pretentious buildings

books:


	• Mussolini's Rome: Rebuilding the Eternal City (Italian & Italian American Studies) Borden Painter Palgrave Macmillan, 2005 - 224 pages average customer review:based on 1 review view larger image
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pretentious buildings

Rome. The Eternal City. Was there something in its water that Mussolini drank? Painter tells of his maniacal obsession with leaving his mark on this city. With such a storied history, he wanted to add his indelible contributions. So we get a grand tour of Rome. From the 1920s to the present. With black and white photos showing buildings added or altered. Several of which still remain to this day.

There is a comic opera feel to the sheer pretentiousness of Mussolini's activities. He comes off as a bumptious oaf, preferring shallow facades to the reality of a second rate economy.

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Rome was Mussolini's obsession. After coming to power as a result of his famed march on the city in 1922, he promised Italians that his fascist revolution would unite them as never before and make Italy a major power on the world stage. In the next two decades, he set about rebuilding Rome as the foremost site and symbol of the new fascist order. Through an ambitious program of demolition and construction, he sought to make Rome a capital that both embraced modernity while preserving and glorifing the city's ancient past. Building the new Rome put people to work, "liberated" ancient monuments from cluttered surroundings, cleared slums; produced giant complexes for education, sports, and cinema; produced wide new boulevards and piazzas; and provided the regime with a showcase for the supposed grandeur, dynamism, and power of fascism. This intriguing book reveals Mussolini's tremendous and lasting impact on the city to which millions flock each year.

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