How much of the Eternal City did Il Duce plow under?
I know he’s responsible for the grand boulevard approaching the Vatican, the Via della Conciliazione, which most architects and city planners say screwed up the perspective for St. Peter’s and the Square. Did he create any other Brutalist masterpieces before he ended up dangling from his tootsies?
I’d love to lay the Vittorio Emanuele II memorial at his door, but he was still in short pants when that Hellenic-Roman monstrosity was built.
The Eternal City is probably eternally grateful that Mussolini turned much of his zeal for building toward the creation of EUR.
He did build the Via dei Fori Imperiali, which knocked down a sizable chunk of the imperial fora. Today, it looks as though the road were built along side the fora site, when it fact it was built over it when necessary.
Mussolini also had the building that housed the US Embassy demolished (it was across the street from the Grand Hotel), but I’ve never seen a picture of the original building so I have no idea if this was any great loss to architecture.