Curating Bolzano’s Fascist Legacies: The Myth of Druso

Elisabetta Rattalino

After South Tyrol passed to Italy in 1919 and the establishment of the fascist regime in 1922, Bolzano-Bozen became the capital city of this border region and the object of particular interest by the national government. A New Italian Bolzano was built during the interwar period, and in less than two decades it became an emblem of fascist modern efficiency and one of the cities in Italy with the most extensive representation of its power. 
The research project Curating Bolzano’s Fascist Legacies: The Myth of Druso retraced one the most contentious narratives that the regime inscribed into the city’s history during the Ventennio: the memory of the Roman commander Nerone Claudio Druso (38 BCE–9 CE). In the early 1930s, infrastructures and landmarks were named after Druso. In addition, three monuments dedicated to the Roman conqueror were planned at different times in the same decade but were never completed. The project examined how these various forms of memorialisation came into being and unified the modern urban plan of the Italian Bolzano. In so doing, the research proved that these circumstances testify to the complex entanglement of urban planning, archaeology, and politics that shaped the public spaces of Bolzano.