Environment and leisure in Italy during Fascism

Abstract

While vacation colonies, camps for children and young people, well-equipped beaches and playgrounds, and the first national parks were conceived in Italy during the Liberal period, it was not until the late 1920s/1930s that they were created and transformed by the Fascist regime. This article will analyse the purposes of the use of the environment and protected areas by Fascist organisations during the Fascist regime by different social groups and classes. It will try to answer several questions: how did Fascist mass organisations (youth organisations such as the Opera Nazionale Balilla (ONB) and Gioventò Italiana del Littorio (GIL), leisure organisations like the Opera Nazionale Dopolavoro (OND), sports associations) relate to environmental space? Which popular activities were conceived for open-air, urban and national parks? How did the relationship between outdoor leisure and the environment develop in the ‘new’ middle class in the 1930s? How did Fascism conceive of the relationship between human beings and nature? The Nazi regime and the US New Deal were the strongest models at that time in terms of the politics of land conservation and leisure time. Did Fascism look to those experiments; did Fascism find its own modern ‘conservative’ relationship with the environment? This article will try to answer some of these questions, mindful of the lack of studies on Italy in comparison with the expanding historiography on the German and American cases.