History by Walking Around: the new tourist destination of Quartiere Giuliano Dalmata

 

As usual with Rome, we find some of the most interesting information - and add to our knowledge of history -  just by walking around. Last year - when we were walking back from our intended destination of the Laurentina 38 housing project (about which Bill wrote in July 2019) we ran across this "monument" (top photo) - with the words "To the fallen, Giuliani Dalmati," placed on a large boulder from the Carso - a rocky region of Italy that was the subject of Italian/Austria-Hungary battles in World War I, and was a focus of competing armies and political interests again in World War II. 

We also saw on a nearby building this plaque, 

which basically reads:

March 1947: The Exodus of Italian Pola: Hospitable Rome welcomes the Istrian, Fiumean [Fiume is now called Rijeka] and Dalmation refugees. President Oscar Sinigaglia [a street in the map below bears his name], with the National Organization of Repatriated Workers and Refugees, gives life to the "Giuliano Dalmation Neighborhood"  The plaque is marked as put up by the National Association of Venezia, Giulia, e Dalmazia (Venezia-Giulia and Dalmatia)

Quite difficult to make sense of this if one is less that fully knowledgeable about Italy's role in World War I, Fascism and World War II, plus some post-World War II history. In giving it a try recently, we ran across an article touting the restoration of the monument at the top of this post, "after years of neglect and degradation" (it didn't look so bad to us in 2019!) only this past October.

And, even more recent, on December 30 of this past year, the "Quartiere Giuliano Dalmata" (map at end of post) was welcomed - with a plaque and Q Code - in the tourist layout of Rome. 

Not exactly readable here, but the plaque relates that the "quartiere" or neighborhood started in 1939 as workers' housing for laborers building Mussolini's E42 expo grounds (now the fully developed EUR zone, which is featured in our books) a few miles further south of Rome. 

When the war brought Mussolini's unfinished international exhibition construction to a halt, the workers abandoned the housing. The Allies occupied the buildings for a while. When they left, in 1947, a nucleus of 12 families - fleeing their homes in Pola, which was ceded to Yugoslavia and is better known as the Istrian Peninsula - were settled here. The dorms were converted to small apartments, and in 1955 another 2,000 people from the ex-Italian Pola region settled here, giving the quarter its name. 

There are still some political joustings and resentments over the "exodus." Apparently (I'm trying to tread lightly here) some of the Italians were settled in the Istrian Peninsula by the Fascist government, which claimed the area and wanted it settled by, and dominated by, Italians.

The boulder monument was put up in 1961, and in 2008 a sculpture (photo below, right) was erected in the nearby Largo Vittime delle Foibe Istriane ("Largo [something like a piazza] Victims of the Istrian Foibe").  Bill commented on the sculpture in a 2011 post here. 

Delving into the foibe (deep sink holes into which victims were thrown, sometimes alive) and their political ramifications is beyond my pay grade at this point - perhaps for a later post.  Because the Day of Remembrance for the victims and those in the exodus that resulted in the neighborhood described here is February 10 - not long ago - we offer a link to an Ansa article describing the reasons for the Day of Remembrance (and a bit of the politics).

Dianne

Rome's E-Prix and the Ghosts of Fascism

We are pleased to welcome back guest-blogger Paul Baxa, writing here on an all-electric (Formula E) car race to be held in EUR, a Fascist/modernist suburb to the south of Rome, on April 14.  Car racing is all about speed and roads, and Baxa, author of Roads and Ruins: The Symbolic Landscape of Fascist Rome (University of Toronto Press, 2010), knows more about Fascism's enchantment with both than anyone else, as well as being an expert on Fascist architecture.  He teaches history at Ave Maria University, Florida. [A walk through EUR is one of the itineraries in our more recent book:  Modern Rome: 4 Great Walks for the Curious Traveler.]

Looks like a test run for the race.  The cars are on Viale
Cristoforo Colombo.  The Marconi Obelisk, the starting line for the race,
 is at right.  

On April 14, 2018, Rome will host a round of the all-electric racing car series, Formula E.  Created in 2014, the series is designed to promote the automobile’s supposed electric future.  In order to do this effectively, the series’ creators have sought venues in the world’s capitals and major cities.  The inaugural race was held in Beijing, and since then electric races have been run in London, Berlin, Paris, Mexico City, and Moscow, among others.  It was only logical that Rome would be the next desired site for an E-Prix and this came about in October 2017 when the Eternal City’s mayor, Virginia Raggi, announced that Rome would host an event in 2018.  Although the photo-ops of the announcement showed some of Rome’s familiar landmarks like the Coliseum and the Campidoglio, the race will be run in Rome’s “modernist” suburb, EUR [the letters stand for Esposizione Universale di Roma--more on that below], southwest of the city on the road to Ostia.

E42 (EUR) as it was imagined in the late 1930s.  It looks very much like
this, today.  The arch was never built.  

            That EUR was chosen as the site of the temporary, 21-turn, 1.77-mile street course came as no surprise.  When the possibility of a Roman Formula 1 race was floated back in 2009, EUR was tapped as the desired location for the event.  La Repubblica, one of Italy’s leading national newspapers, declared the choice as a natural given the wide streets, the “rationalist architecture,” and futurist atmosphere of the place.[1 - footnotes at end of post]  Since the 1950s, EUR has been Rome’s most concentrated area of steel and glass architecture, providing a home for some of Italy’s largest multinationals like ENI, and several government ministries.  Its public spaces and patrimony are managed by a corporation called EUR S.p.A which, since 2000, has attempted to make EUR a center of innovation as well as environmental stewardship.  One of its initiatives, Smart City Lab Eur, aims to implement European Union goals of sustainability in energy, which happens to fit in neatly with the aims of the Formula Electric series.  

           The chairman of EUR S.p.A, Roberto Diacetti, recently lauded the Rome E-Prix as part of the district’s goal to become Rome’s capital for conferences, leisure, and tourism exemplified by the long-awaited opening of Massimiliano Fuksas’ new conference center, La Nuvola ("The Cloud"), in 2016.[2]  All of this comes in the year that EUR celebrates its 80^th anniversary, as demonstrated by a slick video presentation on the corporation’s website.

            It is precisely this anniversary that raises questions about EUR’s past—specifically its Fascist origins.  In the midst of all this innovation and future-oriented work, EUR remains one of Italy’s most emblematic centers of Fascist-era architecture.  The “rationalist architecture” celebrated by the Repubblica article is, to be more precise, the Stile Littorio, a combination of modernist, classicist, and monumentalist architecture associated with Marcello Piacentini, Mussolini’s favorite architect and the

Under construction.  Top, the Square Coliseum.  Top right, Palazzo
Ufficci (see text below)

man in charge of overseeing what was, at the time, called the E42.  

          What is now EUR was the brainchild of Giuseppe Bottai, Fascist of the First Hour and Governor of Rome who, in 1935, suggested to Mussolini that Rome host the 1942 World’s Fair.[3]  The architecture and the overall design of the complex was informed by a desire to exalt the achievements of the Fascist regime and of Italian civilization.  First among these “achievements” was the recent acquisition of Ethiopia and the extension of Italy’s Empire in Africa.  As Richard Etlin has pointed out, this celebration of empire became the leitmotif of the project.[4]  Fascist ideology and pomposity informed every street and building in the original plan of the E42.  By the time World War II interrupted the work, several buildings were left in various stages of completion. 

Pier Lugi Nervi's Palazzo dello Sport 

            
          When the new Italian Republic again began working on the project, the Fascist buildings were joined by modernist skyscrapers, residential apartments, parks, a picturesque lake, and sports complexes to host the 1960 Rome Olympic Games.  

Originally conceived as a Fascist showcase, the newly-named EUR became, instead, a site to celebrate the Italy of the Economic Miracle in the 1950s.  Some famous celebrities and cultural figures like Pier Paolo Pasolini and Giuseppe Ungaretti took up residence there.  Muore recently it has been the home of one of Rome’s most celebrated football icons, Francesco Totti.  EUR has also served as the setting of classic Italian films directed by Federico Fellini and Michelangelo Antonioni among others.  [Clips from their films are in the video on the EUR S.p.A. site linked above.]

EUR as seen from the roof of the Square Coliseum.  The white building with the rounded top (center left) is Libera's
Palazzo dei Congressi--the pit stop area for the race.  The street in front of it, leading back toward the Square
Coliseum, is part of the race course.  The Marconi Obelisk is at center right.  

          The Stile Littorio buildings have become “heritage sites” blended into the landscape of EUR’s modernism.  Only days before the E-Prix announcement last October, a leading expert on Italian Fascism, Professor Ruth Ben-Ghiat of NYU, published an article in New Yorker Magazine asking why Fascist landmarks remain standing.  On the article’s front page was a photograph of EUR’s “Square Coliseum”, the Palazzo della Civiltà, probably Fascism’s most distinctive architectural landmark.[5]  After standing vacant for many years, the building is now the headquarters of one of Italy’s leading fashion houses, Fendi.  The flood of condemnation for Ben-Ghiat’s article in Italy reflects the unwillingness or inability of some Italians to think critically about the Fascist heritage that surrounds them.[6]  Whereas Americans are tearing down Confederate-era statues—the context of Ben-Ghiat’s article—Italy seems content to keep its Fascist landmarks up and even use them as contemporary symbols of the new Italy.  

The Square Coliseum, c. 1950

Dianne and Bill at the race starting line (the obelisk is behind
the camera.  The foot was part of a temporary public sculpture.
Looking north, toward the city center.  2010.  

The design for the Rome E-Prix’s course seems to confirm this desire to use the Fascist buildings in such a manner. Despite Diacetti’s desire to promote EUR’s future-oriented vision, the course is almost entirely located in the “Pentagon” section of the district, which is where the highest concentration of Fascist architecture is located.  The course’s starting line is on the Viale Cristoforo Colombo (formerly the Via Imperiale) under the shadow of Arturo Dazzi’s Marconi Obelisk, dedicated to the pioneer of modern communications.  Although the obelisk was inaugurated on the occasion of the 1960 Olympic Games, it was conceived in 1939 to honor the celebrated inventor and Fascist fellow traveler who died in 1937.  

Fuksas' Cloud, nearing completion, 2016

The course then goes past Fuksas’ La  Nuvola and snakes its way past the museums built by the Fascist regime to celebrate Italy’s heritage. Here, the drivers slow down to negotiate a chicane (a sharp double-bend) directly in front of the prominent colonnaded portico that links the museums.  

1957.  These famous folks (sorry, Bill and Dianne can't recall

their names; perhaps some of you recognize some of them) appear

to be crossing Viale Cristoforo Colombo, walking away from the

 Square Coliseum and toward the Palazzo dei Congressi.  

The pit stop area, meanwhile, goes around Adalberto Libera’s celebrated Palazzo dei Congressi, a good example of a structure that attempts to harmonize classicism and modernism in the Stile Littorio.  In recent years, the building has become a prime night spot with a rooftop theater.  

The paving of the beveled stones (sanpietrini) outside the building to accommodate the E-Prix pit lane, has sparked outrage from those concerned with the site’s heritage.[7]  Libera’s building was central to the Fascist vision of the E42.  It was placed at one end of an axis opposite the “Square Coliseum” with two esedra (semi-circular)-like structures on the Viale Cristofero Colombo in the center of the axis.  In what is now the Piazza United Nations the two main axial roads of the E42 project intersect in a manner that echoes Ancient Roman urban planning.  Fans of the E-Prix, sitting in the grandstands or atop Libera’s Palazzo in the hospitality area of the race will thus have an unobstructed view of the E42’s original plan.  The circuit, meanwhile, on its return leg to the start/finish line will use the opposite side of the axial road showcasing the “Square Coliseum”. 

The Fascist salute, it seems, on display at the Palazzo
Uffici.  The mosaic is at right.  

But it doesn’t end there.  As the cars snake through the back end of the course through turns 8 and 9, they will pass in front of Minicucci’s Palazzo Uffici, designed to house the administrative offices of the Ente E42, the forerunner of today’s EUR S.p.A.  This building, whose main hall is today rented out for luxury banquets, includes a large, stone mosaic dedicated to Eternal Rome which boasts a prominent image of Mussolini on horseback giving the Fascist salute.  Near this mosaic is a bronze statue of a young athlete giving a similar salute.[8]  

Thus, the course seems to be designed to exalt the “heritage” section of the EUR, and this means the Fascist-era sites.  Mussolini’s E42 lives on in the design of the Rome E-Prix, which is fitting considering the Fascist regime’s strong support of motorsport in the 1930s.  The ghosts of Fascism are everywhere, including the promo video of the race which shows the series’ leading drivers walking down the Via dei Fori Imperiali ("Way of the Imperial Forums") in the center of Rome.  This road, once called the Via dell’Impero ("Empire Way"), was inaugurated by the Fascist regime in 1932 on the occasion of the its 10^th anniversary.  After their short walk, the drivers then get into their cars and make their way to EU,  past the ruins of the Roman Forum.[9]  Unbeknownst to them, they have taken the Fascist itinerary to the New Rome. 

           

Paul Baxa

P.S.  Dianne has an upcoming post that features both the Palazzo della Civiltà and the Palazzo degli Uffici, which we toured last year.  We will cross-link these posts when the second one is published.

---

[1] Marco Mensurati and Eduardo Lubrano, “Formula 1 Roma. Ecco il circuito,” La Repubblica, 5 febbraio 2009: http://www.repubblica.it/2008/12/motori/formulauno/stagione-2009/f1-roma/f1-roma.html

[2] Askanews, “Formula E: Diacetti (Eur Spa), accende i riflettori sull’Eur,” 23 marzo 2018: http://www.askanews.it/cronaca/2018/03/23/formula-e-diacetti-eur-spa-accende-i-riflettori-sulleur-pn_20180323_00078/

[3] Luigi Di Majo and Italo Insolera, L’Eur e Roma dagli anni Trenta al Duemila (Laterza, 1986), 11.

[4] Richard A. Etlin, Modernism in Italian Architecture, 1890-1940 (MIT Press, 1991), 483-85.

[5] Ruth Ben-Ghiat, “Why are so many Fascist Monuments in Italy still standing in Italy?” The New Yorker, October 5, 2017: https://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/why-are-so-many-fascist-monuments-still-standing-in-italy

[6] “Perchè l’Italia ha ancora così tanti monumenti fascisti? Il New Yorker provoca, la rete lo stronca,” Il Sole 24 Ore, 8 ottobre 2017: http://www.ilsole24ore.com/art/notizie/2017-10-08/perche-l-italia-ha-ancora-cosi-tanti-monumenti-fascisti-new-yorker-provoca-rete-stronca-121459.shtml?uuid=AEiYSLhC

[7] ANSA, “Formula E, sanpietrini coperti è polemica,” 18 marzo 2018: http://www.ansa.it/lazio/notizie/2018/03/18/formula-esanpietrini-coperti-e-polemica_324443c7-f6ec-4b94-a9d2-c38a3e39b3ad.html

[8] Borden Painter, Jr., Mussolini’s Rome: Rebuilding the Eternal City (Palgrave MacMillan, 2005), 130, 160.

[9] The promo video can be viewed on the Rome E-Prix’s homepage: http://info.fiaformulae.com/it/rome and on YouTube.

Paris (1937) to Rome (1942): World's Fairs on the Eve of War

With thanks to Robert H. Kargon, Karen Fiss, Morris Low and Arthur P. Molella, authors of World’s Fairs on the Eve of War: Science,Technology and Modernity, 1937-1942 (2015, 205 pp., including 46 pages of notes, and index, $34.95 hardback [$21.00 amazon]), and thanks to the publisher, University of Pittsburgh Press, for providing a review copy.  A good read, highly interpretive, fascinating. 

Followers of this website will be familiar with E42, the world’s fair-like exposition south of Rome, planned by Mussolini and a bevy of Fascist-oriented architects.  E (esposizione, exposition) 42 (1942, the planned opening date) never opened and was only partially built when the war changed everything.  It was not finished until the mid-1950s.

What is less well-known is that E42 was only one of 5 major world’s fairs—planned and/or opened in France (1937), Nazi Germany (1937), the U.S. (1939, New York City), Japan (1940, planning only), and Italy--in the 6 years spanning 1937 and 1942.  The authors of this slim and smart book—Robert H. Kargon, Karen Fiss, Morris Low, and Arthur P. Molella--take up all of them, one at a time in chronological order, including an extended and worthy treatment of the Rome expo.  They examine how each of these nations (and others, such as Russia, that mounted exhibits at some of the fairs), came to terms with science and technology—that is, “modernity”—but also how each nation, and each political regime, used the fairs to negotiate the relationship between modernity, the world-wide Great Depression, their own national cultures, and their needs as nation-states in a world rapidly approaching—and then fighting—World War II.  In some sense, the fairs were about defining the future, and the future looked very different from these distinct national perspectives.  All the fairs can be understood as national propaganda.  

At the 1937 Paris fair, for example, the French positioned themselves against what the country perceived as the American version of modernity: consumption of things and Fordist mass production.  Instead, the French fair emphasized “human creativity,” “artistic invention” “good taste,” intellect, and bringing social classes together.  Lots of art (Robert and Sonia Delaunay, Fernand Léger), French cinema.  As the authors suggest, “France imagined itself as a rational middle way between contending ideologies, the “new and powerful forces threatening the stability of Europe.”  

Sonia Delaunay, Propeller (Air Pavilion), Paris, 1937

German pavilion, Paris

In contrast, the Soviet and German pavilions, situated across from each other, were huge, imposing, and confrontational, all about strength and power.  Italy’s pavilion, designed by Marcello Piacentini, was more modest, though it did feature an enormous equestrian statue honoring Mussolini, who was fond of posturing on horseback. 

Russian pavilion, Paris

Schaffendes Volk, Dusseldorf

The 1937 German fair, the Schaffendes Volk in Dusseldorf, while less than a full-blown world’s fair (as in Rome, there were no foreign pavilions), expressed the German perspective.  This fair was about getting the Germans to understand and participate fully in the ongoing militarization of Germany, while recognizing that some consumer purchases would have to be deferred; autarchy (the 1930s word for economic self-sufficiency); and the machine age.  The Nazis were suspicious and intolerant of modernism in the fine arts, and so the fair didn’t do much, if anything, in those areas.  To emphasize the goal of self-sufficiency, the fair incorporated a display by IG Farben, maker of synthetic rubber (and, as it turned out, Zyklon B gas, used to kill millions of Jews), as well as other exhibits about synthetic fabrics.   Lebensraum (living space) was the theme of another pavilion, which also emphasized the German “race.”  The fair presented women as housewives and purchasers. 

Poster for the planned 1940 Japan fair

In contrast to the 1939 New York World’s Fair, which accepted modernity whole-heartedly and looked relentlessly into a technological and scientific future, the 1940 Grand International Exposition of Japan, planned but never opened (that darned war!) was packed with tension between modernization and tradition.  The Japanese didn’t reject technology and science (they would need both to fight the Chinese and the Allies), but they were into the cult of the emperor and didn’t like the idea of seeing their country overwhelmed by western ideas, values, and modes of production.  Those planning the fair also had to find a way to merge international modernism in architecture with Japanese design traditions (like the Shintō shrine).  “Many Japanese,” write the authors, “believed that Japan combined the best of East and West.”  

One result was the “Imperial Crown style” of architecture, a herald of postmodernism: take a rationalist, concrete, steel-frame, modernist building and put a traditional, pitched roof on top.  The winning entry for one of the Japanese halls combined the Shintō shrine with designs for Michelangelo’s Capitoline Hill complex and Bernini’s St. Peter’s Piazza.  Like the Italians and Germans, the Japanese were into “autarchy” (self-sufficiency) as well as race and nationalism, “blood and culture.”

Hey, we’ve made it to Italy, and E42!  Here at RST we’ve written extensively about the planned expo and the arch intended to be its centerpiece (Modern Rome has an EUR itinerary, Rome the Second Time devotes a special section to the arch, and there’s E42 material on the blog, too; links to some posts are at the end of this post).  So here we’ll deal mainly with what the authors of World’s Fairs on the Eve of War contribute to our understanding of E42. 

Ludovico Quaroni poster, with
a version of the E42 arch

Kargon et. al appropriately emphasize the way in which the exposition, designed to be permanent, looked to both a Fascist future, in which Italy was imagined as a world power, and the glorious ancient Roman past.  The never-built symbol of this synthesis of past and future was the Arco dell’Impero, the enormous arch that was to sit astride the far-flung complex, evoking not just technology and science but the imperial conquests of imperial Rome, past and present.  Mussolini wanted to be compared (favorably, of course) to the Emperor Augustus (just as Hirohito saw himself as the heir to Emperor Jimmu), and so he had an Augustan exhibit that had been at the Palazzo delle Esposizione moved to a new building in E42.

E42 planners also wanted to emphasize “Italian scientific genius.”  The arch would have done that, had Italians been able to figure out how to build an arch 600 meters high.  But they couldn’t—at least in the time frame they were afforded. 

Another way to showcase Italian prowess in this area was E42’s Museum of the Sciences, “heavily planned” but, like the arch, never built. 

Italy was not without a scientific heritage, and the new museum would have trumpeted the accomplishments of Leonardo da Vinci, Galileo, and Marconi.  Planners hoped to present Galileo as the founder of scientific method, and Marconi’s contributions to radio were widely acknowledged and praised.  However, as the authors of this book argue, there was not much more to celebrate.  “Too bad,” they write, Italy’s “great atomic physicist Enrico Fermi had fled with his wife, Laura, to America.”  Too bad, too, that the 1938 anti-Semitic laws had forced many other notable scientists to leave the country.  (Mussolini once referred to Einstein’s theories as “a Jewish fraud lacking in originality.”)  Some thought the planners might have done better emphasizing technology rather than science (think of the Roman invention of cement).  Perhaps the basic idea was flawed.  “The Italian performance in science and technology over the last century,” the authors conclude, “was distinctly subpar by world standards.” 

Square Coliseum

Where Italians did excel was in art, architecture, and design, and today EUR (Esposizione Universale di Roma) stands as a monument to that heritage, albeit a flawed and ambivalent one.  The authors present E42 as the product of a debate and competition between Italian rationalist modernism, on the one hand, and “monumental Fascist classicism,” represented by Piacentini, on the other.  The former found its way into the fair’s most iconic structure, the Square Coliseum, and some other buildings, and the arch would have fallen in this category, too.  Indeed, the authors of World’s Fairs foreground the contributions to E42 of Italian futurism and they echo architectural critic Vincent Scully’s remark, that “EUR has a de Chirico-like perspective.” 

Museum of Roman Civilization (now closed for lack of funds)

To be sure, there are places in EUR where the absence of people might lead one to think of Giorgio de Chirico.  But by and large the complex lacks the painter’s sense of the mysterious, and its linearity and stasis seems to have no relationship with futurism’s curves and movement.  No, Piancentini (as the authors acknowledge) “won” the competition with rationalist modernism.  The result is a heavy, overbearing architecture that represents Fascism’s glorification of strength and power, its turn to colonization and, not far down the road, war. 

Bill   

Some additional RST posts featuring EUR:

Il Fungo - Rome's Mid-century architecture.
The art of Caffe' Palombini in EUR.
EUR's manhole covers.
Folk-art and Fascist architecture in EUR.

Giuseppe Penone's installations.
Gino Severini murals in EUR.

The postwar American Academy in Rome: Incubator for Modern Architecture

Writing in the latest issue of American Academy in Rome Magazine, 2015 Fellow Denise R. Constanzo examines how the Academy, located in a city better known for its ancient monuments and baroque churches than sleek, modern buildings, survived the rise of postwar architectural modernism.


 "Rome and the classical legacy promoted by its academies," she writes, "were antithetical to modernism's emphasis on industrial materials, abstract forms, and progressive politics.  Constanzo continues:  "Many of Rome's own modernist developments were ideologically problematic, because they enjoyed considerable Fascist support.  After World War II, when modernism gained widespread official sanction, the Rome Prize appeared irrelevant, perhaps even perilous, to an architect's career."



"How, exactly," asks Costanzo, did the Academy survive?  The answer, she argues, is that the American Academy, unlike its French and British counterparts, left its Fellows free to explore Rome's diversity, "eliminating all work requirements in favor of independent projects with minimal oversight."

Venturi: Sainbury wing of the National Gallery, London (1991).
A meeting of modernism and classicism--i.e., postmodernism.

There's a good deal of truth in that explanation, but it's not the whole story.  It would seem to be relevant to Robert Venturi's 1957 experience as an Academy Fellow.  As the title of his brilliant and influential 1966 book, Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture, would suggest, Venturi reveled in Rome's urban and architectural ambiguities, its tensions and paradoxes, its "messy vitality."

Quaroni poster for E42

I would add, nonetheless, that Rome's architecture was not as far out of the mainstream as Constanzo might claim. Eero Saarinen was not in the least reluctant to fashion his entry in a 1948 competition (what would become the St. Louis Arch) along the lines of a similar arch drawn by Ludovico Quaroni for E42, an enormous exposition designed to commemorate the 1922 March on Rome.  At the very least, Saarinen was likely familiar with the imperial meaning of Italian arches, dating to antiquity and running through Fascism, and that knowledge fazed him not at all as he prepared his contest submission.

Just as important, elements of Rome's diverse architectural heritage contained the seeds of two strands of American postwar architecture: postmodernism and brutalism. With its weighty mass and its affection for unforgiving, uniform facades of reinforced concrete, the brutalist movement that

Fascist-era office building, viale Castro Pretorio, Rome.  A precursor of brutalism--and perhaps postmodernism, too.  

began in the late 1960s owed much to the ponderous office buildings of the Fascist-era, though the latter used marble and stone.

Michael Graves, Steigenberger Hotel, Egypt 

Postmodernism, with is pastiche of forms, its penchant for mixing and matching architectural styles and elements, was eclectic Rome itself, full of juxapositions and the "complexities" that Venturi so admired.  It was the sort of place where Michael Graves--also a Rome Prize recipient (1962)--could begin to imagine his Portland Building, the Steigenberger Hotel in El Gouna, Egypt, the Humana Building in Lousiville, or any of a number of his other "postmodern" buildings.

Bill

Stazione Termini: Spectacle of Mid-century Modernism

In 1937, the Mussolini regime decided it was time for a new central-Rome railroad station.  It was to be ready in time for E42, an enormous fair with permanent buildings in what is now EUR, all designed to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the March on Rome.  The war intervened, Mussolini was thrown out of power in 1943, and construction stopped on both E42 and the new Termini Station. The station's enormous side structures, designed by Angiolo Mazzoni del Grande, had been completed, and these remain.

The rest of the building was subject to a 1947 design competition.  Two teams emerged victorious--nobody really famous among them--and together they re-imagined the structure, which was inaugurated in 1950.

Inside, the great hall was covered by a concrete roof, which one source describes as a modernist version of the barrel vaults used in ancient Roman baths.  This roof is integrated with a cantilevered canopy over the entrance.  Spectacular, we think.  The station was, and is, one of the largest in Europe.

The postcard view shown here captures the modernist allure of the Stazione Termini in its first decade.  The automobiles offer the possibility of a more precise dating, but we're not car buffs, and to be reasonable accurate, one would have to identify the newest car in the lots.  Not easy.  Still, perhaps a reader can help date the photo more precisely. [See the wonderfully detailed comment below from Roger H. who identifies a couple cars and concludes the photo was taken close to when station was inaugurated.]

Bill

A few postscripts from Dianne:
The piazza is no longer called "Piazzale della Stazione," as we see in the postcard photo above, but "Piazza dei Cinquecento" ("Piazza of the 16th century") - I assume that's the meaning, and not the piazza of the Fiat car, the 500 (i.e. cinquecento). [CORRECTION - Nope, that's not its meaning.  I should've known it would've been political and more serious.  Both Marco and Frederika pointed out the real meaning of the cinquecento - Italians soldiers killed in Ethiopia.  See their helpful comments below.] The national train service has a rather thorough, if somewhat glorified, history of the station on its Web site. (You'll get some different opinions about it on Yelp.)  And the station, because of its roof line, is sometimes called the Dinosaur.

Rome's most famous Building that Never Was: the Arch for E42

It may be Rome's most important building--that is, among those that were never constructed. Certainly the architects and engineers involved--Pier Luigi Nervi, Adalberto Libera, Gino Covre, Vicenzo di Berardino, among others--were top-notch.  And the stakes were high.  According to one authority, had it been built "it would have become the symbol of modern Rome."  Likely true.

Via dell'Impero, 1938 illustration

The "building" was not even quite that.  It was an arch, but a spectacular one, intended as the centerpiece of the grand exposition E42--a world's fair, really.  The fair was designed to commemorate the 20th anniversary of Fascism (the 1922 March on Rome) and, then, to become a model suburban neighborhood in the south of Rome.  The great world fairs of the past had been represented by, and left behind, iconic constructions: London's Crystal Palace from the 1851 fair, Paris's Eiffel Tower from 1889 and, it was expected, Rome's triumphal "Arch of the Empire," from its 1942 extravaganza.  A gateway to Rome, from the south, just as a planned 100-meter "Colossus of Mussolini" at the Foro Mussolini (now Foro Italico) would have functioned as a gateway from the north.

The arch was not to be.  The war intervened, of course, and the half-finished grounds of EUR--the Esposizione Universale di Roma--would become a staging area for German and then American armies.  But it wasn't only the war.  An arch on the scale imagined, up to 600 meters wide and 240 meters high, proved an enormous technological challenge.

Virtual reconstruction of the final plan for E42.

Had it been built, it would have been sited in the southern portion of EUR, more or less where Nervi's Palazzo dello Sport (1960) now stands, Some argue that the arch would have been just to the south of Nervi's stadium, but in models it appears it would have been closer to the EUR lake, in front of, or perhaps in the middle of, the space now occupied by Nervi's building.

Ortensi/Pascoletti, et. al. design in steel, set against
model of St. Peter's

The idea for a grand arch of spectacular dimensions (600 x 240 meters, dwarfing St. Peter's) first emerged in 1937.  At that time, two groups offered elaborate plans and specifications for a proposed arch.  One group, led by engineers Dagoberto Ortensi, Cesare Pascoletti, Adelchi Cirella and Covre, offered an arch made of steel--a "spectacular metal arch," according to the plans.

Libera/di Berardino design in cement, 1938

Another group, led by Libera and di Berardino, offered an arch in concrete, inspired by a contest-winning painting of an arch by Ludivico Quaroni, soon to become a well-known poster.

Materials made a difference.  One issue that seems a trifle silly now, but was then of considerable importance, was whether the materials for the arch were "autarchic"--that is, able to be produced within Italy, rather than imported.  The Libera/di Berardino group's first proposal, in 1937, envisioning an arch in non-reinforced concrete, had appeal because Italy produced concrete.  The group also presented a proposal for an arch in reinforced concrete, somewhat less autarchic, perhaps. Nervi argued later that both arches--in reinforced and non-reinforced concrete--were feasible and could be built with Italian materials.  Steel, the favored material of the Ortensi/Pascoletti group, would have to be imported.

As it happened, steel and concrete were both thrown under the bus in April 1939, when E42 President Vittorio Cini announced that the arch would be built in "Italian aluminum''--that is,

Vittorio Cini, gesturing center right, picture of
arch behind and, in the model, at right

"absolute autarchy."  Cini asked that bygones be bygones, and that the two groups come together to jointly solve whatever problems might arise.  And they did, though Nervi would argue that the aluminum was less than fully autarchic because of the ancillary materials required in its production.  In any event, once aluminum was chosen, the arch's dimensions were reduced.  The "final" specifications called for an arch with a 330 meter span and about 200 meters high--smaller than once imagined, but still quite something.  Even with the reduced dimensions, the arch envisioned was to have a system of carriages inside, conveying groups of people to a restaurant/recreation area at the top.  Some even imagined a platform for parachuting to the ground.

Ad campaign idea from the Mussolini regime.  Ship
owners nixed it as unsafe.  

Mussolini was infatuated with the E42 project and, especially, with the arch.  The Duce scribbled: "Arch=E42 and vice-versa."  For a time it looked as if it might happen.  In the late 1930s and early 1940s the arch became a feature of many advertising campaigns--one envisioned ocean liners and commercial ships sporting large on-deck arches; and E42 and its iconic arch were widely promoted at the 1939/40 New York World's Fair.

Ludovico Quaroni's 1937 poster for
E42.  Saarinen's St. Louis design (1948)
was- for some - uncomfortably similar.

The technical problems were not solved by the time the war came to Italy and Rome.  In the 1950s, the idea was set aside for other building priorities, and decisions that one scholar describes as "A pity, not least because there was very little ideologically to be attributed to the Arch," which was, he
argues, even then all about peace and solidarity with other countries.  Not so.  From the beginning, the Arch was deeply identified with Italian Fascism and with Fascist ideology: the drive to the sea, the desire for territorial expansion.  From the beginning, it was understood as "The Arch of the Empire." That's why Mussolini so desperately wanted it built.

St. Louis Arch, under construction, c. 1965

Today, there is renewed interest in building an arch in EUR.  In 2007, the Rome City Council approved a small amount of money, some 30,000 Euros, for very preliminary plans and discussions for a project that was estimated then at 70 million Euros--an extraordinary amount for a city that can't afford to fix potholes.  Some are suggesting an international competition for an arch to "symbolize universal peace," an idea apparently broached by Piacentini in 1937.

It's not hard to imagine that an arch would be an attractive complement to EUR and perhaps draw tourists to the area.  Unfortunately, it's been done.  It seems likely that architect Eero Saarinen got the idea from posters and designs and publicity for E42.  Regardless, he built the arch, on the west bank of the Mississippi River, in St. Louis, almost 50 years ago.  The horse is out of the barn, as they say.

For photos and commentary on the E42 arch--past and present configurations--see L'Arco dell'E42, Supplement to C.E.S.A.R, March-April 2009, a softcover large-format book available in Rome at the Casa dell' Architettura bookshop in the  l'Aquario building, near the Termini station.  On the relationship between the arch intended for E42 and Saarinen's St. Louis Arch, see William Graebner, "Gateway to Empire: An Interpretation of Eero Saarinen's 1948 Design for the St. Louis Arch," Prospects: An Annual of American Cultural Studies, 18 (1993): 367-399, reprinted in Italian in Ventesimo Secolo (May-December, 1994). 

Bill

Design for "Arch of Peace" with a new square, 2009.