Abstract
On October 28, 1922, King Victor Emmanuel III invited Benito Mussolini, leader of the Fascist Party, to form a government. It was a triumphant moment for Mussolini, who had founded the fascist movement only three and a half years before with a few hundred followers in Milan. The movement had taken off by 1920, attracting thousands of adherents, especially veterans of the Great War. Mussolini transformed the movement into a political party that offered Italians a hypernationalism and promised to give Italy new life through a program of internal unity and external strength. Fascism promised its own revolution, but one that would produce a new Italy and new Italians while saving the nation from class warfare and a bloody Bolshevik-style revolution.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Notes
Robert C. Fried, Planning the Eternal City: Roman Politics and Planning Since World War II (New Haven, Conn. and London: Yale University Press, 1973 ): 32.
On the Institute and the cult of romanité see the article by Antonio La Penna, “Il culto della romanità, La rivista ‘Roma’ e Istituto di studi romani,” Italia Contemporanea 217 (December 1999): 605–630.
Romke Visser, “Fascist Doctrine and the Cult of Romanità,” Journal of Contemporary History 27 (1992): 5–22
Emilio Gentile, “Fascism as a Political Religion,” Journal of Contemporary History 25 (1990): 229–251, and “The Conquest of Modernity: From Modernist Nationalism to Fascism,” Modernism/Modernity 1 (September 1994): 54–57.
Mark Antliff, “Fascism, Modernism, and Modernity,” The Art Bulletin 84: 1 (March 2002): 152.
Italo Insolera, Roma moderna: Un secolo di scoria urbanistica ( Turin: Einaudi, 1962 ): 121–122.
Edwin Ware Hullinger, The New Fascist State: A Study of Italy under Mussolini (New York: Rae D. Henkle, 1928 ): 143–145.
John Patric, “Imperial Rome Reborn,” The National Geographic Magazine 71: 3 (March 1937): 269–325.
Antonio Cederna, Mussolini Urbanista: Lo sventramento di Roma negli anni del consenso (Rome-Bari: Laterza, 1981): 97ff.
Ezra Pound, Jerson and/or Mussolini: I’Idea Statale, Fascism as I Have Seen It (New York: Liveright, 1995) [originally published 1935], 33–34.
See entry on Piacentini in Philip V. Cannistraro, ed., Historical Dictionary of Fascist Italy (Westport: Greenwood Press, 1829 ): 421.
Antonio Mufioz, Roma di Mussolini ( Milan: Fratelli Treves, 1935 ): 149.
Georgina Masson, The Companion Guide to Rome, revised by Tim Jepson (Suffolk, UK and Rochester, NY: Boydell Brewer, 2000 ): 92.
Sergio Lambase, ed., Storia Fotografica di Roma ( Naples: Intra Moenia, 2003 ), 254.
Rossi, Roma, Guida all’architettura moderna ( Rome-Bari: Laterza, 2000 ): 72.
Emil Ludwig, Talks with Mussolini (Boston: Little, Brown, 1933). The original edition in German appeared in 1932, as did the Italian translation, Colloqui con Mussolini ( Milan: Mondadori, 1932 ).
Copyright information
© 2005 Borden Painter
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Painter, B.W. (2005). Mussolini’s Obsession with Rome. In: Mussolini’s Rome. Italian and Italian American Studies. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781403976918_1
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781403976918_1
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, New York
Print ISBN: 978-1-4039-8002-1
Online ISBN: 978-1-4039-7691-8
eBook Packages: Palgrave History CollectionHistory (R0)