This article compares two recent memory controversies in the United States and Italy – the removal of the Robert E. Lee statue in Charlottesville, Virginia and the Legge Fiano, the abortive ban on Fascist propaganda proposed by Emanuele Fiano and the Partito Democratico – in order to identify a common set of challenges now confronting liberal democracies on both sides of the Atlantic. While acknowledging the longue durée of memory politics surrounding the Confederacy and Fascism respectively, the article argues that disputes over their monuments and symbols must also be situated in terms of contemporary debates over national identity, race, populism, citizenship and speech.

This article focuses on the history and reception of the ex-Casa del Fascio in Predappio, from the end of the Second World War to the current plans for its restoration and reuse as a study centre and a museum of Fascism. Taking into account changes in legislative, political, and cultural contexts, the article proposes an approach to the legacy of Fascist architecture in Italy based not just on its ideological charge, but also on cultural and political shifts, changes in legislation, and the complex relationships between the bodies in charge of the preservation and management of public heritage. The recent plans put forward by the town administration to restore the building and turn it into a museum of Fascism have reopened the debate on the heritage of Fascism and the ex-Casa del Fascio has now become one of the most conspicuous emblems of Italy’s uneasy relationship with its Fascist past and of the problems of dealing with the material legacy of the Fascist regime.

In recent decades, architectural historians, preservationists, and the general public have shown a growing interest in Fascist-era buildings. Many of the most high-profile examples are those associated with the monumental excesses of the regime. However, new attention has also been focused on more modest buildings that are significant examples of interwar Italian modernism or Rationalism, including former party headquarters (case del fascio). Taking as primary examples works by Giuseppe Terragni, the architect most often associated with Rationalism, as well by Luigi Carlo Danieri and Luigi Vietti, whose interwar contributions to Italian modernism have been less often the focus of scholarly attention, this article traces the postwar histories of case del fascio with the aim of better understanding the ways in which architecture and politics intersect and some of the consequences of this for the contemporary Italian architectural landscape.

The large triangular building sandwiched betweenthe Castel Sant’Angelo and the Palazzo di Giustizia in Rome is the Casa Madre dei Mutilati, designed by Marcello Piacentini and built in two phases between 1926 and 1928, and from 1936 to 1939. Its exterior blends in well with its surroundings, suggesting it no longer conjures memories of the Fascist regime, but inside, its decorative plan reveals a series of artworks with polyvalent meanings that were later depoliticised, ‘censored’ and rehabilitated. They throw light on the ‘difficult heritage’ of the Fascist era in a continuum of meaning and memory connected to myths of war and sacrifice.

The military ossuaries (sacrari militari) that were built to house the remains of fallen soldiers of the First World War offer a striking example of how Italy has dealt with the legacy of Fascism. Located along former frontlines in north-eastern Italy, the ossuaries occupy an ambiguous position in Italian heritage as both national monuments and the remnants of a difficult past. Whereas originally they functioned as instruments of Fascist propaganda, they have been reinvented as monuments of Republican Italy. Thus, while challenging the notion of Fascist remains as ‘difficult heritage’, this article suggests that the ossuaries might be seen as palimpsests that have been overlaid with different and ever-changing memories. To this end, the article traces the afterlives of ossuaries from 1945 to the present in search of evidence of evolving attitudes towards the Fascist period. It also examines a recent resurgence of public interest in the ossuaries in conjunction with the centenary of the First World War.

This article examines the meaning of monuments in Italy and the United States (Chicago) dedicated to the Fascist gerarch Italo Balbo. A hugely popular personality in Fascist Italy, Balbo cemented his reputation in the early 1930s as the commander of mass-formation transatlantic flights to Brazil (1930-1931) and the United States (1933). Chicago’s monuments – a road (Balbo Drive) and a column (the ‘Balbo monument’) – are a legacy of Balbo’s triumphant arrival in the city in 1933. Italy’s monuments date from the postwar and contemporary periods. The article examines why Balbo Drive and the Balbo monument in Chicago have become more controversial over time, especially in recent decades, and why, despite calls for their removal, both remain. It contrasts the Chicago case with the situation in Italy where, since the 1990s, Balbo has been commemorated in numerous ways.