Tra ossari di guerra e monumenti alla pace: politica e costruzione della memoria in Italia, 1938-1952

Three war memorials are the subject of this study: the first is the Redipuglia Ossuary built by Greppi and Castiglioni in 1938 to remember the WWI; the second is the Ara Pacis – a monument dedicated to the peace - designed by Piacentini in 1940, which should have been built in Rome, for E42 Universal Exhibition; the third is the monument – called Ara Pacis, too – built by Bacciocchi in 1951 in Medea. Redipuglia ossuary aimed to fascistize the war memory, to emphasize the myth of the Italian warrior. The Ara Pacis of Piacentini should have celebrated the victory of the Fascist Italy in the WWII. There was no contradiction between the “fascist peace” celebrated at E42 and the war exalted in Redipuglia. The Ara Pacis of Medea was built to remember the dead of WW2, in an ecumenical picture of the past. Unlike the “fascist peace” immortalized by Piacentini’s project, Medea wanted to be a monument against the war. But the pacification program was ambiguous and the ambiguity appeared through architecture.