ABSTRACT
Between 1922 and 1943, under the Fascist regime of Benito Mussolini, the city of
Rome was transformed. Its population grew from around 660,000 when Mussolini
seized power to a figure of 1,500,000 when he finally left Rome (Agnew, 1995;
Fried, 1973). To accommodate this growth, the city's perimeter witnessed the relent-
less construction of new residential districts. The centre of the city was subjected to
radical surgery as the regime re-planned and rebuilt the Eternal City in a sustained
attempt to articulate its political, cultural and social agenda through the form and
use of the cityscape. Indeed, so politicised was this programme of urban interventions
and so crucial were public spaces to the regime that Diane Ghirardo argues:
In fascist Italy, much of the battle for hearts and minds of Italians took
place in the public arena, in the streets and squares of the peninsula's cities.
