Anybody who has ever seen a news reel of Italy’s former fascist dictator Benito Mussolini will recognize the balcony of the Palazzo Venezia in Rome, where he used to hold his speeches, and where he declared war on France and the United Kingdom on July 10th, 1940.
After years of abandonment the balcony will soon be reopened to the public. In order to realize this aim it was necessary to thoroughly clean and restore it, since the museum had been using it for years as a storage place for technical instruments.
"Italians.....!"
The balcony, raised famous thanks to the myriad of movies made by the Istituto Luce, will be accessible through the Sala del Mappamondo (Hall of the Map of the World) in the museum of Palazzo Venezia, at the moment hosting the exhibition titled “Due imperi – l’Aquila e il Dragone” (Two Empires – The Eagle and the Dragon).
The Sovrintendenza del Polo Museale, through the sottosegretario ai Beni Culturali Francesco Maria Giro, made the following statement: “Let the damnatio memoriae (damned memories) of the balcony be forgotten, but not the historical misdeeds of the era. The balcony is one thing, the man is another.”
The question remains of course whether the balcony would have been important enough to merit a re-opening to the public if “the man” had not been holding his little Fascist speeches there.
Though the balcony is without doubt a historically significant spot, one would like to know where the sympathies lie of a man who, in 2010, declared that house-arrest was sufficient punishment for a young Roman who had murdered a Romanian nurse after an argument.
