Dr Antonia Liguori, “Traces of Fascist Urban Iconography in the Latina Province, Italy”, Loughborough University, 2016. file:///C:/Users/Station43%20CEIPES/Downloads/12653.pdf
7 At the Conference in Fiuggi, 1993, Fini decided to end the experience of the ‘fascists in democracy’ and opened the era of the new Great National Right.
8 Ruth Ben-Ghiat, “Why Are So Many Fascist Monuments Still Standing in Italy?”, in The New Yorker, 5 ottobre 2017 (consultabile online:
https://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/why-are-so-many-fascist-monuments-still-standing-in-italy). 9 Fratelli d’italia website https://www.fratelli-italia.it/
10 Lega per Salvini premier website https://legaonline.it/
11 Forza Italia website https://forzaitalia.it/
12 Il dibattito è ricostruito in Giorgio Lucaroni, Fascismo e architettura. Considerazioni su genesi, evoluzione e cristallizzazione di un dibattito, in «Italia contemporanea», 292 (2020), pp. 9-33, in particolare pp. 19-21.
13 Ruth Ben-Ghiat, “Why Are So Many Fascist Monuments Still Standing in Italy?”, in The New Yorker, 5 ottobre 2017 (consultabile online:
14 Sharon Macdonald, “Difficult Heritage. Negotiating the Nazi Past in Nuremberg and Beyond”, Abingdon-New York, Routledge, 2008. The british anthropologist and historian defines difficult heritage – as a difficult heritage, complex, that divide the public discourse, that is difficult to ignore in the daily life. Her new definition works in relation to the architectural and monumental heritage of the Nazist Germany,, in particolar for Norimberga.
15 Geopop, Matteo Ammirati, 8 luglio 2023, consultabile online: https://www.geopop.it/il-palazzo-della-civilta-italiana-nel-quartiere-eur-la-storia-del-colosseo-quadrato/ 16 Ruth Ben-Ghiat, Why Are So Many Fascist Monuments Still Standing in Italy?, in «The New Yorker», 5 ottobre 2017 (consultabile online: https://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/why-are-so-many-fascist-monuments-still-standing-in-italy).
17 The document entitled “Return to Romagna” is kept at the Polish Institute in London and was recovered by the Institute for the History of the Resistance and Contemporary Age in Forlì-Cesena, where a copy and translation are available.
18 RSI, “Predappio simbolo della memoria divisa”, Anna Valenti, 28 ottobre 2022, https://www.rsi.ch/info/mondo/Predappio-simbolo-della-memoria-divisa–1802940.html
19 Mario Proli, Predappio il paese del duce, E-Review Dossier 7, 2019-2020 Spostarsi nel tempo. Esperienze emiliano-romagnole di viaggi della e nella memoria, pag. 8 https://e-review.it/sites/default/images/articles/media/225/proli-predappio-paese-del-duce.pdf
20 Mario Proli, “Predappio il paese del duce”, E-Review Dossier 7, 2019-2020 Spostarsi nel tempo. Esperienze emiliano-romagnole di viaggi della e nella memoria https://e-review.it/sites/default/images/articles/media/225/proli-predappio-paese-del-duce.pdf
21 EUROM, Predappio and the memory of the dictatorship. By M. Flores and C. Giunchi, Dicembre 2019, https://europeanmemories.net/magazine/predappio-and-the-memory-of-the-dictatorship/
22 Il Sole 24ore, “18 marzo 1937, Mussolini in Libia”, Marco Innocenti, March 2008.
https://st.ilsole24ore.com/art/SoleOnLine4/Tempo%20libero%20e%20Cultura/2008/03/storie-dalla-storia-mus solini-spada-islam-140308.shtml?refresh_ce=1
23 The Guardian, “A small Italian town can teach the world how to defuse controversial monuments”, Carlo Invernizzi-Accetti, Dicember 2017.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/dec/06/bolzano-italian-town-defuse-controversial-monu ments?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other
24 Ruth Ben-Ghiat, Why Are So Many Fascist Monuments Still Standing in Italy?, in «The New Yorker», 5 ottobre 2017 (consultabile online:
25 Comune di Affile website, affile.org
https://www.affile.org/s_storia-cultura_p_personaggi-illustri-rodolfo-graziani/
26 Idem.
27 Viqueria, Sguardi sulla Storia e il territorio, “Graziani e quel mausoleo della discordia”, Laura Bardori, 9 settembre 2015. Available at: https://www.viqueria.com/graziani-e-quel-mausoleo-della-discordia/. More information available in the following article: Internazionale, “678 giorni di vergogna”, Lee Marshall, 20 giugno 2014. https://www.internazionale.it/opinione/lee-marshall/2014/06/20/678-giorni-di-vergogna
28 Istituto Nazionale Ferruccio Parri, Luoghi e memoria del fascismo website: https://www.reteparri.it/ricerca/progetti-di-ricerca/luoghi-memoria-del-fascismo/
29 QUARZ, “Italy’s neo-fascism is what happens when you normalise extremism”, Annalisa Merelli, Published December 1, 2017.
https://qz.com/1114170/normalizing-extremism-a-history-lesson-from-italys-fascist-resurgence
30Internazionale, “Un dibattito sul passato”, 30 ottobre 2017.
https://www.internazionale.it/notizie/2017/10/30/monumenti-fascisti-articolo-new-yorker
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