Somewhere over Rome

Recently, on my way to catch a bus into the centre of Rome, I noticed that a building near my house in the Garbatella neighbourhood bears the date E. F. VII, which refers to the seventh year of the Era of Fascism. As the bus turned onto the Lungotevere, I noted that Anno IV is marked on the stone embankment of the Tiber River. Under Fascist rule, time in Italy was renumbered to begin at October 1922, the date of the March on Rome, and many of these markers still exist as leftovers from that past.

I walked up Via Calandrelli, which leads to a park where I used to bring my son when he was little. It was he who pointed out that the street’s manhole covers show a bundle of sticks and an axe, the symbol taken by Mussolini from ancient Rome, where it signified strength. Since Fascism was in power for such a long time, more than twenty years, the city became filled with symbols like this. Whole neighbourhoods of narrow medieval streets and houses were razed and remade with...