Libya, also called Tripolitania and Cyrenaica, was unique among the Italian colonies in the sense that it had a Roman past with a material presence in the form of the ancient empire’s ruins. Although Libya was seized in 1911-12 during the Italo-Turkish war, assertions of empire were far more forceful when the Fascists came to power in 1922. Here we primarily focus on Tripoli, Libya’s capital, which was also featured as the Italians’ exemplary city. A principal reason for the choice of Tripoli was the fact that it had once been under Roman rule, and the Fascists claimed that it retained a Roman essence. However, the signs of more than 350 years of Ottoman rule (1551-1911) and of Islamic rule since the seventh century, are hardly discreet within the urban fabric of the city. One needs only look at the skyline of Tripoli: rising above any other structures are pencil minarets, which are immediately recognizable features of Ottoman architecture. Elsewhere in Italian colonial Africa the Fascists willingly emphasized cultural distance and otherness, but in Libya they wished to claim common roots. Eventually they were forced to handle the inconveniently present non-Western otherness by pretending to embrace it benevolently. This false embrace, too, was reflected in architecture: along with importing modernizing and historicizing styles from the Italian mainland, quasi-Arabizing buildings, including a mosque, were built by the Fascists in the 1920s and ‘30s. Many of these buildings still remain today, but Italian control in Libya only lasted 31 years (1912-1943).
Ruderi di antichita’ romane. Tolmetta” (Antique Roman Ruins. Tolmetta) from the album of Gen. CanevaPresented here is a selection of Fascist affirmations of the ancient Roman Empire’s presence in Libya. Much like the use of Roman ruins for propaganda purposes on the mainland of Italy, extensive projects of archaeology, documentation and display were undertaken in order to link the former glories of ancient Rome to the so-called “Third Rome.” The journal Africa Italiana eloquently illustrates such efforts.
Produced by the Fascists’ Ministry of the Colonies from 1927-1941, Africa Italiana was dedicated to publishing archaeological finds in Italian Africa. The ancient Roman ruins in Libya were frequently featured. In Tripoli, the most impressive Roman ruin was the arch of Marcus Aurelius. Outside the city, though, are two outstanding sites of Roman antiquity: Sabratha and Leptis Magna, respectively located 45 and 75 miles away from the capital. Both are now UNESCO heritage sites, but at the time they were used by the Fascists as propagandizing links to the ancient imperial past. Most of the images of ancient Rome represented here are drawn from issues of this journal.
Depicted on this postcard is the Roman site of Leptis Magna, a veritable wonderland for Fascist propaganda. Images like these, illustrating the archaeological wealth of Leptis, played a crucial role in celebrating the Roman Empire’s presence in Libya and validating the claims of Fascist Italy on this African territory.
Sculpted head of Augustus Sculpted head, possibly of the mother of Drusus Caesar The arch of Tiberius The arch of Trajan Details from a mosaic featuring the mythical figure of OrpheusUnder the Fascists, demolitions were undertaken, especially in the city of Rome, in order to clear space and feature a given structure. A similar demolition project took place surrounding the arch of Marcus Aurelius in Tripoli. Work like this was showcased in publications like La rinascita della Tripolitania (The Rebirth of Tripolitania).
This volume was published by Mondadori in 1926 in honor of Giuseppe Volpi, who had been appointed the governor of the colony upon the Fascist takeover of power in 1922. The title implies a rebirth, or renaissance, of ancient Rome in Libya, brought about especially under the Fascists. Mussolini underscored this claim with an introductory note in the book; “Only from 1922 … has Tripolitania returned to being an Italian colony, not only in name, but in fact.” Regarding architecture and urban planning, which were heavily featured as proof of this rebirth, Volpi wrote the following: “In the course of twenty centuries, that which re-emerges is Roman: these are signs of civilization before being signs of art, seals of armed will and decisiveness rather than aesthetic contemplations.” The built environment in Libya was thus understood as a symbol of ancient Roman and modern Italian imperialism.
In the years preceding the Italian takeover, the part of Tripoli that the Fascists considered central bore a marginal function in city life. Yet, precisely because this area was away from the “disorderly” extant urban fabric, the Fascists were able to carve out and build up a space to their liking. This map, dating to 1926, is an illustration of this Italian reshaping. The via Vittorio Emmanuele III, renamed after the king of Italy, was expanded and deemed “the principal artery of the city.” It linked the historic castle and its piazza, which was specified as the new-found city center, to the Governor’s Palace. Many of the Fascists’ principal governmental and cultural buildings were constructed along this street. These newly formed segments of the city were those principally featured through various Italian media. The city’s actual character was almost entirely ignored in order to portray Tripoli as an Italianized capital of colonial Africa. The legend on the map draws attention to specific structures. The majority of the pictured buildings are referenced on this legend and are located beside their original numbers.
Tripoli was hardly shaped by anything approximating the Roman grid, which would have fit the Fascists’ favored rhetoric of romanità (Romanness). But they not only viewed the urban fabric before the Italian presence in Libya as poorly organized; they argued that the building work of the Italians before them was likewise poor. “In essence, there was nothing there to show our unwavering will to power,” one Fascist wrote, taking a page from Nietzschean thought. Pictured here is a selection among the outburst of buildings produced under the Fascist regime, mostly in the early to mid-1920s.
In the center is one exception: the castle dating to the seventh century, which was used by the Italians for governmental purposes.
The three diagrams functioned as proof of this newfound bold assertion of “civilization.” They represent public works, public funded buildings, and private architectural ventures by Italians, all to show the contrast of construction before and after 1922. “Benito Mussolini,” it was thus claimed, “molded the consciousness of imperial Italy.”
While the Fascists emphasized their buildings, and thus their version of Tripoli, they occasionally included images of the historic center amidst their presentations of the city. Notably, when the old city was represented through media such as postcards or journals, it was intentionally ill-defined: “An Arab road” is the caption on one postcard.
The Gurgi (Qurji) Mosque was another of the pre-Fascist and non-Western buildings that was occasionally presented, due to its problematically close proximity to the Arch of Marcus Aurelius.
The following photographs were taken by the photographic duo of Lehnert and Landrock, who were Austrian and Swiss-born artists, respectively. The two traversed North Africa looking for the most picturesque scenes: none of the Italian buildings in Tripoli were among the photos they chose to publish in 1924. Thanks to images such as these, beautiful aspects of Tripoli intentionally ignored by the Fascists can be seen and appreciated.
The Italians wished that the city of Tripoli and its inhabitants would conform to their idealized tale of re-enlivening an already inherent Roman past, but the true history was all too present. Despite genocide, forced exile, the removal of locally managed schools, and significant destruction of the built and natural environment (all well documented), a non-European history remained salient in Tripoli and Libya. To save face and rhetorically redress this presence, the Italians were forced to claim they embraced it. They began championing their “peaceful cohabitation” and they carried out acts of supposed benevolence, including the construction of buildings such as the Mosque of Sidi Hammuda. Mussolini even went so far as to declare himself the “Protector of Islam,” and he struck a pose in which he held the symbolic Sword of Islam during one visit to Tripoli; a gesture made concrete through the immediate erection of a statue.
This audio compilation seeks to provide both an aural timeline and a sense of Tripoli from 1912 through the 1940s. It may be actively followed or taken as a background accompaniment. The recorded sounds of the city were recently taken from the areas of Tripoli labeled “indigenous” or “Arab” during the Fascist era. Occasionally interrupting these sounds are chronologically inserted clips that highlight key events in the twentieth century development of Italian colonialism, including the 1912 Italo-Turkish War, the Fascist March on Rome in October 1922, and the proclamation of Empire on May 9, 1936. The series of “interruptions” ends with a clip from the United Newsreel broadcasting the allies’ seizure of Tripoli in 1943. This aural experience concludes with the continuing sounds of the city in order to suggest that in spite of all these outside forces and interventions, the city went on living and breathing on its own terms.