Remembering Giacomo Matteotti, and the Early Days of Italian Fascism

 

One of Rome's least prominent--and probably least visited--memorials is located on the Lungotevere Arnaldo da Brescia, just steps from the Tevere, near Ponte Pietro Nenni--a 5-minute walk from bustling Piazza del Popolo.

There, on June 1924 (two years after the March on Rome), while walking along the Lungotevere Arnaldo, the Italian politician Giacomo Matteotti was waylaid, thrown into a Lancia Lambda, and stabbed to death. Of the 5 men involved, one was a prominent member of the Fascist secret police. The extent of Benito Mussolini's involvement is not clear. [See the RST post on David Kertzer's book The Pope and Mussolini for more information.]

Matteotti was an anti-Fascist socialist--a member of the Unitary Socialist Party--and a deputy in the parliament. Ten days prior to his murder, he had spoken in the parliament, concerned about violence that had occurred during recent elections and critical of the anti-democratic Acerbo law, which had assigned 2/3 of the seats in parliament to the party of Mussolini--the largest in the body--which had won 35% of the vote. 

The monument to Matteotti occupies a semi-circular green space on an elevated terrace above the river. The space can be accessed by the Lungotevere or from the river bank, via a substantial staircase that appears to be a part of the memorial. 

Inaugurated in 1974 (50 years after Matteotti's death) and paid for by the Socialist Party, the bronze memorial consists of two very different sculptures, both by Jorio Vivarelli (1922-2008), who as a soldier was captured and imprisoned in 1943 by the German forces. The monument includes the words, "Although you kill me, the idea within me can never be killed."

The original plaque was smashed in January 2017, 6 months before we visited the site and these photos were taken.  

Bill 

Quarticciolo: A Visit to Rome's Working-Class Periphery

We knew almost nothing about the quartiere of Quarticciolo when we spent a couple of hours there this Spring, except that it was a working-class enclave with a leftist reputation. It's located on Rome's periphery, a third or fourth-tier suburb east of the city center, not far from the GRA that encircles the city, and bounded on the west by a quasi-highway, viale Palmiro Togliatti. Coming from the center on via Prenestina, we turned right on the first street after viale Togliatti and parked the scooter, just a few feet from what appeared to be an abandoned "ape" (a small, three-wheeled truck) and amid the first of many low-rise apartment buildings. 

Across the street was a church (completed in 1954) and down the way, built into one of the apartment buildings, a substantial altar to the Virgin Mary, constructed in 1950. 

Quarticciolo has been described as the last of the "borgate" (towns or "working-class suburbs") constructed by the Fascist regime. The first buildings--all of Quarticciolo was, and probably still is, "public" housing--were erected between 1941 and 1943, during the war. The units were intended for very large families. The first 300 apartments were designed for families with at least 7 children, and the next 100 were for those with 4 or 5 kids--depending on need, part of the Fascist encouragement of large families.

The north end of the community, where we began our trek, is now the site of a large chain grocery store (and other stores); the basic apartment buildings were not designed for "mixed use." It also has a recently built community sports center ("From the Borgata, for the Borgata," reads the lettering at the top of the building below, an interesting pride in the term "borgata").

Moving along via Alessandrina into the center of Quarticciolo, we came upon what appeared to be a multi-story city hall (although not marked as such)/community center, covered with graffiti and other materials that revealed much about the quartiere. Along one wall, large graffiti letters "Essere un comitato e' prendersi cura della borgata" (to be a committee--the common council, one presumes--means taking care of the town).  

A plaque (far left in the above photo), placed on the building in 2010, honors the anti-Fascist partisans of Quarticciolo who resisted the German occupation of 1943-1944. Quarticciolo was one of several communities, moving east from the center, that were prominent in the resistance to Nazi occupation; they included Quadraro, Torpignattara, and Centocelle (all of which we've written about many times; one post is linked here to each community). 

In the rear of the building, a line drawing appears to show a rapacious capitalist with little regard for needs of the ordinary people. 

The rear façade is decorated with two multi-story figures. Not sure what they are supposed to represent.

And a sign proclaims "Insieme Tutto E' Possibile" (together, everything is possible), more evidence of a desire for community solidarity (it's signed "Quarticciolo Ribelle" [Quarticciolo Rebel]. 

Both sides of the building feature a rich variety of graffiti, old and new. 

Across the street from the community center (maybe the municipal hall) we were surprised to see a theater and library. Although the building has some 1960-era features, it was constructed quite recently, apparently in 2007, on the site of a public market (probably the victim of the supermarket).

The town is long and thin, and in a few minutes we had reached the other, southern, end. Time for a 2nd coffee of the day--served in glass cups, quite unusual for most of Rome--in a nice bar with many patrons, inside and outside.

On our return to the scooter we found lots of evidence of Quarticciolo's liberal (and radical) politics. On the liberal side, we came across a center for volunteers and, next to it, a free book exchange (there aren't many in Rome) housed in an old cooler. 

Housing is a major issue, as it was 80 years ago. A larger banner proclaimed "Stop Sgomberi" (stop evictions), and a sign made a point of the comitato's recent efforts to move the community in an ecological direction: "How can one make an ecological transition when it's raining on your head inside your house?" 

"Stop Evictions. We all have a right to a house!"

"The ecological transition doesn't make much sense when it's 
raining of your head--inside your house!"

Low-income communities such as Quarticciolo are likely to be anti-prison (anti-carcere), and signs confirmed that perspective. We also found standard Communist stuff--Viva Stalin (really?) and a hammer and sickle with the date, 1917, of the Russian Revolution.

And an enormous and striking portrait of (to us) a person unknown.   

One last photo, this one not so political--and yet it is. The wall sign reads, "Quarantine in 20 square meters: You can't do it." 

Thanks, Quarticciolo, for having us!

Bill 

ELFO in Rome

 

As those who follow Rome the Second Time may know, the administrators of the website are keen observers of Rome's WALLS.  Over the years, we have learned a great deal about the city's politics, about its heroes and villains, its neo-fascists and do-gooders, its martyrs and activists.  

And so, when we landed in the neighborhood of Pigneto in the spring of 2019, we were pleased to find an area dense with posters, graffiti, wall art and wall writing. Much of what we found was familiar.  But not the word ELFO, which appeared in several places, sometimes simply as "ELFO," but also as "ELFO AMOK" and "ELFO AMOK/LF.LF."  A mystery to be sure: possibly the initials of a local activist, or those of an anti-fascist martyred in the "Anni di Piombo," the "Years of Lead," a reference to a decade of ideological conflict and violence, assassination and murder, that began in the 1970s. Another layer of Rome's political onion, peeled away.  

Alas, none of that proved to be true. As we later learned, ELFO (which means "elf," a mythical being), refers to the animated television series "Disenchantment," written and produced by Matt Groening (best known for "The Simpsons," whose characters also appear on Rome walls), which premiered on Netflix in August, 2018--just in time to inspire the person or persons who chose to celebrate it on Pigneto's walls.  

It's in the genre of medieval fantasy, and it's set in the kingdom of Dreamland. As far as I know, it has nothing to do with Rome.  Sorry about that. 

Bill 

Tufello: A Rebel Community

Vigne Nuove--we started here - no "new vineyards" in sight. 

On a sunny day in mid-May, we got on the Honda Forza 300 and headed north to Vigne Nuove.  The name refers both to the quartiere/neighborhood of Vigne Nuove, and to one of Rome's largest public housing projects (above), this one from the 1970s. Our plan was to have a look at the housing project (which we did--we plan a full report in a future post), then walk south into Tufello, an older, more human-sized enclave just to Vigne Nuove's south. If you're not on a scooter or in a car, Tufello is accessible, at its southern end, by the relatively new Jonio stop (one beyond Conca d'Oro) on Metro's "B1" line (though some refer to waiting for a Metro B1 as "waiting for Godot"). Vigne Nuove means "new vineyards." We're not sure when it got its name, but the area obviously was at one point an agricultural area with vineyards, and ruins of a 1st-century AD villa have been found there. And "Jonio" is also spelled "Ionio" as in the Ionian Sea between Italy and Greece.

"Welcome to Tufello, a Free and Rebellious Quartiere" - note the "Welcome" is expressed in BOTH the masculine and
feminine plural (very PC), instead of using the masculine plural to refer to both males and females - the classic use.

Tufello's "charm" comes in part from its geographical confinement; it's essentially a triangle with one angle at the top, bounded on the south by Viale Jonio, on the west by via Giovanni Conti, and on the east by via delle Vigne Nuove. At its center is Piazza degli Euganei (see below).

Just north of that piazza, off via Monte Massico, we encountered several apartment buildings--probably dating to the late 1940s or 1950s. The courtyards were less than elegant--not unusual for "public" spaces in Rome.  A few of the apartments had air conditioning, but here, as elsewhere in the city, clothes are dried by hanging them in the sun.

A sparse, uninviting courtyard.  Dianne checks the map. Yes, a print map.

This interior space had nice pine trees, but was overgrown

On one of the buildings, an ode to "Fabio," now deceased, "nel paradiso degli eroi" ("in the paradise of heroes").

Tufello has a cultural center, the C.C.P., or Centro di Cultura Popolare, offering a Yoga experience.

At the end of several blocks of this older housing, a new, more modern building:

Some new investment in the area

The main piazza has a large, somewhat awkward, modernist market, surrounded by the standard array of shops, many of them closed in the early afternoon, when we visited.

Many of Rome's neighborhoods have a "favorite son"--always a young man rather than a woman, and usually a political figure from the Anni di Piombo (Years of Lead), a period in the 1970s and early 1980s characterized by deep political divisions and violence. The identity of the favorite son defines the political identity of the neighborhood.

Tufello's walls tell the story.  In posters and wall art, the quartiere remembers Valerio Verbano.  Verbano was born into an anti-fascist family in 1961, and became an active militant during his high school years in the Rome neighborhood of Nuovo Salario.  He was a Communist and a member of Autonomia Operaia ("Worker's Autonomy" - loosely translated - perhaps "Power to the Workers" might be better).  In April 1979, Verbano was arrested and charged with fabricating explosive devices--basically, Molotov cocktails--in an abandoned building in San Basilio.  He was convicted and served 6 months in prison.

These signs appear on a gymnasium building (palestra). 

"Valerio Verbano--Militant Communist, Assassinated by the Fascist Skunks
An Idea Never Dies"

On February 22, 1980--three days from his 19th birthday--Verbano was shot and killed by three armed and masked men who had come to his home at via Monte Bianco 114, tied up his parents,and waited for Valerio to come home from school. Though the case was investigated many times over the years, it has never been solved--which may explain Verbano's prominence on Tufello's walls 40 years later. The Monte Bianco address places Verbano's home just south of Viale Jonio.

While much of the area's wall art and postering deals with Verbano, a good portion is more broadly political, marking the neighborhood as anti-fascist, militant and, after almost 80 years, still linked to the anti-Fascist/anti-Nazi partisans (partigiani) of World War II.  This wall immediately below links Verbano and Carla to the partisans.

"ieri partigiani"--yesterday, partisans

Identifying the enemies: money and Nazis--and something else

"Antifa Tufello"--anti-Fascist Tufello
Again, red and black flags

Cuore is heart, ribelle is rebels or rebellious. Not sure what a good translation would be
other than a literal "Rebellious heart". 

And the poster below reveals that Valerio is more than an idea; every year, on the anniversary of his death, the community marches in his memory, and for what he presumably stood for and against: against the "racism of the state," against the "war on the poor," "connecting the resistance."  A significant level of distrust of government here. (Tufello was cited in one of Conor Fitzgerald's novels as a neighborhood "where the police have not disturbed the criminal status quo." 

"1980...The Revolt Goes On...2019"

Bill

I've written many posts on "heroes" celebrated on Rome's walls, from both the left and the right. Here are some of them:
https://romethesecondtime.blogspot.com/2012/11/the-story-of-zippo.html
https://romethesecondtime.blogspot.com/2012/09/piazza-vescovio-anni-di-piombo-and.html
https://romethesecondtime.blogspot.com/2011/12/gabbo-death-and-life-of-gabriele-sandri.html
https://romethesecondtime.blogspot.com/2012/10/sites-of-anti-fascism-trionfale.html
https://romethesecondtime.blogspot.com/2015/06/a-tale-of-two-suburbs-balduina.html
https://romethesecondtime.blogspot.com/2019/10/villa-certosa-hidden-rome-neighborhood.html

Sites of Anti-Fascism: Trionfale, Garbatella, and San Lorenzo

Post Office on Via Marmorata, 1940 photo

Regular readers of these pages are familiar with the remaining reminders of the Fascist era in Rome, of which the Foro Mussolini/Foro Italico, the grand complex of EUR, Luigi Moretti’s House of the Italian Fascist Youth (l'ex GIL in Trastevere), the Ostiense Post Office on Via Marmorata, the University of Rome, the Via dell’Impero, and what was once the Ministry of Corporations (improbably on Via Veneto) are only the most prominent (see links at end). 

Public Housing in Trionfale

Less well known are the sites of resistance to Fascism.  They were all, at the time, areas of the city populated by and identified with the city’s working class, students, and youth.  Two—the near-in “suburbs” of Trionfale and Garbatella—were the sites of major public housing developments built or completed under Fascist auspices.  

Garbatella is one of the itineraries in our new book, Modern Rome: 4 Great Walks for the Curious Traveler; see below for more information.

One of Mario Mafai's "demolition" paintings, late 1930s

Significantly, these “projects” (to use the American term) housed many families that had been driven from the central city when their living quarters were razed to make way for the broad avenues favored by Mussolini and other Fascists.  Artist Mario Mafai, whose own family was forced from the Monti quarter by the demolitions (in Italian, sventramento/tearing down), did a series of paintings on the subject. 

The Red Hotel, Garbatella

In Garbatella, four of the largest buildings, including the famous and still-standing Albergo bianco (white hotel) and Albergo rosso (Red hotel) now and then served as detention centers for communists and others deemed dangerous to the state.  When Hitler made his one and only visit to Rome in 1938, potential dissidents were rounded up and brought to the “hotels,” where they were placed under police guard.  The hotels also housed ex-prisoners returning to Rome after incarceration elsewhere.  In addition, living conditions in the hotels contributed to anti-fascism.   Residents not only resented being forced out of their former neighborhoods, but also disliked having to leave their own furniture behind for the iron tables and chairs provided by the complexes. 

Anti-fascist graffiti on Garbatella's old marketplace,
2009 (now being renovated)

Moreover, the great majority of the men living in the new housing in Garbatella were proletarians--ordinary, poorly paid workers struggling to keep their jobs and feed their families under the difficult conditions of the worldwide Great Depression.  These workers were especially vocal, and most likely to incur the wrath and intervention of the police, as May 1—Europe’s labor day—approached.   In 1943, with Fascism disintegrating  and the city occupied by the Nazis,  some 270 of the most disaffected—from the working-class neighborhoods of Ostiense, Testaccio and San Saba, as well as Garbatella--formed a resistance organization with like-minded anti-fascists.  Even today Garbatella is known as Rome's most socially progressive neighborhood. 

San Lorenzo

But it was another working-class quartiere, this one to the north of the Centro, and close in, that caused the Fascists the most trouble.  San Lorenzo was a dense neighborhood of narrow streets, just the sort of place that the Fascists imagined was full of left-wing troublemakers.  In this case they were right.   In 1921, the year before the March on Rome, the Fascist Party congress came to the city, and some 30,000 blackshirts roamed the working-class sections of the city, bashing heads—especially in San Lorenzo—in what proved a deadly effort to keep dissidents in line. 

The following year, according to historian Paul Baxa, the arrival in the city of the remains of Enrico Toti, a hero of the Great War, killed on the Carso and a Fascist icon, brought another confrontation in San Lorenzo.  As the procession with Toti’s body moved along Via Tiburtina, through the heart of the district to the nearby Verano cemetery, anti-Fascists fired from windows and alleys.  Five months later, in the epic March on Rome, a unit of Fascisti, heading west and south on Via Tiburtina and warned to stay out of San Lorenzo, entered the area anyway and again faced fire from San Lorenzo’s socialists, communists, and anarchists.   

The center of the University of Rome, built,
so the story goes, on the ruins of San Lorenzo. The
sign in the foreground advertises the Rome version
of the "Occupy" movement (October 2011)

After the second of these events, an angry Mussolini announced in the newspaper Il Popolo that “all obstacles [to Fascism] will eventually come down.”  Not even Mussolini could tear down all of San Lorenzo, but he came close, or so the story goes.  In the 1930s the regime tore down most of San Lorenzo that lay to the northwest of Via Tiburtina for its new University.   Although Mussolini was capable of such venality, we’re just a bit skeptical, if only because our early-20^th century map of the area destined to house the university shows it to be nearly empty of buildings. 

Another site, not visual but oral, is the resistance anthem, Bella Ciao.

Bill
Links to other posts include Foro Mussolini/Foro Italico, Case Popolare (on Fascism's housing projects), L'ex GIL (the Moretti youth center), the via Marmorata post office, and the University of Rome (Gio' Ponti's mathematics building). Via Veneto's Fascist corporate buildings are on Itinerary 5 in RST:  The Nazis and Fascists in Central Rome.

And for more on Garbatella and Fascist architecture in Rome, see our new print AND eBook,  Modern Rome: 4 Great Walks for the Curious Traveler.  Along with the tour of Garbatella that includes the Red Hotel and the old marketplae, Modern Rome features three other walks: 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 classic 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.