Guerrini, La Padula, Romano

The Profile

Giovanni Guerrini, Ernesto La Padula and Mario Romano were the architects of the Palazzo della Civiltà Italiana (the 'Colosseo Quadrato') in the EUR district of Rome.

The Palazzo della Civiltà Italiana (Colosseo Quadrato) in EUR is a landmark of Fascist-era architecture; construction dates commonly cited are in the late 1930s through the early 1940s. The building is notable for its repetitive arches, monumental prism form and association with Littorio stylistic directives.

A critical architectural reading of the Palazzo della Civiltà Italiana that links its monumental rhetoric to Fascist propaganda and finds its formal repetition emotionally empty. The review contrasts Littorio prescriptions with earlier Rationalist experiments.