These two inscriptions were carved over the entrance to the Central Museum of the Risorgimento (Via di San Pietro in Carcere), that is inside the complex of the Victor Emmanuel II National Monument, for the occasion of a visit of Mussolini to the building site in 1933 (Torelli Landini 1991: 214). They were deleted in March 1945 (Ferraironi 1953: 227), and the text of the main inscription was replaced by a simpler Italian text that reads: “Museo Centrale / del / Risorgimento”.

The inscriptions were authored by Augusto Milani (1862–after 1936), who was probably involved by the architect Armando Brasini (1879–1965). Milani and Brasini had been collaborating in the Villa Brasini Augusta since 1931, and Milani had composed the Latin inscriptions for that project, too.

The inscriptions were carved in Roman square capitals. The shorter of the two, carved in the top frame of the epigraphical panel, expressed the idea that Fascism was a source of salvation for Italy. Its phrasing seems to be inspired by the motto of d’Annunzio Ex vulnere salus (see Maiolini and Paradisi 2022: 84). The larger inscription, carved on the panel itself, opened with the name of Benito Mussolini in larger letters than the rest of the text and explained the aim of the building both as Museum of the Risorgimento and as a substructure to sustain the Capitoline’s slopes. The text is notable for some linguistic peculiarities, including, for example, the asyndeton between the gerundives (excipiendis adservandis … fulciendis) and the dating formula a receptis fascibus (literally ‘after the recovery of the fasces’) to indicate the Fascist era, which is an uncommon variation of the more usual phrasing a fascibus restitutis or renovatis.

The museum was inaugurated on 24 May 1935, the twentieth anniversary of Italy’s entry into the First World War. The museum’s façade is characterized by four buttresses that were designed to support fasces and imperial eagles on top to symbolize the strength of Fascism sustaining the Capitoline Hill, i.e., the essence of romanità (Pisani 1996: 63).

Brasini Fund in the National Central Archive of Rome preserves photographs of the building dating back to 1933 in which the inscriptions are still extant and clearly readable.

Bibliography

Ferraironi, Francesco. 1937. Iscrizioni ornamentali su edifici e monumenti di Roma con appendice sulle iscrizioni scomparse. Rome: Industria Tipografica Romana, no 65bis.

———. 1953. ‘Iscrizioni ornamentali di Roma scomparse’. Strenna dei Romanisti 14: 226–30.

Lamers, Han, and Bettina Reitz-Joosse. 2014. ‘Fascisme in de taal van Augustus: de Latijnse literatuur van het ventennio fascista’. Roma Aeterna 1 (2): 63–72.

Maiolini, Simone and Patrizia Paradisi. 2022. I motti di Gabriele d’Annunzio. Le fonti, la storia, i significati. Cinisello Balsamo: Silvana Editoriale. 

Nastasi, Antonino. 2019. Le iscrizioni in latino di Roma Capitale (1870-2018). Rome: Edizioni Quasar, 684–85.

Pisani, Mario. 1996. Architetture di Armando Brasini. Rome: Officina, 63–67.

Torelli Landini, Enrica. 1991. ‘Il completamento del Vittoriano sotto l’architetto Brasini (1914-1936)’. In La capitale a Roma, città e arredo urbano. 1870-1945, edited by Luisa Cardilli and Anna Cambedda Napolitano, 212–15. Rome: Carte Segrete.

Antonino Nastasi