Roman Archaeology Under Italian Fascism

What today we deem as characteristic of the city of Rome was largely the product of one particular ideology of Rome; our understanding of the city’s spatial relationships and our sense of its visual familiarity have been orchestrated by the vision of one man, Benito Mussolini. Many students of antiquity are aware that the Fascist regime sponsored excavations throughout Italy and the Mediterranean. Yet perhaps more significant is the fact of Mussolini’s creation of the physical vision of Roman antiquity, literally how we view and thereby interpret the Roman city. The dominant vistas from which we study the emblematic Roman monuments were all designed and constructed between 1925 and 1942.

Mussolini was eager to reveal the ruins of the past to emphasize the ways in which Fascist Italy was a visible improvement on Imperial Rome, and how antiquity relied on modern policies for its very survival. Towards these ends, the Fascist regime was a great supporter of archaeological scholarship and many prominent archaeologists wrote analyses of Roman monuments in genuine support of Fascist principles. The construction of Fascist doctrine and aesthetics developed hand-in-hand with the rise of modern Roman archaeology. This volume seeks to excavate the cultural layer that Fascist ideology placed upon contemporary archaeology, and to understand the ways in which this context continues both to obscure and enlighten our vision of Roman antiquity.