Meggie Macdonald

This afternoon I attended a lecture by Stephen Dyson on archaeology and Italian national identity at York University, sponsored through the History, Humanities, and Classics Departments. I was almost entirely unfamiliar with Dyson’s work before today and was surprised that none of his books had ever presented themselves in my research before. There was an element of archaeological study (and historical inquiry) that I had not been aware of, and hope to have the chance in the near future to read some of his major publications.

This particular lecture dealt with the history of Classical archaeology in Rome from the fall of the western empire to the present day and how that reflected or was made to reflect current nationalistic ideology in Italy. Truly archaeology was a political weapon.

He began with the Ara Pacis in its new building, designed by California architect Richard Meyer, and opened in the recent past. Professor Dyson’s dislike for the building was not an unusual sentiment among the men and women present at the lecture, but he was careful to give reasons for his dislike, however personal they might be. He continued from there back to the Middle Ages and the early Renaissance and outline what the city looked like in these eras – basically a papal village surrounded by farmland and villa estates, which came close enough to the heart of the old city that they were built on several of the Seven Hills.

It was not until the unification of Italy in 1870 that excavations within the city itself really started to take off. Rome was now the centre of a bureaucratic state and new urban expansion began for the first time since the age of Empire. The city itself was overwhelmingly papal, but the newly formed Italian nation was decidedly secular. It was not until Mussolini that some kind of reconciliation would occur between the Vatican and the rest of the country.

Jumping ahead to Mussolini in the 1920s, I was incredibly surprised that much of the city that I recognized from pictures and topographical maps as the city of Rome was actually developed by the fascist leader in the 1920s and 1930s. Particularly, there are three major monuments of the city that bear the sometimes irreconcilable stamp of Italian fascism.

To accomodate a very visible urban parade route, a swath of road was cut out of the middle of the city between the Colosseum and the Piazza and Palatia Venetia, drawing crowds from the ancient world to the monument of Victor Emmanuel to hear Mussolini shout from his balcony. With the Roman Forum to the right and the Fora of the Caesars to the left, the route was unabashedly symbolic.

Secondly, the Mausoleum of Augustus, that had served as a bull-fighting ring and a lavish concert hall, was restored to its original brick and had a piazza built around it, again cut right out of residential sections of the city. This site has been left to itself since then, and much needs to be done to make it a safer part of the city as well as a historical attraction. Mussolini drew links between his identity and purpose within Italian nationalism and that of Augustus, the peace-maker and protector of law and order.

The third major monument is, of course, the Ara Pacis itself. Reassembled from pieces strewn across the urban landscape, the Ara Pacis has been housed in two different buildings in the twentieth century, with the Res Gestae available for perusal close by. Not surprisingly, at the time Mussolini was using archaeology for political and ideological ends, there was great support for what he was doing within Italy. Outcries about the nature of fascist archaeology of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries did not arise until the 1970s and 1980s when popular politics shifted to the left. The search for great buildings and inscriptions was considered buffoonery and the need for closer attention paid to the Roman proletariate and to daily life began to take hold in the city. There was also a desire to research artifacts OTHER than early imperial Roman pieces, and consideration for Late Antique and Medieval excavations also developed.

When the newest architect in Rome, Richard Meyer, constructed a new building to house the Ara Pacis, he wanted to restore Rome as a “centre of active culture” once again. Professor Dyson mentioned quite plainly that, besides Meyer’s design, there is remarkably little modern architecture in the city of Rome. There has continued to be strong debate about the aesthetic value of Meyer’s product, and there was no irony lost when the building opened shortly after the Iraq War got under way. Such “neo-imperialist architecture” is no longer appreciated in contemporary Italy.

I really enjoyed Professor Dyson’s lecture. It was informal but not uninformed, relaxed but
wonderfully detailed. His style was blunt, light-hearted, and sophisticated, something I always appreciate being in the presence of. Many thanks to JS Perry, Matthew Clark, Steve Mason (PACE project), and the head of the York Department of History for allowing us to learn from Professor Dyson!