Abstract

This paper aims at investigating the peculiar aspects of Italian architectural culture under the fascist regime. Edoardo Persico, the most important critic of architecture between the two wars, recognized well that political powers and architecture crossed on the critical discourse. From this point of view, he defined the short history of this Italian movement as a process from 'europeismo' to 'romanità', and to 'mediterraneità. These notions do not imply the supremacy of Italian ethic and nation, but demonstrate that young architects, who had been eager to introduce European modern building styles into their own country, was subordinated to political requests of fascism. Yet it was more important for Persico to reveal the rhetorical mechanism that obstructed the European artistic taste and also disguised the Italian one as they were. Hence his analysis of a lot of reviews appeared on the catalogues or magazines proved the diversity of the modern culture. Persico was the only writer that could describe the whole space of critical discourse as a matrix of fascist cultures with some paradoxical characters