My project concerns how, under fascism, the Italian state used architecture to exploit the memory of the dead. Initially, soldiers who died fighting in the Great War were buried in makeshift cemeteries close to battlefields. However, in the 1920–30s their remains were disinterred and reburied under the fascist regime within large ossuaries that were located along the former front in northeastern Italy. The ossuaries were designed by a group of favoured architects who worked under the direction of a special commission, and their vast scale and monumentality meant that they are quite unlike other European memorials. As secular sites of pilgrimage, they fostered the veneration of war heroes through a rhetoric that was wound around the ideals of the Risorgimento, martyrdom and sacrifice. By imposing a narrative that spoke of victory, they helped to silence discordant memories of the Great War as pointless slaughter. Moreover, they acted to bolster support for nationalism, militarism and imperialism.
This topic appealed to my overriding interest in the relationships between architecture and politics. As instruments of fascist propaganda, the ossuaries are an ideal vehicle in that they demonstrate how architecture can be shaped by political forces. Specifically, my intention was to expose the political aims that underpinned the campaign to exploit the fallen, and how those aims were manifested in the architecture of the ossuaries. In this regard, my research differed from earlier work that tended either to focus on the architecture of the ossuaries while ignoring their ideological significance, or to examine the monuments in purely symbolic terms. My research also sought to cast light both on the meanings that the ossuaries elicited under fascism and on the ambiguous position that they hold today. In effect, I have attempted to examine how the power of the collective memory, as it operates through architecture, has shaped Italian history.
My research drew extensively on archival material. The archive of the commission that directed the construction of the ossuaries still exists, and is under the control of the Ministry for Defence in Rome. The archive is closed to researchers but, after numerous requests, I was granted access. In this regard, I am indebted to the Permissions Officer of the BSR, Stefania Peterlini, to the staff of the Commissariato Generale delle Onoranze ai Caduti, and particularly to the Ten. Col. Roberto Scarpone. Over the last two months of the Fellowship, I began to catalogue the archive and to uncover related correspondence, architectural drawings and administrative documents, through which it was possible to trace the genesis of the ossuaries and its underlying purposes. Given the wealth of material, I imagine that this research will provide the basis for a book.
During the Fellowship, I consulted secondary literature at the Biblioteca Nazionale, the Biblioteca di Storia Moderna e Contemporanea, and the Biblioteca Centrale di Architettura of La Sapienza University. In those libraries, I found contemporary publications that were aimed at the promotion of the ossuaries, and which included books, pamphlets and articles in the general and specialized press. Whilst in Rome, I had the opportunity to meet Italian and foreign scholars working in the field, which was particularly useful in terms of an insight into Italian attitudes towards the heritage of fascism.
During my stay at the BSR, I also worked on the manuscript of a book that is based on my doctoral research on Italy's monumental cemeteries of the nineteenth century, and which will be published shortly by Ashgate. My time in Rome was particularly valuable as it allowed me to explore the architecture of the city and to create a photographic catalogue of many of its buildings. Moreover, I greatly benefited from contact with scholars and artists across different disciplines, and for their help and support I wish to thank all the staff and residents of the BSR.
