Construction
Demolition of the spina of Borgo began with Mussolini's symbolic strike of the first building with a pickaxe on October 29, 1936, and continued for twelve months. Even at the time, the demolition proved controversial, with many Borgo residents displaced en masse to settlements ("borgate") outside of the city. Among the buildings dismantled, either totally or in part, and rebuilt in another position, were the Palazzo dei Convertendi, the house of Giacomo and Bartolomeo da Brescia, the Church of the Nunziatina, the palaces Rusticucci-Accoramboni, Cesi and degli Alicorni. Other buildings, like the palace of the Governatore del Borgo and the Churches of S. Giacomo a Scossacavalli and S. Angelo al Corridore, were destroyed. Facing into the cleared area are five other historical buildings, the Palazzo Giraud-Torlonia, the church of Santa Maria in Traspontina, the Palazzo dei Penitenzieri, Palazzo Serristori, and Palazzo Cesi (which was mutilated).
The construction of the road was only a small feature in the reconstruction of Rome ordered by Mussolini, which ranged from the restoration of the Castel Sant'Angelo, the clearance of the Mausoleum of Augustus, to the vastly more complicated site of the Via dell'Impero through Rome's ancient imperial remains. His plan was to transform Rome into a monument to Italian fascism.
In five years, Rome must appear marvellous to all the peoples of the world; vast, orderly, powerful, as it was in the time of the first empire of Augustus.
- Benito Mussolini
Construction of the road continued long after Mussolini's death and the abolition of Italian Fascism. The obelisks along the road were installed in time for the Jubilee of 1950.
Read more about this topic: Via Della Conciliazione
Famous quotes containing the word construction:
“No real “vital” character in fiction is altogether a conscious construction of the author. On the contrary, it may be a sort of parasitic growth upon the author’s personality, developing by internal necessity as much as by external addition.”
—T.S. (Thomas Stearns)
“Striving toward a goal puts a more pleasing construction on our advance toward death.”
—Mason Cooley (b. 1927)
“There’s no art
To find the mind’s construction in the face:
He was a gentleman on whom I built
An absolute trust.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)