The Stadio dei Marmi ("Stadium of the Marbles") is one of four stadiums located in the colossal sports complex, the Foro Italico in Rome, Italy.Giorio, Maria Beatrice. “La Scultura Fascista Di Soggetto Sportivo Tra Bellezza e Propaganda Ideologica.” Italies, no. 23, 2019, pp. 68., The other stadiums are the Stadio Olimpico, the Stadio del tennis Romano, and the Stadio Olimpico del Nuoto.Dyal, Mark. "Football, Romanità, and The Search For Stasis." In Global Rome: Changing Faces of the Eternal City, edited by Marinaro Isabella Clough and Thomassen Bjørn, 175. Indiana University Press, 2014. Accessed March 4, 2021. http://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt16gzp33.15 . Stadio dei Marmi was designed in the 1920s as a complement to the annex Fascist Academy of Physical Education (now the seat of CONI, Italian Olympic Committee), to be used by its students for training.Baxa, Paul. 2010. Roads and Ruins: The Symbolic Landscape of Fascist Rome. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. BAXA, PAUL. "Demolitions: De-familiarizing the Roman Cityscape." In Roads and Ruins: The Symbolic Landscape of Fascist Rome, 73. University of Toronto Press, 2010. Accessed March 30, 2021. http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.3138/9781442697379.8 . The Stadio dei Marmi first opened in 1932, on the 10th anniversary of the March on Rome, near the Roman neighborhood Monte Mario, by the architect Enrico Del Debbio under the Fascist ruler Benito Mussolini. The Stadio dei Marmi is encircled by sixty, 4-meter tall classical statues of athletes made from Carrara marble. The stadium was built to celebrate Fascist accomplishments and the Gioventú del Littorio, the youth movement of the National Fascist Party of Italy. In its twenty-year reign, the Fascist regime used sports to introduce and instill new fascist "traditions", ideals, customs, and values, with the goal of forming citizen warriors.Falasca-Zamponi, Simonetta. “Fascist Spectacle: The Aesthetics of Power in Mussolini's Italy.” Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997, p. 90., Subsequently the Stadio dei Marmi has been used to host some of the field hockey preliminaries for the 1960 Summer Olympics. It also hosted the opening ceremony for the 2009 World Aquatics Championships.
History Early on, the Fascist movement saw the potential of using sports to promote its political and economic ideologies.iorio, Maria Beatrice. “La Scultura Fascista Di Soggetto Sportivo Tra Bellezza e Propaganda Ideologica.” Italies, no. 23, 2019, pp. 65., Immediately after the March on Rome, the Fascist regime invested in large-scale sports arenas, buildings, and institutions, such as the Stadio dei Marmi, which made sports accessible to all classes of society.Giorio, Maria Beatrice. “La Scultura Fascista Di Soggetto Sportivo Tra Bellezza e Propaganda Ideologica.” Italies, no. 23, 2019, pp. 66., Through sports, Fascist institutions emphasized and promoted Fascist values, which developed a national identity. The most prevalent and valued sports included combat sports such as boxing, Greco-Roman wrestling, and javelin, hammer, or stone throwing.Giorio, Maria Beatrice. “La Scultura Fascista Di Soggetto Sportivo Tra Bellezza e Propaganda Ideologica.” Italies, no. 23, 2019, pp. 67., Through physical education and sports, the Fascist government aimed to create professional militia and warriors, who would readily enter war. Mussolini began the construction of then named Foro Mussolini in 1928 as the central sports city and, in 1932, he opened the Instituto Superiore Fascista di Educazione (Fascist Institute for Physical Education) as the first male athletic institution.McLean, Eden K. "From Instruction to Education." In Mussolini's Children: Race and Elementary Education in Fascist Italy, 97. LINCOLN; LONDON: University of Nebraska Press, 2018. Accessed March 30, 2021. http://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctv19x4pm.9 . The importance that the Fascist regime placed on male physical education highlighted the characteristics of the ideal Fascist citizen, as well as the rigid gender binaries it instilled within Italian culture.McLean, Eden K. "From Instruction to Education." In Mussolini's Children: Race and Elementary Education in Fascist Italy, 98. LINCOLN; LONDON: University of Nebraska Press, 2018. Accessed March 30, 2021. http://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctv19x4pm.9 . After its unveiling, the Stadio dei Marmi became the leading physical education training center for the Gioventù Italiana Littorio, the youth movement of the National Fascist Party of Italy.Impiglia, Marco. “Arte Sportiva Fascista in Italia (1922-1943).” Academia.edu, www.academia.edu/34320668/ARTE_SPORTIVA_FASCISTA_IN_ITALIA_1922_1943. During the Fascist period, the Stadio and complex became the nation's center for athleticism and increasingly renowned until Italy joined the war in 1940. According to the historian Eden K. McLean, "the Mussolini Forum was designed to forge educators and political leaders united by an Italian-Fascist sensibility about the past, present, and future of the race."
Sculptures and architecture
The sixty towering Carrara marble athletic statues ringing the stadium were gifted by the Italian provinces and embodied the ancient cardinal Roman values: virilitas, fortitudo, disciplina, and gravitas (virility, fortitude, discipline, and dignity). They were designed and produced by twenty-four sculptors, who were chosen from a contest, and included artists like Nicola D'Antino, Aldo Buttini, Silvio Canevari, Carlo de Veroli, Publio Morbiducci, Eugenio Baroni, Arnolfo Bellini, Francesco Messina, and Romano Romanelli. The sculptors adhered to classical forms and elements, when they used Greek and Roman statues as models, such as Doryphoros of Polykleitos and Discobolus of Myron, which stood out against the plain white marble architecture of the stadium. The statues, monuments, and architecture produced under the Fascist regime were a fusion of ancient Roman and modern elements.Malone, Hannah. “Legacies of Fascism: Architecture, Heritage and Memory in Contemporary Italy.” Modern Italy, vol. 22, no. 4, 2017, pp. 461., According to the architect Enrico Del Debbio, the sports complex was designed as an "architectonic complex of severe monumentality ... the result is the emergence of a monumental group, which can be traced back to the greatest monuments of ancient Rome." The impressive statues of the Stadio dei Marmi resemble the ancient Roman Foro Imperiale.Higgins, Valerie. “Rome’s Uncomfortable Heritage: Dealing with History in the Aftermath of WWII.” Archaeologies9, no. 1 (2013): 30. . These statues, which incorporated classical elements, served to glorify Mussolini, in order to equate him to Augustus, the Roman emperor, and memorialize Fascism. "The obvious references to Rome, claimed Fascist propagandists, made the Foro Mussolini the living embodiment of the 'Mediterranean spirit and the Latin world at its best.'" Baxa, Paul. 2010. Roads and Ruins: The Symbolic Landscape of Fascist Rome. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. BAXA, PAUL. "Demolitions: De-familiarizing the Roman Cityscape." In Roads and Ruins: The Symbolic Landscape of Fascist Rome, 74. University of Toronto Press, 2010. Accessed March 30, 2021. http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.3138/9781442697379.8 .
Renato Ricci, chief of the Opera Nazionale Balilla (O.N.B), the Fascist youth organization, oversaw the design and sculpting process of the statues encircling the Stadio dei Marmi, aiming to ensure stylistic standardization and visual consistency between the sculptures carved by the various artists. The statues represented the most esteemed Fascist sports and were intended to evoke heroism by displaying monumental and imposing athletes in static, powerful, and valiant poses with a focus on gestures and proportions, rather than in arbitrary motion or action. Many of the statues are shown at rest, in vigorous stances. In Aroldo Bellini's statue of an Atleta che scaglia una pietra (athlete throwing a stone), for example, the athlete's pose lacks signs of any physical exertion.
The Stadio dei Marmi exemplifies the ancient body politic metaphor: the important interrelationship between the ideal male body and the ideal nation.Griffiths, Jennifer S. "Re-envisioning Italy’s ‘New Man’ in Bella Non Piangere! (1955)." In Cultures of Representation: Disability in World Cinema Contexts, edited by FRASER BENJAMIN, 188. LONDON; NEW YORK: Columbia University Press, 2016. Accessed March 5, 2021. Its large-scale athletic sculptures represent the idealized, strong, masculine body that was fundamental to Fascist ideology while strengthening the belief that through sports 'mens sana in corpore sano' (healthy mind in a healthy body) can be achieved.
The Olympic games and subsequent use
Prior to World War II, Italy's Fascist regime invested in large-scale construction projects such as the new neighborhood Esposizione Universale Roma (EUR), which included the Palazzo della Civiltà Italiana, and the Foro Mussolini (now known as the Foro Italico), which contained the Stadio dei Marmi. To this day, these monuments, buildings, stadiums, statues, and neighborhoods are incorporated into Italy's past, culture, and history, due to both the lack of funds in post-war Italy to rebuild major districts and buildings and the presence and persistence of Fascist ideology. After the Fascist regime was defeated in 1943, the Foro Italico was not destroyed and demolished because it was used by the Allied military as a refuge center.Malone, Hannah. “Legacies of Fascism: Architecture, Heritage and Memory in Contemporary Italy.” Modern Italy, vol. 22, no. 4, 2017, pp. 452., Following Mussolini's reign (1922 to 1943), the Stadio dei Marmi has been continuously used for various sporting events including the 1960 Summer Olympic Games, when it hosted the field hockey tournament.Higgins, Valerie. “Rome’s Uncomfortable Heritage: Dealing with History in the Aftermath of WWII.” Archaeologies9, no. 1 (2013): 32. .