The town of Pomezia, 25 km from Rome - of vaccines, Fascism, World War II

Bill looks like he's in a de Chirico painting here in Pomezia

We were surprised to learn that Pomezia, a small town created from scratch by the Fascists (inaugurated in 1939) in the Agro Pontino outside of Rome, is the site of the maker of one of the most promising Covid-19 vaccines. We knew nothing about that when we visited the town - several times in years past. We tried to figure out how we missed such an important industry. You may have heard of the Advent vaccine. That vaccine is being developed by Advent, which is an offshoot of Pomezia's IRBM, together with Oxford University. Some recent information on this vaccine trial is here. It's the Astra-Zeneca vaccine whose trial was halted for a while and is now restarted.

Our mission in the times we went to Pomezia was to view the Fascist architecture (see here for a reference to other forays) and visit the WWII German Cemetery. In those days, we were exploring the iconography of war cemeteries in and around Rome (e.g. here).  

Dianne posing with enormous fasci
 in a doorway, likely to the town hall.
The year is listed as "A. XVII E.F. -
Era Fascista, year 17 (or 1939)

We stopped in Pomezia's main square to get the requisite coffee (see Bill above) and saw some signs indicating there was to be a celebration of Garibaldi. We think that's the subject of the painting above.

We didn't have to look hard for the Fascist architecture.  Here are a couple examples (left and below, plus photo at top). There are more at the end of the post.

We then headed to the cemetery, which is only a short ways out of the town center. It's beautifully maintained and peaceful, the resting place of almost 30,000 German soldiers, some of them "unknown." 

I'll skip a description of the cemetery here, since our friend and Dante scholar, Virginia Jewiss, has written eloquently about it, and I want to give more space to her analysis in a later post.

The question remains, where is the famous laboratory making these vaccines, and why did we - who scour towns and cities - miss it?

It turns out the lab is very close to the town center, across the notorious via Pontina. It appears to be not very visible from the road (on a higher piece of land).  No doubt we scootered right past it.  See maps below.

IRBM Science Park. Pomezia's town center is at the upper right. This photo is looking South.

The map below right shows the IRBM plant on the map - at Google's inverted red drop -  with Pomezia's town center just to the West. The red cross below the green space (the town cemetery) shows the location of the German Cemetery - so obviously, we scootered right by the IRBM facility.

Italy's important connections to the Covid-19 vaccines also include a glass manufacturing company near Venice, founded in 1949 to make bottles for perfume and liquors, now devoting itself to glass vials for the vaccines. Forbes featured the family-owned company in an article here.

Jewiss says there's some irony that Pomezia, a town designed to laud the Fascists, is the resting place of Germans who fought with, and then against, the failed Italian regime. I view the cemetery as a cautionary reminder of the wages of war, and Pomezia now as a sign of the future - waging a different war - against the virus.

More on the German cemetery, and some of Jewiss's interpretations of its iconography, in a subsequent post.

Dianne

Church - a central church was a
part of all the Fascist "new towns."

Pomezia's "GIL" or  youth center
(Gioventu' italiana del littorio -
the Fascist youth movement party),
the letters framed by two fasci.

 

A 50th anniversary monument (1990), testament to the town's forefathers - note the hand-driven agricultural equipment as the main symbol.

The ubiquitous "Bar dello sport,"
with a very nice 1953 decoration above the door,
echoing the style of Fascist figures
and also the town's agricultural founding.

Hunting for Fasci (Fasces) in Rome

Prominent, column-size fasci on a government building in Pomezia, a nearby "new" town,
built under Mussolini's regime.  Above the door, we learn that the building was constructed
in the year (A., anno) 17 (1939) of the Fascist (F.) Era (E.).

As readers of this blog and our book, Rome the Second Time, are well aware, we enjoy exploring the Rome cityscape for signs of Mussolini's Fascist regime (1922-1943), the most important political event in 20th-century Italy.  Some of those signs are obvious, including the monumental complex at EUR, south of the center, and Foro Italico (once Foro Mussolini), the complex of sports facilities north of the center, across the river from the Flaminio area.  Although neither of these areas is featured in Rome the Second Time (the book), the book's Itinerary 5, "Nazis and Fascists in Central Rome," offers a look at Fascist-era architecture on Via Leonida Bissolati and the lower reaches of Via Veneto.   For more on Fascist architecture, see our new book, Modern Rome: 4 Great Walks for the Curious Traveler (more at the end of this post).

There are other, more subtle ways to engage the Fascist heritage.  As we explain in a sidebar in Rome the Second Time (p. 85), many buildings constructed in the Fascist era proclaim their origin under the regime by using the Fascist dating system, which begins with 1922 (Year I, using Roman numberals).  Many if not most of these buildings retain these Fascist markings. 

Another way--and the subject of this post--is to look for fasces (the Italian word is fasci), the foremost symbol of the Fascist regime.   The fasci--a bundle of sticks with an ax blade emerging--dates to ancient Rome and means something like "strength through unity." 

The symbol has been widely used through the ages.  It appears on the "tails" side of the U.S. mercury dime; on the emblem of the Knights of Columbus (right); on the insignia of the National Guard Bureau; and on the seal of the Adminsistrative Office of the United States Courts (above).  In the twentieth century, it was most prominently employed by Italy's Fascists, whose movement takes it name from the fasci. 

Hacking away at a symbol of the
Fascist regime, Milan, 1943.

Although some fasci were removed by angry anti-Fascists when Mussolini's regime fell in 1943 (left), and others since then, many still remain as reminders of the dictatorship.

Fasci on a school building in Centocelle, a
close-in suburb of Rome

A high schematic example, from Fascism's
year (A.) 9.  In Garbatella

Here the fasci decorate an ornate fountain
in the main piazza in Grottaferrata,
a town in the Alban Hills.  Probably 1920s. 

Below, we offer some of those we found in the last two years.  Good hunting! 
Bill

The base of a flagpole at Cinecittá, the
movie-making center, with wrap-around fish.

One seldom sees a light standard with fasci, perhaps because they're quite public.  This one, featuring a schematic design, was in an ironworks exhibit in the Casino delle Civette, in Villa Torlonia.

Because manhole covers are seldom changed and seldom stolen, they are a good source of fasci.  This one is obviously from Pomezia. 

Here, a contemporary artist has juxtaposed fasci with
other images from or of the 1930s. 

For more on fasci and Fascist architecture, see our new print AND eBook, Modern Rome: 4 Great Walks for the Curious Traveler. Modern Rome features tours of the "garden" suburb of Garbatella; the 20th-century suburb of EUR, designed by the Fascists; the 21st-century music and art center of Flaminio, along with Mussolini's Foro Italico, also the site of the 1960 summer Olympics; and a stairways walk in Trastevere.

 This 4-walk book is available in all print and eBook formats The eBook is $1.99 through amazon.com and all other eBook sellers. See the various formats at smashwords.com. 

Modern Rome: 4 Great Walks for the Curious Traveler now is also available in print, at amazon.com, Barnes and Noble, independent bookstores, and other retailers; retail price $5.99.

Deciphering Rome's Walls: Neo-Fascist Iconography

If you've been in Rome 15 minutes, you've already seen, and lamented, the vast amount of graffiti that adorns the city.  Much of it--notably the ubiquitous "tags" (initials, signatures) of graffiti "artists" (we're not talking about the colorful, design-based lettering that lines the train and Metro tracks)--is close to worthless, lacking in the "redeeming social value" that was the US legal standard applied to pornography in the 1960s.  That said, the stuff is there, and one can either a) try to ignore it or b) take an interest in aspects of it--separate the wheat from the chaff--using the walls of Rome as a window on contemporary culture. 

Note the highly stylized fasci,
below right. 

Some of this reading of contemporary Italian culture requires a knowledge of Italian and a Roman friend or two, and RST can't supply either on the blog.  But there's one area--the iconography of neo-Fascism--where a little help goes a long way. 

Mussolini's Fascist movement (roughly 1919-1945, with Fascism officially in power from 1922 to 1943) made use of Roman symbols.  One of the most signifcant was the Fascio Littorio (the bundled sheaves of wheat, with protruding axe, symbolizing power over life and death), first used as a Fascist symbol in 1919.  The poster above left, using a drawing to advertise the Monday after Easter, features three small, highly stylized fasci.

The Latin/Roman influence,
apparent in the typography of a
Fascist building

Fascism also often used a "V" - the Roman way of writing (in ancient times in stone) a "U" - on its buildings and posters, and the "V" was employed by the Triple Alliance (Germany, Italy, and Japan) during World War II.  On the facade of a Fascist-era building in EUR known as the "square coliseum," an inscription begins, "VN (UN) POPOLO...."  ("a people...."). 

During the Fascist years, the "M" (for Mussolini, and hence for Fascism) was everywhere; indeed, in the 1930s a Fascist administration building in the new town of Latina (in the reclaimed marsh land southeast of Rome) was constructed in the shape of an "M."  The building still stands today.

A prominent flattened "S" on
a 1939 poster ("Squadristi"). 

A contemporary flattened "S,"
referencing the Fascist era.

Certain other letters or modes of lettering--the squared off C is one example--may also represent a neo-Fascist hand at work.   Another letter that was widely used and was highly symbolic of Fascism is the flattened, modernist-looking "S" (above, right and left). 

A Celtic cross

The postwar (and especially post-1970) neo-Fascist movement used, and uses, all these symbols, sometimes in modified form, and you'll see them all on the walls of Rome.  You'll also see one symbol that was NOT used by Mussolini's Fascists.  The Celtic Cross was first used by a French Fascist party in the 1930s, then adopted by Italian neo-Fascists in Italy and elsewhere in the 1970s.  The iron cross at left is flanked by two letters of significance for Fascism: the "M" and the "V."

A Fascist "M" and a
highly stylized Fascio Littorio

In several places we've encountered the word "Militia," followed by a figure we at first could not decipher (right).

A Fascist-era poster, 1936

The Militia "M" is adapted from a typeface used by Mussolini's regime (left).  And the curious end figure, we concluded, was a highly stylized version of the Fascio Littorio (compare with those above and below). 

Mayor Alemanno, attacked as a Zionist

We learned more about that "M" with the arrests a few days ago (December 13) of the leader of the "Militia," Maurizio Boccacci, and four others identified with the group.  They were charged with spreading racial hatred, inciting violence, and engaging in acts against the Jewish community and against Rome's Mayor, Gianni Alemanno (right). 

A "pietra d'inciampo," a
memorial paving block

Another 11 persons are under investigation for similar offenses, including supporting fascism.   Specifically, the Militia members were accused of having defaced the walls of the capital with Nazi writings and with having defaced "pietre d'inciampo"-- engraved memorial paving stones in brass (resembling special sanpietrini)--that were designed by a German artist and installed beginning in 2010 in front of the homes of Jews deported from Rome to Nazi concentration camps during World War II. 

The Militia denies the Holocaust

On one wall, signed with the Militia "M," the group attacked the upcoming (January 27) anniversary of the Day of Remembrance for Victims of Nazism, known here as "il Giorno della Memoria"--essentially a day for recalling the horrors of the Holocaust and remembering its victims.  "27/1 non c'é memoria!" translates "January 27: there is nothing to remember!", probably a denial that the Holocaust ever took place. 

On another wall, the words "Pacifici continui a meritare il fosforo bianco" refers to Riccardo Pacifici, the president of the Jewish community in Rome; Pacifici "continues to deserve the white phosphorus," a reference to the lethal compound widely used in warfare since World War I.  Several Militia writings appeared in Monti, a tourist area near the Coliseum.  One of them said "Israele non esiste" ("Israel doesn't exist").  And on Via Tasso, the street that housed the SS prison from which political prisoners were removed to be executed in 1944 (and now houses a museum to honor those prisoners), someone had written, "via Tasso uguale bugia" ("Via Tasso is a lie").  Elsewhere, the anti-semitic Militia attacked Alemanno as a "Sionista" (a Zionist) [above right]. 

Boccacci, 54, is known to authorities for his extreme right-wing views and for a long history of participation in rightist militant groups, dating to the 1970s.  He defines himself as a "soldato fascista senza compromessi" ("a fascist soldier without compromise") and has said, "I admire what Hitler did.  The Jews were enemies that opposed his plans."  Of the Militia members thus far identified, two were 54 years old, two 26, and one 43.  Two, including Boccacci, were residents of Albano Laziale (a town in the Alban Hills close to Rome), two of Rome, and one of Ascoli Piceno (about 150 miles northeast of Rome).  Until recently, the group was headquartered in a gymnasium in the north Rome suburban quartiere of Vigne Nuove, just beyond Monte Sacro. 

With thanks to MV for assistance with this post,

Buon deciphering!
Bill