Framing St. Peter's: urban planning in Fascist Rome

Mussolini brandished the ceremonial pickax over the "parasitic and profane constructions" of the spina on October 29, 1936, and within twelve months all were cleared away, including the Vatican's Palazzo dei Convertendi. The Vatican agreed to this property's demolition, pending negotiation of a shift of its extraterritorial status to another comparable site nearby. Meanwhile, decorative elements from the Palazzo dei Convertendi and other buildings of any aesthetic interest were saved and stored in warehouses. Bottai ordained that "the buildings of notable historical or monumental value be kept or rebuilt along the new alignment." (37) The residents of the district, however, were displaced en masse in settlements ("borgate") beyond the city's edges, following the regime's policy in the 1930s of urban depopulation.

Spaccarelli had been working on a Borgo urban development plan since 1934, when he had Mussolini's ear, but his plans met with harsh criticism in the press. (38) Piacentini intervened by working up a counterproposal, and he eventually invited Spaccarelli to collaborate. Piacentini, whose influence with government officials was far greater than Spaccarelli's, always encouraged collaborative work because in his experience it not only produced better results but also presented to the regime overseers the image of a productive and efficient professional syndicate. (39) The team answered only to Governatore Bottai, while the pope played no direct role in the development of the new street. The designers took suggestions from the Vatican, for example, from Giuseppe Momo, director of the Vatican architectural office, author of articles with implicit papal benediction, onetime collaborator with Piacentini, and architect selected for the rebuilding of the Palazzo dei Convertendi at its new site. Giulio Tardini, a Vatican researcher, made all earlier historic projects from the archives available to the designers. (40) Bottai's guidance was instrumental in realizing the scheme in a period of simultaneous, often competitive urban projects across Rome. The clearance of the Mausoleum of Augustus or the design of the Via dell'Impero through the Imperial Fora with its planned site of the Fascist party headquarters were high-priority party projects. The Foro Mussolini sports complex or the fairgrounds for E42, the upcoming world's fair, could also have drawn away vital support and funds. Bottai, keeping vigilant to ways in which his project could best serve the regime, relied on the collaboration of several cabinet colleagues, especially the minister of propaganda, Dino Alfieri. It was Bottai who defined the political nature of the urban project when he chose the name for the new street: the Via della Conciliazione--the Street of the Reconciliation. (41)

Piacentini, involved in numerous large planning commissions, including two of the aforementioned (Via dell'Impero and E42), was the ideal project designer. Piacentini often repeated that the work of urbanism concerned "the conception of space, of the perspective setting, and research into the best points of view from which to enjoy a monument or monuments according to their architectural characteristics--sometimes even their errors." (42) Piacentini rarely articulated his design ideas in terms of politics, and he never held a political post, in contrast to his counterpart in Nazi Germany, Albert Speer. Bottai's supervision and the project's relation to the Lateran Pact provide the political context in which the Via della Conciliazione can be read. The political importance to the Fascist state of a reconciliation with the Roman Catholic Church was demonstrated in the efforts the state then undertook to design on its side of the boundary the grandest entrance any government ever built to a neighboring state.