California Italian Studies

During the twenty years of Fascist rule, the diffusion and pervasiveness all throughout Italy of the popularized image of the ancient roman symbol of fasces lictoriae well reflects the sense of a political crusade that had made from the very beginning a decisive appeal on the symbolic lure of a spatially based rhetoric.

the emergent regime would be well prepared in emotionally involving the Italians through a complete arsenal of symbols and rites that, much more than autonomous  elements, will come to form - in the course of twenty decisive years - a well displayed set of spatially based dramatizations, where the figurative aspect would have paved the way to a rising and robust popular consensus.

It was then in the name of a mythical idea of Romanity, that the Fascist leaders will lay the basis of a complex cultural project aimed at discarding the young and still imprecise construction of the Italian national ethos, through genuinely aesthetically based actions, perfectly functional to the systematic fascistization of the liberal institutions of Italy.

Among the most successful aspects of this ‘branding strategy’, should be considered the re-invention of the fasces lictoriae operated by Fascism and its diffusion throughout Italy, starting from 1923.