Upon gaining power, the Fascist régime took this practice to an extreme. Ancient Roman buildings were enthusiastically ‘liberated’ from the ‘parasitic’ accretions of later periods. In practice, this often meant the wholesale demolition of other structures around the ancient ones, regardless of whether they were occupied by people and irrespective of their own historical value.

As pointed out by Dr. Martina Caruso, author of the book Italian Humanist Photography from Fascism to the Cold War, “huge swathes of medieval Rome were destroyed in the late 1920s and replaced with rationalist or imperialist‐style buildings.” In part, these clearances were an attempt to address pressing issues such as traffic congestion and unsanitary housing conditions, but the solution of cutting multilane roads through the heart of neighborhoods entailed the forced eviction of thousands of residents and irrevocably changed the nature of the city.

(Unfortunately, the author left the identities of the demolishers and the architects unspecified. Naturally, the profits made from these adventures is left unclear as well.)

The 1920s–40s remains a very difficult and controversial period in Italy’s history. Its legacy is everywhere in the city, but how to deal with it is complicated. Martina Caruso sees “one of the main challenges, which is not being met currently, is to achieve a modicum of historical transparency and communication with the public in terms of the ways in which these monuments are or may be being restored, how, why and to what end.”

Many of the buildings are exceptional works of architecture, but they were built in service of a now‐discredited ideology. In some places, fasces and inscriptions have been defaced or removed, but elsewhere Mussolini’s name and his régime’s imagery is very present.

(Emphasis added in all cases.)