Rome will not have museum on fascism. Mayor Raggi: "we are an anti-fascist city."

Going against her own party is Rome Mayor Virginia Raggi, who is against the idea of setting up a museum dedicated to fascism in the capital. The proposal had been put forward in a motion by 5-Star Movement Councilwoman Gemma Guerrini, in which she asked the mayor and the council to commit to the creation of a “Museum on Fascism,” with an adjoining study center, also capable of using “new technologies, open to a wide audience,” and which could consider “for such a museum one of Rome’s industrial archaeological sites.” For Guerrini and the other Pentastellati councilors who signed the motion, it would have been an operation similar to that of other European countries (such as the Topography of Terror in Berlin, the Nuremberg Documentation Center and the Anna Frank Museum in Amsterdam) where “an important cultural operation of critical analysis of the period of Nazism and fascism and the Cold War has been carried out, which have led to the creation of centers named after those experiences visited by thousands of people from all over Europe.”

The ANPI had already protested the idea of a museum on fascism. “We are alarmed,” the Rome section of the National Association of Italian Partisans wrote in a joint note with Aned Roma-National Association of Former Deportees to Nazi Camps, Anppia Roma-National Association of Persecuted Italian Political Anti-Fascists, the Fiap Roma e Lazio-Italian Federation of Partisan Associations, the Irsifar-Roman Institute for the History of Italy from Fascism to the Resistance, the Anei Roma-National Association of Former Internees in Nazi Camps, the Anpc Roma e Lazio-National Association of Christian Partisans, and the Gianni Bosio Circle. “There are no explicit plans for a museum on the crimes of fascism, following the example of what was carried out in Germany, but simply on fascism,” the text reads. “We imagine how many look forward to being able to show that fascism also did good things. The motion also makes reference to both Nazism and the Cold War and goes so far as to mention the museum in Hungary that obscenely lumps Nazis and Communists together in Budapest. All this is envisaged for a museum that will be built and run by the next Capitoline Council, about whose anti-fascist values nothing can be foreseen today, when in our country we are no longer ashamed to cite Mussolini and where fascism is even expressed by forming parties that explicitly refer to it and which are slow to be disbanded. We therefore express our strongest opposition to the approval of such a motion and call on the proponents to withdraw it.”

Criticism had also come from the PD: “We will not allow Rome’s gold medal for the Resistance to host a museum of fascism,” Rome’s PD secretary Andrea Casu had said, along with the PD group leader in the city council, Giulio Pelonzi. They were echoed by Dem Senator Bruno Astorre: “It is hard to believe but with the Raggi junta it happens that one can imagine advancing the project of his majority in the Capitol for a museum of Fascism in Rome. It would be a slap in the face, an insult to the city that won a gold medal for the Resistance and to the many victims of the fascist regime.”

The definitive no came from Virginia Raggi, who merely said that “Rome is an anti-fascist city.” And on that basis, it will not have a museum on fascism.

Pictured: Rome, Palazzo Braschi during the 1934 election campaign.

Rome will not have museum on fascism. Mayor Raggi: "we are an anti-fascist city."

Warning: the translation into English of the original Italian article was created using automatic tools. We undertake to review all articles, but we do not guarantee the total absence of inaccuracies in the translation due to the program. You can find the original by clicking on the ITA button. If you find any mistake,please contact us.