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Rome (IT), Ospedale «San Camillo de Lellis» [extant] - 1929

PEOPLE
[Unknown]
THEMES/GENRES
City of Rome Benito Mussolini
Regnante Victorio Emanuele III, / Benitus Mussolini Italiæ dux / hoc valetudinarium grande a Littorio dictum / omnibus subsidiis recentibusque inventis munitum / erigi decrevit curavit perfecit, / supra collem spei plenum ubi purior aer / ubi quies ubi amœna spatia virescunt / ad salutem recuperandam tuendam. / A(nno) D(omini) MCMXXIX, ((vac.)) e(ra) f(ascista) a(nno) VII.
Under the reign of Victor Emmanuel III, Benito Mussolini, Italy’s Duce, ordered and took care that this large hospital, named after Littorio, furnished with all instruments and recent inventions, be erected, and he completed it over a hill full of hope, where the air is purer, where there is calm, where there are pleasant green spaces, to recover and protect one’s health. In the year 1929, the 7th year of the Fascist era.
 
 
BACKGROUND INFORMATION

The inscription (1929) can be read at the entrance of the central pavilion of "San Camillo de Lellis" hospital (Circonvallazione Gianicolense 87). Its author is unknown.

 

The inscription is carved in square Roman capitals which are retraced with red colouring (‘rubricated’) on a plaque that is affixed on the right wall of the entry hall.

 

The inscription celebrates the construction of the Lictorian Hospital (Ospedale del Littorio) in 1929, renamed “San Camillo de Lellis” after 1945. The text strongly underlines the role of Mussolini in the project (Mussolini ... decrevit curavit perfecit), even though the initiation of the project preceded Fascism and its urbanistic policy. Its erection already began in 1919, was halted in 1922, resumed in 1927 and only concluded ten years after its beginning, thanks to the intervention of Mussolini himself, who financed the works (Picardi 2009: 412–13). Then, the choice of the place where the hospital emerges (called in Italian “Monteverde”, i.d. “green mount”) is praised. The form Emanuel instead of Emmanuel (with only one m, as in Italian), the term Littorio kept in Italian instead of Lictorio, and the expression ubi purior aer (a commonplace in Latin inscriptions of Rome of the 19th and 20th centuries) are remarkable.

 

The hospital was built by the Holy Spirit’s Pious Institute and United Hospitals of Rome (Pio Istituto di Santo Spirito and Ospedali Riuniti di Roma) and its name was originally meant to be Victory’s Hospital (Ospedale della Vittoria), as it was started after the Italian victory in WWI. Its construction is remembered also by another inscription, in Italian, carved on a plaque affixed in the same entry hall. The hospital was inaugurated on 27 October 1929 by Mussolini himself (see Archivio Storico Istituto Luce, Sua Eccellenza il Capo del Governo inaugura il nuovo Ospedale del Littorio).

 

The inscriptions were relocated after a restauration in 2003, during which the painted decorations representing fasces were also brought back to light: this caused some controversy, directed against the then-president of the Regional Council of Latium Francesco Storace, exponent of the post-fascist right (Franchi 2003). 

 

Bibliography

Franchi, Massimo. 2003. ‘Il San Camillo torna «Ospedale del Littorio»’. L’Unità, 11 July: 8.

 

Nastasi, Antonino. 2019. Le iscrizioni in latino di Roma Capitale (1870-2018). Rome: Edizioni Quasar, 536–37.

 

Picardi, Nicola. 2009. ‘L’Ospedale di S. Camillo de Lellis di Roma’. Annali Italiani di Chirurgia, 80: 411–15.

 

Antonino Nastasi

Inscription at Ospedale 'San Camillo de Lellis' © A. Nastasi (Rome).