Two Italian-built airships flew the same route to the top of the world: the Norge to the first verified attainment of the North Pole in 1926, the Italia to triumph and disaster in 1928. Two mooring masts on that route still stand.
Forlì was the regime’s showcase city; Predappio, a planned model town. Five stops link them: Bazzani’s post office, Valle’s Casa del Balilla and cadet academy, and the post office and abandoned Casa del Fascio of Predappio Nuova. A driving route with map and GPX.
Five stops through interwar and post-war Padua: De Giorgio’s shuttered Cinema Altino, Gio Ponti’s Palazzo Liviano, the streamline corner of the Kofler works, the Sacra Famiglia church and the stone slogan of Rubano. A driving route with map and GPX links them all.
Three buildings tell the story of E42, the Rome universal exposition cancelled by the war: Minnucci’s Palazzo degli Uffici, the Colosseo Quadrato and Libera’s Palazzo dei Congressi. A walking route with map and GPX links them all.
Between Cattolica and the Cervia pinewood, nine seaside colonies — ship-shaped dormitories, company commissions and one 1912 hospice — trace the razionalismo balneare of the Romagna coast. A driving route with map and GPX links them all.
The least known of Italy’s territories was in northern China: the Tianjin concession, 458,000 square metres of Liberty villas on the Hai river, held from the Boxer Protocol of 1901 to 1947 — and restored by the Chinese city in 2005-2008 as the Italian Style Town. Final piece in the overseas territories series.
Never formally a colony, Albania holds the rare case of an Italian interwar plan still serving as a capital’s heart: the Tirana axis drawn by Brasini in 1925, built by Di Fausto at Skanderbeg Square and completed by Bosio in 1939-41 — adopted, not erased, by every regime since. Sixth in the overseas territories series.
The most Italian-built capital of Africa and the least legible today: Mogadishu’s 1928 cathedral now in ruins, the Duke of the Abruzzi’s SAIS company town on the Shebelle, the Genale plantations and their documented labour coercion. Fifth in the overseas territories series.
Five years of empire (1936-1941): master plans for Addis Ababa, Gondar and Jimma by Gherardo Bosio, 4,400 km of imperial roads, the origin of the Merkato — and the documented atrocities, from Yekatit 12 to Debre Libanos, without which none of it can be read. Fourth in the overseas territories series.
