By Joseph Kelly
July 2022, Rome
Rome’s Central State Archive is an imposing building based in the E.U.R. district of Rome. The area’s name stands for Esposizione Universale di Roma (Universal Exposition of Rome) and was built specially for the 1942 World Fair which never took place due to the outbreak of the Second World War. Exuding a sometimes disconcerting mix between classicism and futurism, Antiquity and modernity, its architecture was designed to express Rome’s universal mission of which Fascism was the modern-day embodiment. I am here conducting research for my DPhil thesis on international broadcasting in Fascist Italy. My walk to and from the archive has me strolling along the Viale Europa seeking shade from the forty-degree heat wherever possible. Now a business district with a ready availability of Poke bowls, sushi and Chinese food, the E.U.R.’s imperial character is still very much present. My directionless explorations take me down the Via Cristofo Colombo, Via dell’Oceano Atlantico and its counterpart Via dell’Oceano Pacifico. It seems that every corner of the globe has its own street: there are Via Australia, Via Nepal and Viale Iran to name but a few. The international feel to the area is further enforced by the names of foreign artists adorning the streets, such as Beethoven, Chopin and Stendhal. There is even a Viale dell’Esperanto to make me further question what it could mean to be ‘universal’. I decide to follow Cristopher Columbus to see where his trail of breadcrumbs might lead me. Eventually I arrive at the obelisk that has held my attention for most of the walk down this road. It stands tall in the middle of a grassy central reservation, four lanes of traffic carrying the sound of car horns either side. Unable to inspect the monument from close up, I enlist Google Maps to enlighten me. I see that I am pretty much slap bang in the middle of the E.U.R. district in the Piazza Guglielmo Marconi (formerly known as Piazza Imperiale) and the obelisk is, in fact, in honour of the Italian physicist who was instrumental in the birth of the radio. Classical in style, the monument evokes a radio tower which looks over the E.U.R. and, by extension, over the Via dell’Oceano Atlantico, the Via dell’Oceano Pacifico and all of the other vie named after countries, continents and cities which, between them, cover most of the globe. The symbolism could not be clearer – an obelisk resembling the masts of the regime’s Centro Radio Imperiale (Imperial Radio Centre) at Prato Smeraldo (just 9 km east of the monument) holding centre stage in the district designed to communicate Rome’s universal mission. There stood, enshrined in marble, the Fascist regime’s conception of universality: modernity and Antiquity fused together outside of time and meeting in Rome, the crossroads of civilisation, which would, once again, lead the way.
But, if it was thanks to Marconi’s Italic genius that Fascist Italy could speak to the world, the border-defying nature of his invention also meant that the world could speak to Italy. From its genesis, radio culture in Italy (just as elsewhere) had an undeniably international character. The advertisements for radio sets in the Radiocorriere (the Italian broadcaster’s official weekly magazine) demonstrate just how important and prevalent ‘distant listening’ was, with every company promising to bring the world into your living room. A weekly rubric in the Radiocorriere offered a page full of updates on radio-related news from all over the world (taking the lead from the BBC’s magazine World Radio) and foreign radio schedules took up a hefty chunk of each issue. My research has the dual intention of elucidating at once how the radio was used as a means of promoting Italy and Fascism abroad and, on the flipside of the coin, the tensions and negotiations at play between Fascism’s vision for Italian society and the internationalism and cosmopolitanism of radio culture. The radio of the period was the ultimate polyglot and, so far, the listener letters I have consulted communicate a strong sense that many listeners would happily tune into foreign-language broadcasts even when they lacked proficiency in that language. As I pursue my research, it is precisely this adventuring spirit which I have had to channel as I consult sources in a variety of languages including (but not limited to) Italian, English, French, Spanish, Catalan, German, and Portuguese and which involve many of the countries who lend their name to streets within the reach of Marconi’s obelisk-cum-transmitter. Whether through clandestine or official radio propaganda, the regime sought to bring Imperial Rome to life in the wireless world. There is, in this regard, a great irony that Marconi’s birthday (which Mussolini made a giorno di solennità civile) was 25 April, the day of the Liberation and the day in which the dream of a Fascist Roman Empire came definitively crashing down.