After having detailed the narratives and agents of the ideological placemaking in modern Rome, this chapter shows how the rediscovery of classical architecture of the Urbs started soon after the Unification of Italy. Quite often considered as almost insignificant years in Italian history, the period between 1870 and Mussolini’s seizure of power in 1922 was the starting point for the realisation of the ideological renovations perpetrated by the fascist regime on a grander scale. It was a slow process of restructuring and remodelling the Eternal City, a first attempt to modernise the cityscape in line with what was happening within other European capital cities. Behind the scenes of the renovation, the monuments’ classical charm was emphasised through imposing urban projects, the construction of new architecture, and the vast archaeological excavations that focused on the heart of imperial Rome.

The historical identities of the Ara Pacis Augustae, the Mausoleum of Augustus, the Colosseum, and the Imperial Forums have just resurfaced from the dust of the past and, with them, their multiple, ever-changing messages and symbols. Imbued with the inevitable passage of time, these monuments tell us of the Rome that was, of the characters who followed one another in ruling and managing it, of the bloodthirsty spectators of gladiatorial shows and bullfights, of triumphant emperors buried at the base of dedicatory columns, and of rising early medieval aristocrats who occupied the ruins.

Ancient monuments have always played a key role in building the identity of a nation or, as in the case we are going to deal with, of the city of Rome. Such processes are dictated by clear political agendas through which a precise selection of connections with the past is established, as well as a series of narratives aimed at creating, through myths and legends, a sense of social belonging. Entering the heart of the Eternal City, architecture was bent to the will of emperors, popes, and governments up to Mussolini’s regime and transformed into a vehicle for the transmission of populist propaganda, whether it be religious or political.

The fascist period saw the realisation of the urban regeneration project of Rome that began in the post-unification period and transformed the overall image and furnishings of the city over a period of about seventy years. Questionable choices were made in the name of modernising the urban fabric: Gutting, demolitions, and open and still unhealed wounds were the protagonists of the master plans aimed at extrapolating historical identities, dissecting the authenticity of classical monuments, modernising the road network, and celebrating ideologies and propaganda. Rome was the architectural stage of such actions, and the various actors sometimes interpreted its ruins to save them, perhaps isolating them, and sometimes to remove them mercilessly by creating a stratigraphic gap in the capital of the classical Mediterranean.

This book is about placemaking, a theme increasingly connecting the archaeological discipline with anthropology, urban planning, and the visual arts. From the very first pages, it is good to underscore how this book deals with placemaking from a strictly anthropological, architectural, and archaeological perspective, emphasising the relationship that has been created between historical monuments, their architecture, the urban planning of the Third Rome, and the ideological trends that are recorded between the post-unification period (1870–1922) and that of the fascist regime (1922–45). This clarification is necessary to prepare the reader for the theoretical context of this introduction, as well as to encourage those who are interested in broadening their knowledge of placemaking from the philosophical standpoint, with the heated debates that followed in the same decades.

Now we enter the urban organism of Rome, the Eternal City, the city of classical architecture par excellence, where the past constantly mixes with the present and is tangible at every step of the tourist or scholar; this is the city of the twins Romulus and Remus raised by the she-wolf, which turned into a Republic and then became the Empire of the Caesars. The advent of Christianity saw it dotted with churches and new landmarks, committed to rooting the power of the popes in Italy and in the rising Europe. Popes were the first promoters of the rediscovery of the city’s classical past and monumental architecture, which exuded identities to be rescued and adjusted according to the tastes and inspirations of the great Renaissance artists.

With the interruption of the works of the EUR due to World War II, the narrative of the ideological placemaking of post-unification Italy and, more specifically, of the fascist phase of this intricate journey into the rediscovery of the classical world, and its interpretation and reception in modern Italy, comes to an end. Together with the University City, the Palazzo del Littorio then turned into the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the unrealised Danteum, and the Foro Italico, were added to the now isolated ancient monuments of imperial Rome as places newly representing national identity.