ABSTRACT
The importance of urbanism for the reproduction of dictatorship is commonly understated—especially in historical studies. Even architectural historians tend to confine themselves to looking at architecture and ignoring urbanism. The topic of urbanism and dictatorship highlights the need for an interdisciplinary and transnational perspective. It also requires a comprehensive view of projects, journals and reference books, actors, institutions and propaganda media. However, this is by no means self-evident. The associations connected to the architecture and urbanism of dictatorship is often peculiarly rigid, inflexible and frozen. Exhibitions of various formats were an important medium of urbanism propaganda. This included world fairs, building exhibitions and classic picture and model exhibitions. The large exhibitions of the 1930s and 1940s, such as the World Fair in Paris 1937 or the never-realised World Fair in Rome, which was planned for the year 1942, are relatively well documented.
