Conclusion: The ‘Third Rome’ as Fascism’s imago mundi

Abstract

The fifth marble map that was placed along the Via dell’Impero in 1934, depicting the new Mussolinian impero in the Mediterranean and Africa (Fig. 38), barely survived the collapse of the Fascist regime. Just like the faraway lands that it depicted as prized possessions of the Fascist imperialist imaginary in luminous white, the map was undone (in fact, defaced, removed, and destroyed, only to resurface half a century later from the basement of the Theatre of Marcellus) and allowed to fade from memory. The other four marble maps depicting the foundation of Rome and the expansion of the Roman Empire (Fig. 10) did survive the watershed, as did the avenue that they decorated and framed symbolically (Hyde Minor 1999: 149, 153–8). Yet, the change of its name into the more utilitarian ‘Street of the Imperial Fori’ (Via dei Fori Imperiali) in the autumn of 1944 altered the legibility of Fascism’s most high-profile work inside Rome’s historic centre. Every year, the avenue hosts a ceremonial parade, but the date (2 June) marks a very different occasion — the constitutional referendum that put an end to the rule of the Savoy monarchy and marked the birth of the First Italian Republic. Meanwhile, the other major Fascist-era street project in Rome’s historic centre, the Via del Mare, was also renamed into Via del Teatro di Marcello — a more narrowly descriptive toponymy deliberately revising the avenue’s original association with empire and Mediterranean expansion.