ABSTRACT
This contribution examines the presence of the fascist past in Italy through the lens of the built environment. Focusing on one well-known case – the Foro Italico in Rome – it considers the historical processes and debates that led to the survival of the regime’s monuments after the Second World War; recent political and aesthetic controversies about their present-day function; and their significance as ‘symptoms’ of a more fundamental crisis afflicting contemporary Italian society. The Italian far right, which often uses these spaces as memorials to the fallen regime, has aligned itself with architectural preservationists who emphasize the monuments’ importance as exemplars of interwar Rationalist architecture. In this way, the protection of fascist remains has become a vehicle for the aestheticization, heritagization and normalization of the Ventennio Nero, integrating Mussolini’s regime into a depoliticized representation of Italian history. On one level, this chapter addresses questions about the memory and continued resonance of the fascist past in contemporary Italy; at the same time, it engages with broader and comparative analyses of the use and re-use of physical space in moments of political and social transformation; the history of vandalism, damnatio memoriae and ideological violence; and the politics of heritage conservation and memory.
