The Danteum is an unbuilt monument proposed by a scholar of

Dante Dante Alighieri (; most likely baptized Durante di Alighiero degli Alighieri; – September 14, 1321), widely known mononymously as Dante, was an Italian Italian poetry, poet, writer, and philosopher. His ''Divine Comedy'', originally called ...

, approved by the Benito Mussolini's Fascist government, designed by the modernist architect Giuseppe Terragni. However, in the end about all that remains now are some sketches on paper, scraps of an architectural model of the project and pieces of a project report (''Relazione''), written by Terragni. The structure was meant to be built in Rome on the Via dell'Impero. The intention was to celebrate the famous Italian poet

and extol the virtues of a strong fascist state that bases its foundations on the glory of imperial Rome. The residues of the project give us the unfulfilled dream of Terragni for a monument to Dante, in which the ''

Divine Comedy The ''Divine Comedy'' (, ) is an Italian narrative poetry, narrative poem by Dante Alighieri, begun and completed around 1321, shortly before the author's death. It is widely considered the pre-eminent work in Italian literature and one of ...

'' was projected in an architectural scheme.

History

In 1938 Rino Valdameri, then director of the

Brera Academy The Accademia di Belle Arti di Brera (), also known as the or Brera Academy, is a state-run tertiary public academy of fine arts in Milan, Italy. It shares its history, and its main building, with the Pinacoteca di Brera, Milan's main public mu ...

in Milan and president of the ''Società Dantesca Italiana'' (Italian Dante Society), had proposed to the

Mussolini Cabinet The Mussolini government was the longest-lasting government in the history of Italy. The Cabinet administered the country from 31 October 1922 to 25 July 1943, for a total of 7,572 days, or 20 years, 8 months and 25 days. On taking office, the ...

to build, in time for the Universal Exposition of Rome E.42, a ''Danteum'' to celebrate the great poet. The project was commissioned by Valdameri to Terragni and Pietro Lingeri and was supported by steel industrialist

milan Milan ( , , ; ) is a city in northern Italy, regional capital of Lombardy, the largest city in Italy by urban area and the List of cities in Italy, second-most-populous city proper in Italy after Rome. The city proper has a population of nea ...

ese the count Alessandro Poss who had made available the sum of two million '' lire'' as a personal contribution to the project execution.T.L. Schumacher, cit., p.21 Valdameri had also proposed a board of directors of twenty members to the nascent institution, made up of ministers, supporters and intellectuals, ''under the high supervision of the Head of government'' (Mussolini). The Valdameri himself had proposed some names for the board, including

Giovanni Gentile Giovanni Gentile ( , ; 30 May 1875 – 15 April 1944) was an Italian pedagogue, philosopher, and politician. He, alongside Benedetto Croce, was one of the major exponents of Italian idealism in Italian philosophy, and also devised his own sys ...

and

Ugo Ojetti Ugo Ojetti (15 July 1871 – 1 January 1946) was an Italian journalist-commentator and author. He wrote prolifically on a wide range of topics. His output also includes short stories and at least seven novels. Nevertheless, during his later ...

. November 10, 1938, at the

Palazzo Venezia The Palazzo Venezia (; "Venice Palace") or Palazzo Barbo, formerly Palazzo di San Marco ("Saint Mark's Palace"), is a large early Renaissance palace in central Rome, Italy, situated to the north of the Capitoline Hill. Today the property of the ...

, the Valdameri and the designers present the project and they obtained the consent of the ''Duce''. However, because of the political developments that led to the entrance into the

war War is an armed conflict between the armed forces of states, or between governmental forces and armed groups that are organized under a certain command structure and have the capacity to sustain military operations, or between such organi ...

, the subsequent hearings to discuss the project, still they had been continuously postponed. At the very end the dream of the realization of the building dedicated to Dante Alighieri and the ''Divine Comedy'', remained on paper.

The project

Regarding the project papers, there are a few copies of the boards of the panels with bas-reliefs, that had been photographed and entered in the drawings, and the project report of Giuseppe Terragni. Compositionally, the Danteum was conceived as an allegory of the ''

''. It consists of a sequence of monumental spaces that parallel the narrator's journey from the "dark wood" through hell, purgatory, and paradise. Rather than attempting to illustrate the narrative, however, Terragni focuses on the text's form and rhyme structure, translating them into the language of carefully proportioned spaces and unadorned surfaces typical of Italian Rationalism. Because of the complex of literary, artistic, and architectural meaning associated with the design, the theorist Aarati Kanekar regards it as exemplary of how a spatial structure can express a sophisticated poetic meaning without an explicit "vocabulary" of architectural symbols.

References

Bibliography

* Thomas L. Schumacher, ''The Danteum'', New York,

Princeton Architectural Press Princeton Architectural Press (now PA Press) is a division of Chronicle Books. Founded by Kevin Lippert in 1981 in Princeton, NJ, PA Press has been a leading publisher of books on architecture, design, and visual culture for over forty years, ...

, 1985 * Aarati Kanekar, "From Building to Poem and Back: The Danteum as a Study in the Projection of Meaning Across Symbolic Forms" in '' The Journal of Architecture'' volume 10 issue April 2, 2005 (RIBA & Routledge) {{DEFAULTSORT:Barca de Aqueronte Italian fascist architecture Cultural depictions of Dante Alighieri Unfinished buildings and structures Works based on the Divine Comedy