History of the Obelisk Dux

Paola Salvatori

This project is devoted to reconstructing the history of the DUX Obelisk in its now ninety years of existence. The erection of the obelisk, dedicated to the Duce and foreseen for the center of the Foro Mussolini, was an operation of an eminently political and symbolic nature. The project has pieced together the history of the marble monolith, which was isolated in the quarries of Carrara in the early months of 1928 and then arrived in Rome in a voyage that had the character of a mythopoetic journey. The history of the Obelisk in the urban and political landscape of the Italian capital in the decades after 1945 has not been adequately studied until now. This project teases out the reasons why the Obelisk did not become an object of Damnatio memoriae after the fall of fascism and furthermore identifies the salient aspects of a slow process of resemantization that the artifact experienced even in anti-fascist political circles. The research is part of the lively ongoing debate on the complex survival of fascist monuments in Italy, highlighting the specificities of the history of the DUX Obelisk and comparing its history to other Italian monuments strongly representative of the Ventennio.