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Il concorso per il palazzo del Littorio, 1934-1937

This chapter is a contribution to the catalogue for the exhibition on the Italian architect Luigi Moretti, with which the new museum of art and architecture – the MAXXI – was inaugurated. It is the first attempt to bring together the debates in Italy in the early 1930s within the Italian Rationalist movement and to interpret the two competition designs by Moretti in this light. Benton was the only Anglo-Saxon researcher to be invited to contribute to this important catalogue, in consequence of his series of publications on Italian architecture of the 1930s. The article reviews the polemics launched by Pier Maria Bardi in his journal Quadrante and Giuseppe Pagano in Casabella on how to situate a modernist architectural practice within Fascist ideological models. It argues that Appeals to ‘Italianicity’, or ‘Romanicity’ were countered by seeking the authority of ancient Greece or a more vague ‘Mediterranean spirit’ to allow free expression of Modernist principles. The two competitions for the Palazzo del Littorio (1934 and 1936), to be situated on the new avenue leading to the Colisseum, was one of the last moments when frankly modernist architects competed openly with the practitioners of what came to be called the ‘stile Littorio’ – a pompous modernised classicism. The article shows that Moretti’s two entries were original in using authentic Modernist principles of planning and structure while adopting a recognizably ‘Roman’ character, in the use of colour, inscriptions and statuary. Benton uses primary sources in the two Moretti archives to analyse the drawings in detail. The chapter also raises important issues about the limits imposed on architectural practice by Moretti’s sincere Fascist beliefs.

This chapter interprets two competition designs by Italian architect Moretti, with reference to debates in the 1930s within the Italian Rationalist movement. The article reviews the polemics launched by Pier Maria Bardi in his journal Quadrante and Giuseppe Pagano in Casabella on how to situate a modernist architectural practice within Fascist ideological models. It argues that appeals to ‘Italianicity’, or ‘Romanicity’ were countered by seeking the authority of ancient Greece or a ‘Mediterranean spirit’ to allow free expression of Modernist principles. The article shows that Moretti used Modernist principles of planning while also adopting a recognizably ‘Roman’ character.