Roads and Ruins: The Symbolic Landscape of Fascist Rome (Toronto Italian Studies)

Drawing on a wide variety of sources, including war diaries, memoirs, paintings, films, and government archives, __Roads and Ruins__ is a richly textured study that offers an original perspective on a well known story.

In the 1930s, the Italian Fascist regime profoundly changed the landscape of Rome's historic centre, demolishing buildings and displacing thousands of Romans in order to display the ruins of the pre-Christian Roman Empire. This transformation is commonly interpreted as a failed attempt to harmonize urban planning with Fascism's ideological exaltation of the Roman Empire.

Roads and Ruins argues that the chaotic Fascist cityscape, filled with traffic and crumbling ruins, was in fact a reflection of the landscape of the First World War. In the radical interwar transformation of Roman space, Paul Baxa finds the embodiment of the Fascist exaltation of speed and destruction, with both roads and ruins defining the cultural impulses at the heart of the movement. Drawing on a wide variety of sources, including war diaries, memoirs, paintings, films, and government archives, Roads and Ruins is a richly textured study that offers an original perspective on a well known story.

In the 1930s, the Italian Fascist regime profoundly changed the landscape of Rome's historic centre, demolishing buildings and displacing thousands of Romans in order to display the ruins of the pre-Christian Roman Empire. This transformation is commonly interpreted as a failed attempt to harmonize urban planning with Fascism's ideological exaltation of the Roman Empire. Roads and Ruins argues that the chaotic Fascist cityscape, filled with traffic and crumbling ruins, was in fact a reflection of the landscape of the First World War. In the radical interwar transformation of Roman space, Paul Baxa finds the embodiment of the Fascist exaltation of speed and destruction, with both roads and ruins defining the cultural impulses at the heart of the movement. Drawing on a wide variety of sources, including war diaries, memoirs, paintings, films, and government archives, Roads and Ruins is a richly textured study that offers an original perspective on a well known story. Roads and Ruins argues that the chaotic Fascist cityscape, filled with traffic and crumbling ruins, was in fact a reflection of the landscape of the First World War. In the radical interwar transformation of Roman space, Paul Baxa finds the embodiment of the Fascist exaltation of speed and destruction, with both roads and ruins defining the cultural impulses at the heart of the movement. Drawing on a wide variety of sources, including war diaries, memoirs, paintings, films, and government archives, Roads and Ruins is a richly textured study that offers an original perspective on a well known story."--Pub. desc Contents 7 Acknowledgments 9 Preface: Death on the Via del Mare 11 Introduction: Rome and Fascism 17 1. The Landscape of the War 32 2. Roads to Rome: The Blackshirts and the città nemico 50 3. Demolitions: De-familiarizing the Roman Cityscape 70 4. ‘An uninterrupted racecourse’: Fascism’s Roman Roads 92 5. The Palazzo and the Boulevard 117 6. Resurrecting a Pagan Landscape 137 7. Return of the Roman 151 Conclusion: The Cinematic City 171 Notes 179 Bibliography 219 Index 233 Paul Baxa. Includes Bibliographical References ( P. [203]-215) And Index.