PS
opposite Spectators during Hitler’s visit to Florence in 1938 (Photo: Life Magazine)
What was Fascist Allegiance? During the 1930s it was in an architect’s best interest to toe the party line. The central government established architectural schools, underwrote the publication of journals such as Architettura, Casabella, and Domus, and sponsored professional design competitions. Although buildings had been designed and built for centuries, architecture was a relatively young discipline. The profession was first recognized with the establishment of a professional union in 1923. The first school was set up in Rome in 1919 with Venice following in 1926, Turin in 1929, Naples in 1930, Florence in 1931, and Milan in 1933. In many ways it was a discipline that came of age during the regime. Furthermore the PNF was the biggest patron and advocate of architecture during the period. As a result, architects learned to become adept at finessing their interests in terms of the party agenda so as to gain support for their projects. To what extent the Tuscan Rationalists’ interest in promoting a native Italic style was complicit in the government’s increasingly racist agenda remains unclear. Certainly someone like Pagano, a good friend of Giuseppe Bottai (the PNF minister and one-time Governor of Rome), would have been aware that the regime was investing in rural Italy. Regardless of whether or not individuals like Pagano acted at the behest of the Ministries in Rome, their celebration of a native architectural form and the desire to ground modern architecture in anonymous traditions helped to legitimize the national campaign of promoting rural culture. There was no single Fascist aesthetic in Italy and no designated government architect, as was the case in Germany. Instead, Fascist era architecture in Italy consisted of a range of styles and practices — everything from the streamlined neo-Classicism of Giuseppe Terragni evident in new construction, to the heavy-handed restorations of medieval and Renaissance buildings undertaken by Giuseppe Castellucci and others in towns like Arezzo, San Gimignano, and Figline Valdarno. There was no sense of a sovereign modernity. Bottai asserted, “it is the unlimited vastness of content and the plurality of forms which give the Italian artistic tradition a universal value and an influence a thousand times larger than its national territory”. There was a more subtle and perhaps subversive way of involving young architects in projects that were sympathetic to party goals: by supporting exhibitions such as the 1936 Triennale and publications such as Architettura ed arti decorative (renamed Architettura in 1932), Casabella and Domus (both founded in 1928), in which they could write about architecture or feature their own projects, or both. The PNF controlled and mediated ar-