ABSTRACT
In the history of the city of Rome, it was not just the Church that appropriated and used art and architecture for political or propagandistic purposes. From the city’s annexation to the kingdom of Italy in 1870, Rome became a space of contest in which the contrasting discourses of the classical Roman Empire, the papacy of a universal Church, and the secular Savoyard monarchy were articulated. Such discourses affected and often reshaped the urban landscape. One of the best examples is constituted by the Vittorio Emanuele II monument (or Vittoriano), built between 1885 and 1911 to honor the memory of the first king of united Italy. Some 80 meters high, it irrevocably changed the cityscape, throwing out of scale the capitol itself. The architect, Giuseppe Sacconi, winning an international competition, employed a dazzling white “bottocino” marble from Brescia that further emphasized the monument with respect (or disrespect) to its surroundings. The Vittoriano was constructed in the Beaux Arts architectural style, which was popular at the time as appropriately “imperial” for urban monuments throughout all the major European capitals. Interestingly, both Liberal and Fascist governments between the wars emphasized the Vittoriano’s centrality within the city’s space and Italian territory. Mussolini in particular used the monument to promote an imperial spatiality through his performative rhetoric, which often unfolded while facing the monument in the adjacent Piazza Venezia.
