prestige. Some fi#y years before Berlusconi, he had obtained the Presidency of the popular soccer team of A.C. Milan (although he would never actually own it, like his successor). Even more prestigious had been his election at the head of the Brera Academy of Arts, the result of bi!er feuds within the political and cultural milieu of the time. His knack for socializing and networking – I gathered – had been able to prosper partly thanks to the subdued but ever-present engagement of his wife Amelia, the sophisticated hostess of their lavish apartment in the very heart of Milan, of a country house on the road to Venice, but especially of a stunning Villa perched on the cliffs just outside fashionable Portofino. I had always been struck, as a student of Italian literature, of how scant was the research on the episode of the Danteum, which had a!racted its share of scholarly work but almost exclusively in the field of architectural history. For years I had observed my Californian graduate students in architecture during their winter program in Como, fastidiously going over Terragni’s completed masterpiece, the unequivocally named Casa del Fascio. A#er the publication of David Ri&ind’s book on the architectural debates in Fascist Italy, I understood that the time had come to try to look deeper into the fascinating failure of a monument disturbingly poised between stylish novelty and a display of power and sanctimoniousness.
Villa Valdameri in Portofino, circa 1930 MARTINO MARAZZI
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