A way to answer to New Yorker piece “Why are so many fascist monuments still standing in Italy?” published on October 5, 2017.

According to journalist Ruth Ben-Ghiat, the centrepiece of Roma EUR district, the Palazzo della Civiltà Italiana, is “a relic of abhorrent Fascist aggression. Yet, far from being shunned, it is celebrated in Italy as a modernist icon.” The writer thinks that Italians’ live in comfort amid Fascist symbols allowing “its Fascist monuments to survive unquestioned”.

Far from being a Fascist supporter, I think that changing a street name (like France did with all streets named after the Nazi collaborationist leader Marshall Pétain) it’s very different from dismantling monuments that defined the architecture of entire districts and inspired, with their style, new modern currents.

And yes, I do believe we Italians are still “a people of poets, artists, heroes, saints, thinkers, scientists, navigators, and transmigrants.”