Many of the urban projects realized during the Fascist regime have remained part of the Italian landscape. Together with monuments and works of art, they are the surviving traces of Fascist imagery in contemporary Italy. Protected by preservation laws as part of the national cultural patrimony, these remnants have become the focus of a politically charged public debate.
In this book, scholars and curators from different disciplines critically examine the afterlives of Fascist-era artifacts. Spanning from the iconoclasm that followed the fall of the regime on July 25, 1943 to the present day, and moving from mural paintings and mosaics to buildings, decorative arts, monuments, and sculpture, the essays explore Italy’s transition from Fascism to the Republic and the dynamics of postwar de-Fascisization, revealing ruptures and continuities throughout the twentieth century. Applying the notion of “difficult heritage” to the Italian context, the volume addresses issues of restoration, display, and critical preservation of artifacts in public and institutional spaces, drawing comparisons with practices in other countries including Germany and the United States.
Contents
7 Fascism heritage in Italy: from iconoclasm to critical preservation
Carmen Belmonte
A difficult heritage?
21 Difficult how? Italy's Inertia memoriae of Fascism
Mia Fuller
31 Fascism and the arts: a difficult legacy?
Giuliana Pieri
47 Questioning the idea of difficult heritage as applied to the architecture of Fascist Italy
Hannah Malone
65 Nationalism's difficult monuments
Dell Upton
81 Erased, engraved, emerging. Nazi heritage, architecture, and public memory
Liza Candidi and Davide Grasso
Legacies of Fascism
99 Ruins of ancient civilization? Contemplating the debris left by Fascism during the transition to democracy
Franco Baldasso
115 Monuments: Fascist, Modern, invisible
Adachiara Zeli
133 Architecture and Fascism: the life and destiny of works for the regime
Rosalia Vittorini
149 "Mussolini did good things too": the memory politics of Fascit modernity
Joshua Arthurs
159 Architecture and empire: architecture in late Fascist Italy and it s Postwar legacy
Lucy Maulshy
Fascist heritage and contemporary art
179 Negotiating memories
Pippo Ciorra
195 A town square midway between past and present: Piazza della Vittoria in Brescia
Luca Acquarelli
209 The former Casa d'Italia of Marseille (1935-1936) and the murals of Angelo Della Torre in dialogue with contemporary art
Alessandro Gallicchio
229 Index
231 Acnowledgments
