Rome (IT), Piazza di Sant'Andrea della Valle [extant] - 1937
et novus in nostra funditur urbe decor. /
Anno Domini MCMXXXVII, imperii primo.
The inscription (1937)
is still visible over the entrance of the former offices of the National
Institute of Insurances (Istituto Nazionale delle Assicurazioni, INA) at Piazza
di Sant’Andrea della Valle 6. Raffaello Santarelli authored the text.
The inscription is
carved in sans-serif capitals. It consists of an elegiac couplet in the
form of a versus aureus; its two lines are perfectly
justified, while the date is centralised below in characters of smaller
dimensions. The text concisely connects the foreign and the urbanistic policy
of the regime as two aspects of the same ideal of greatness: the first verse
refers to the conquest of Ethiopia and the second to the construction of Corso
Rinascimento.
The couplet’s
language echoes the elegiac poets: for example, bellica is in
the same metrical position as in, e.g., Prop. 2.15.43; 3.14.15 and Ov. Met.
4.754 (the words bellica virtus as closing feet are only found
in Prud. Psych. 208); for nostra … urbe in the same
metrical position see Prop. 2.32.48 and Ov. Fast. 2.616; 4.248; 6.624;
for decor at the end of the pentameter see Tib. 3.8.8;
Ov. Ars 3.282; Fast. 2.764.
The dating formula
is remarkable: the Fascist dating starts from the proclamation of Empire on 9
May 1936 rather than the start of the ‘Fascist Era’ on 28 October 1922, which
is much more common.
Piazza Sant’Andrea
della Valle is the result of the deep urbanistic transformation
that changed this area of the historical centre of Rome with the opening of
Corso Rinascimento between 1936 and 1938. This alteration responded to
Mussolini’s ambition to create space around the most relevant historical
buildings and archaeological ruins of the city and, at the same time, to
modernise Rome as the capital of the Fascist State. The new avenue and the
INA’s building in Piazza di Sant’Andrea della Valle were planned by
Arnaldo Foschini (1884–1968), one of the most important Roman architects during
the ventennio, who was very close to Marcello Piacentini (Foschini
1937). The over-all design of the inscription’s architectural context complies
with Fascist propaganda. The backwall of the loggia, for example, shows the
she-wolf feeding Romulus and Remus, together with the ubiquitous fasces (Arthurs
2014: 293–95).
Bibliography
Arthurs, Joshua.
2014. ‘«Voleva essere
Cesare, morì Vespasiano»: The Afterlives of Mussolini’s Rome’. Civiltà Romana 1: 283–302.
Bartels,
Klaus. 2012. Roms sprechende Steine. Inschriften aus
zwei Jahrtausenden. 4th
ed. Darmstadt/Mainz: Von Zabern, no.3.5.
Ferraironi, Francesco. 1937. Iscrizioni
ornamentali su edifici e monumenti di Roma con appendice sulle iscrizioni scomparse. Rome:
Industria Tipografica Romana, 523-4, no. 24.
Foschini, Arnaldo. 1937. ‘Il corso del
rinascimento’. Capitolium 12 (2): 73–89.
Lansford, Tyler.
2009. The Latin Inscriptions of Rome: A Walking Guide. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University
Press, no. 12.1.
Nastasi, Antonino. 2016. ‘Urbis ad
ornatum est‘ versificata’ domus. Le iscrizioni metriche in latino di Roma
Capitale’. Semicherchio 54 (1): 31–50.
———. 2019. Le iscrizioni in latino
di Roma Capitale (1870-2018). Rome: Edizioni Quasar, 140-1.
Antonino Nastasi
Inscription of Piazza di Sant'Andrea della Valle © A. Nastasi (Rome).