MUSSOLINI (RE)WRITES HISTORY (Segesta/Calatafimi)
CONTENTS:
(1) MEMORIAL STONE STYLE
(2) ANCIENT NOBILITY
(3) FOLLOW THE FASCES
(4) THERE WAS A CITY HERE...
(1) MEMORIAL STONE STYLE.
The Italians have a name for this sort of ponderous effusion…
STILE DA LAPIDE = MEMORIAL STONE STYLE
That is to say: NEVER FAILING IN THE MEMORY OF ANCIENT NOBILITY / NEVER DOUBTING THE DESTINED FUTURE / UNDER THE AUSPICES OF BENITO MUSSOLINI / IN THE FOURTH YEAR OF THE FASCIST ERA
Stile da lapide can sound as potent as the Voice of God on first reading. Then you scratch your head and wonder what on earth they are going on about.
.webp)
The time was 1926 (Year Four of the Fascist Era). And the place is a barely two-lane bridge over a rivulet in northwestern Sicily—where you see rocky crags, vineyards and marshland all at once.
(2) ANCIENT NOBILITY
We are between Segesta and Calatafimi—barely four miles apart on the old road.
Segesta and Calatafimi.
What do these two localities have in common?
Nothing really, except geographic proximity.
And glorious —if unrelated— histories going back many centuries.
Segesta was the principal city of the Elimi, an ancient Sicilian people—dating at least to the Tenth Century B.C. A large theater and a breath-taking Doric Temple remain above ground, in a setting of astonishing natural beauty.
Calatafimi is a lively small town, founded by the Arabs—who called it Kalat-al-fimi (Castle of Eufemius), evidently alluding to a previous Roman or Byzantine fortification.
Little was heard of the place, however, until 15 May 1860 when Giuseppe Garibaldi and his thousand red-shirts engaged the forces of the Bourbon Kings—a crucial step on the way to the unification of Italy.
The Sicilian capital of Palermo fell just two weeks later, after a three-day siege (27-30 May 1860).
Calatafimi already had its share of older nationalist monuments, some of them decidedly odd. But it was left to Benito Mussolini to incorporate this town into his new narrative of fascist state-building.
Mussolini's interventions were bold and instantly recognizable. In the mid-to-late 1920s, the Duce was still in the full flush of his transient love affair with the Futurist avant garde— before embracing the romanizing monumentality of his later Imperial phase.
And so, astounding déco baubles started popping up in a place that was far nearer to North Africa than Milan or Turin (not to mention Paris, New York and Weimar).
(3) FOLLOW THE FASCES
But how do you get from Segesta to Calatafimi (or Calatafimi to Segesta)—literally and metaphorically—while hewing to Mussolini's tenuous narrative?
Just follow the fasces and let PRISCA NOBILTÀ (Ancient Nobility) fill in the gaps...
Past a crumbling terminal on the Pispisa bridge...
Then up a long steep path —with fasces left and right—to the great Temple of Segesta...
Then over to the Theater. On the next hill...
The theater dates from circa 300 BC, a century or so later than the Temple.
It hosted some 4,000 spectators—in a panoramic setting that could easily upstage any theatrical production.
The Theater, in fact, was first excavated in 1927— barely a year before the lavish directional sign was put in place.
All proud achievements of the Mussolini Regime. Linking the past to the present...as it was or might have been.
(4) THERE WAS A CITY HERE...
What about the Elimi—or Elymians—who built and occupied the entire city (temple, theater and all)?
We still don't know where they came from and when, before they annexed a large chunk of Western Sicily.
In later days, they got lost in the shuffle—absorbed into the prevailing narrative of Italian Manifest Destiny.
Then there is the peculiar reality of Segesta today.
Once there was a thriving city, extending over these barren hills.
Vestiges still emerge from the ground—if we look for them—which only archeologists usually do.
But Segesta, as the world now knows it, is only a temple and a theater.
They seem to spring from the earth on their very own.
Pristine elements of Ancient Nobility...ready to plug into any narrative we choose.
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