These inscriptions can be read at the entrance and inside the campus (‘Città Universitaria’) of ‘Sapienza’ University (founded in 1303), that was inaugurated on 31st October 1935. The texts were drawn up by Vincenzo Ussani and were approved by Giuseppe Cardinali (1879–1955), ancient historian and headmaster of the Humanities faculty, and Vittorio Rossi, director of the School of Philology in the same faculty (Azzaro 2012: 366).

The inscriptions are sculpted in sans-serif capitals in relief over the entrance porch (1) (but nowadays this inscription is carved and not sculpted in relief), over the rectorate, on the entrance (2), on the left (3) and on the right wing (4) and on the rear façade (5), and over the façade of the Law faculty (6) and of Humanities faculty (7). Ussani wrote commemorative and institutional texts for the inscriptions at the entrances (1-2) but adapted quotations from the authors he studied and loved the most (Cicero, Horace, Lucan) for the other inscriptions (3-7).

The inscription over the main entrance (1) recalled the construction of the campus of the university, whose headquarter had once been in the Palazzo della Sapienza, in the historical centre of the city. The original text mentioning the Duce (Ussani 1942: 372) was censored in August 1944: the words Benito Mussolini rem Italicam moderante were erased; then the remaining text was modified at the beginning of 1947 (Billi 2021: 274–76), eliminating also the mention of the king and saving only its second part in the following way: Vetus Studium Urbis quod per tot hominum saecula magna gloria floruit / anno MDCCCCXXXV in hanc sedem Romana magnificentia dignam translatum est (“The ancient University of Rome, that flourished with great glory for many generations of men, was transferred in this place, worthy of Roman magnificence, in the year 1935”). On this occasion, the letters sculpted in relieved were removed to carve the new inscription, the date An(no) MCMXXXV sculpted under the inscription, on the porch’s balcony, was deleted too, and the stylized Savoyard cross with fasces sculpted before and after the inscription were substituted by carved seraphines, Sapienza’s logo.

The inscription over the rectorate entrance (2) only indicates the institution there hosted by the same words – Studium Urbis – used by pope Boniface VIII in 1303 to name Rome’s university. On its side there were two inscriptions indicating the year of construction according to the Christian era on the left – An(no) MCMXXXV – and the fascist era on the right – An(no) XIII a f(ascibus) r(estitutis/enovatis); these inscriptions were deleted after the Second World War, but their traces can be still discerned.

The other inscriptions on the rectorate focus on the importance of knowledge, culture, and education, in order to stress, indirectly, the role of the university in fascist Italy. On the wings of the rectorate, two quotations from Cicero can be read: on the left side (3) a citation from De Officiis (1.13), on the right side (4) a citation from De Oratore (3.57). On the rear façade (5) there are two lines from Horace (Carm. 4.4.33–34); the entire stanza (vv. 33–36) had already been carved as inscription inside the Liceo classico statale “Terenzio Mamiani” in 1924.

The remaining inscriptions refer to specific faculties and their disciplines: the one on the façade of the Law faculty (6) adapts a passage again from Cicero (Off. 3.28) about the role of justice; the one on the façade of the Humanities faculty (7) adapts two lines from Lucan (9.980–81) about the role of poets.

The masterplan of the Città Universitaria was designed by Marcello Piacentini (1881–1960), “the architect of the regime”, who involved in the project some of the most important and promising Italian architects of the 1930s but reserved the rectorate for himself. Piacentini gave the campus the form of a basilica and decided to put the inscriptions only along the two main axes: entrance–rectorate and Law faculty–Humanities faculty (Danesi Squarzina 1985: 61; Marcello and Gwynne 2015: 329–30). The preeminence of these two faculties, located on either side of the rectorate, corresponded to the explicit order of Mussolini given in a letter to the minister of National education Balbino Giuliano (1879–1958) of 18^th February 1932 (Nicoloso 2008: 196). As usual, Piacentini already indicated the presence of the inscriptions by alphabetical sequences in the sketches, because of their importance and substantial – and not merely subsidiary or decorative – role in the architectural project (Petrucci 1986: 138; Marcello and Gwynne 2015: 324).

Immediately after the Second World War, Giuseppe Caronia, university rector between 1944 and 1948 and politician of the Christian Democracy party, commissioned Piacentini to lead the operations of rewriting of the entrance’s inscription and of the elimination of all the other references to Fascism inside the campus.

Bibliography

Azzaro, Bartolomeo. 2012. La Città Universitaria della Sapienza di Roma e le sedi esterne 1907-1932. Vol. 1. Rome: Gangemi.

Billi, Eliana. 2021. ‘“Lavori urgenti” e restauri nella Città universitaria di Roma. Caronia, Toesca e il murale di Sironi’. In Storie nascoste. Studi per Paolo Simoncelli, edited by Stefano Dall’Aglio, Alessandro Guerra, and Michaela Valente, 273–87. Milan: Franco Angeli.

Danesi Squarzina, Silvia. 1985. ‘Architettura come servizio, come linguaggio, come propaganda’. In 1935-1985: La “Sapienza” nella città universitaria. Università degli studi di Roma «La Sapienza», Palazzo del rettorato, 28 giugno / 15 novembre 1985, 57–75. Rome: Multigrafica.

Ferraironi, Francesco. 1937. Iscrizioni ornamentali su edifici e monumenti di Roma con appendice sulle iscrizioni scomparse. Rome: Industria Tipografica Romana, nos 683–87.

Gamberale, Leopoldo. 2000. ‘Appendice. Iscrizioni in latino nella città universitaria (nuova edizione ampliata)’. In Guida al dipartimento di Filologia Greca e Latina. Anno accademico 2000-2001. [Rome: Università degli Studi di Roma “La Sapienza”, Facoltà di Lettere e Filosofia], 49–62.

Marcello, Flavia and Paul Gwynne. 2015. ‘Speaking from the Walls: Militarism, Education, and Romanità in Rome’s Città Universitaria (1932-35)’. Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 74 (3): 323–42.

Nastasi, Antonino. 2019. Le iscrizioni in latino di Roma Capitale (1870-2018). Rome: Edizioni Quasar, 482–87.

Nicoloso, Paolo. 2008. Mussolini architetto. Propaganda e paesaggio urbano nell’Italia fascista. Turin: Einaudi.

Petrucci, Armando. 1986. La scrittura. Ideologia e rappresentazione. Turin: Einaudi.

Ussani, Vincenzo. 1942. Scritti di filologia e umanità. Naples: Ricciardi.

Antonino Nastasi