Mussolini built Rome's most famous selfie spot. Here's why the Vatican wishes he hadn't.
Everyone knows the view of Via della Conciliazione with St. Peter's Basilica framed behind it. The most famous postcard of Rome, the background used by correspondents all over the world. Few know that this street hasn't always been there, and in fact shouldn't have been from the premises.
Direction
Unpacks 80 years of Vatican spin with archival precision
Director
Raffaele Brunetti
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
The street's name literally means 'Road of Reconciliation' — a propaganda term for the 1929 Lateran Pact that made Catholicism Italy's state religion. Mussolini got photo ops; the Pope got sovereignty. Everyone else got bulldozed.
Paolo Portoghesi, interviewed here, led the 1999 reconstruction of the Ara Pacis museum — another Mussolini-era project he spent his career untangling. The man had a whole aesthetic vendetta.
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