ABSTRACT
After 1945, the Sant’Alessio College was abandoned as the property of a defunct political party. For a while it was used by a priest for a makeshift orphanage and today the building, engulfed by the urban sprawl of Rome, has become a cultural centre, teaching electric guitar and drama to the youth of the southern Roman suburbs. The tower blocks of a modern housing estate, built on the college’s farmland, which crowd around and dwarf the original two-storey building, seem a telling symbol of the ultimate futility of the fascist ruralization campaign. 1
