2
Norberto Bobbio, taking the argument a step further, has dismissed the very
idea of a genuine Fascist culture, and viewed the cultural products offered by the
dictatorship as mere appendages to its instruments of control and oppression.
5
According to Bobbio, because Fascism did not produce any high culture, it did not
have any cultural appeal at all, confining itself instead to the vulgar realms of
rhetoric and propaganda.
6
In his work on the iconography of the Fascist press,
Mario Isnenghi analysed the role of Fascist imagery in the construction of Fascist
identity, yet, neglected the field of high culture entirely,
7
while Edward
Tannenbaum also reduced regime-sponsored culture to an element of its
propaganda campaign in his The Fascist Experience (1972).
8
Historian Alberto Asor Rosa, however, in the 4th volume of Storia d’Italia,
did engage systematically with the intellectual culture produced during the Fascist
Ventennio. He located the origins of Fascism in the ‘anti-Giolittian’ mood prevalent
amongst Italian intellectuals before Mussolini came to power and, more generally,
in widespread feelings of disillusionment with capitalist society, liberalism,
socialism and democracy.
9
Liberalism had failed to establish a liaison with
intellectuals, while at the same time proving unable to compete with the ability of
the emerging Fascist movement to appeal to the masses. Yet, when it comes to
defining the relationship of Fascism with the intellectuals, and the question of
forging consent through culture, Asor Rosa seems confined to a kind of Crocean
idealism where Fascist ideology was a purely negative phenomenon, representing a
5
Norberto Bobbio, ‘La cultura e il fascismo’, in Guido Quazza (ed.), Fascismo e Società Italiana,
Torino, Einaudi, 1973, pp. 224-26, 235, 243.
6
Ibidem, ‘Profilo ideologico del Novecento Italiano’, in Cecchi E., Sapegno N., (eds.), Storia della
Letteratura Italiana. Il Novecento, Milano, Garzanti, 1987, pp. 172-3. ‘For the Croceans, ‘true’
culture created between 1922 and 1945 necessarily transcended political realities and responded to
timeless aesthetic categories. Remaining ‘uncontaminated’, Italian culture waited in a holding
pattern for the fall of the dictatorship in order to resume its authentic trajectory. This interpretation
had the convenient corollary that ‘true culture’, by definition, was estranged from the rhetorical
propaganda that made up official culture; therefore, the cultural forms produced in the service of the
regime or under its umbrella a priori could not be considered ‘art’, nor could its practitioners be
called ‘artists’’ (Stone, The Patron State, p. 11).
7
Mario Isnenghi, Intellettuali Militanti e Intellettuali Funzionari. Appunti sulla Cultura Fascista,
Torino, Einaudi, 1979.
8
Edward Tannenbaum, The Fascist Experience. Italian Society and Culture 1922-1945, New York,
Basic Books, 1972.
9
Alberto Asor Rosa, ‘La Cultura’, in Romano R., Vivanti C., (eds.), Storia d’Italia. Dall’Unità ad
oggi, 4° vol., 2° tomo, Torino, Einaudi, 1975, pp. 1358-65.
3
powerful combination of anti-Marxist, anti-Enlightenment, and anti-Liberal
tendencies. For Asor Rosa, since Fascism emerged as a negative intellectual force
pitting itself against the very essence of modern thought, it was by its very nature,
anti-culture.
10
Fascism, when it has been deemed worthy of being considered as a
cultural movement at all, has tended to be dismissed as archaic and backward,
11
while the Fascist regime has been regarded as the more ‘serious’ side of the
dictatorship as it became institutionalised, and deployed its ideological and
technical resources to gain consent among the intellectuals.
12
Logically, therefore, Fascist culture could not and did not equate to national
culture since, as a flawed totalitarianism, Fascism could never hope to achieve
‘total hegemony’ over Italians.
13
For Asor Rosa, this failure was symbolised by
Croce’s intellectual refusal to accept Fascism. Indeed, Asor Rosa appeared to
regard Croce as something of a ray of light in the dark ages of the Ventennio who
was perhaps the only Italian philosopher who bore comparison with Antonio
Gramsci.
14
Within this rather limited conceptual framework, it was natural for Asor
Rosa to deny the existence of a genuine Fascist culture. Fascism, he observed, did
not produce any literature of value, with any literary developments that did occur
during the Ventennio doing so independently of the regime. In this way, the
existence of ‘autonomous literary societies’ could become evidence for the case
against the Fascist regime.
15
A similarly dismissive attitude is in evidence when
Asor Rosa came to consider the avant-garde movements, or the literary school
Novecento letterario.
16
Caught between apparently contradictory perceptions of
10
Ibid, p. 1365.
11
Ibid, p. 1376.
12
Ibid, p. 1381. For Asor Rosa, ‘Il Fascismo movimento non e’ altro, a guardar bene, che la
‘cultura’ del Fascismo, cioe’ il coacervo delle ambizioni insoddisfatte e delle illusioni sbagliate,
questo impasto policefalo di vocianesimo, prezzolinismo, papinismo, sofficismo, gentilianesimo,
futurismo, sorelismo, dannunzianesimo, ruralismo reazionario, controriforma, -la fogna insomma in
cui va a sboccare tutto l’aspetto arcaico, arretrato, provinciale e schizofrenico della cultura italiana
postunitaria’ (Ibid, p. 1386).
13
Ibid, p. 1471.
14
Ibid, p. 1537.
15
Ibid, p. 1514. The original text read: ‘Una società delle lettere è una smagliatura del sistema
totalitario, una testimonianza della sua incompiutezza, o ne rappresenta la conseguenza logica, il
prodotto ovvio e naturale sul piano dell’evasione? (...) In questo senso, appare abbastanza chiaro che
un concetto di letteratura come valore non rientra negli schemi dell’ideologia del regime o è quanto
meno, una posizione eretica’ (Ibid).
16
Ibid, pp. 1501, 1507.
4
Fascism as essentially non ideological and as a repressive and coercive regime,
Asor Rosa failed to appreciate or escape the limitations of his own normative
position.
17
When he engaged with the role of corporatism as an embodiment of the
Fascist ‘Third Way’, he focused on the rigidity of corporations as mediators, the
rhetoric of cultural production, and the ability of the dictatorship to deploy
powerful means of coercion.
18
Yet, in his conclusions, Asor Rosa risked
contradicting this general argument by claiming that the ‘fascistization of culture’
often did not entail ideological inculcation, ‘just the institutional management of
different sections of cultural producers’.
19
In all these accounts, it seems that the historiographical debate has been
limited to a bipolar system pitting ‘Fascist’ versus ‘anti-Fascist’. According to
Marla Stone, ‘the post-World War II political and moral settlement stood on a set of
dichotomies: fascist and antifascist; totalitarian and democratic, and, in the sphere
of the arts, reactionary representational aesthetics and modernist democratic
abstraction’.
20
In the field of culture, however, such rigid binary distinctions and
discourses have proved of limited use. Lino Pertile, for instance, has argued that in
the early years of the Fascist regime the government had no cultural policy, and that
high culture was given a good deal of freedom to continue through the traditional
channels of the pre-Fascist liberal elite,
21
while Geoffrey Nowell-Smith has made a
convincing case that the Italian Fascist government, rather like the British
government of the same period, behaved towards the cinema with a certain amount
of indifference.
22
17
Ibid, p. 1401.
18
Ibid, p. 1489. ‘Essa [corporazione] presupponeva un’articolazione estremamente rigida del lavoro
intellettuale, una fissità di temi ideologici e culturali ruotanti in una gamma estremamente limitata.
(...) Dietro il velo ideologico delle corporazioni, riemergono semplicemente le strutture dello stato
totalitario, con le sue capacità di pressione e di persuasione articolate e potenti, ben intrecciate con
quelle della repressione e della coercizione’ (Ibid, pp. 1487-8).
19
Ibid, p. 1483.
20
Stone, The Patron State, p. 10.
21
Lino Pertile, ‘Fascism and Literature’, in Forgacs (ed.), Rethinking Italian Fascism, p. 162.
22
Geoffrey Nowell-Smith, ‘The Italian Cinema under Fascism’, in Forgacs (ed.), Rethinking Italian
Fascism, p. 143.
5
In the case of Venice, even though the city had its Fascist administration,
the local ruling class was clearly able, in the field of cultural tourism, to retain its
traditional aims of using cultural showcase events to promote economic resurgence
rather than the indoctrination of the masses. Here, the argument that local interests
sought to exploit the central Fascist authorities through an appeal to their
ideological sensibilities is not to be rapidly dismissed. While Venice accepted
Fascism provided she could carry on with her own business, Fascism accepted that
‘fascistisation’ in Venice had to come to terms with the needs of international
tourism and culture, imbued with commercial possibilities instead of Fascist
ideology. The term ‘accommodation’ rather than ‘coercion’ or ‘consent’ can better
define the complex webs that were established between the Fascist regime and the
Venetian populace.
In the past, little attention was given to the attraction Fascism offered to
millions of people, and to the subtle strategies of persuasion employed by the
regime to win over the masses to their cause. Some scholars still seem reluctant to
relate artistic manifestations such as painting, sculpture or architecture with the
historical analysis of Fascism, confining them to the realm of history of art.
Recently, however, cultural historians have become increasingly wary of
interpretations which focus on elements of high culture presented as virtually
untouched and untainted by Fascism.
23
Instead, in the last few years, serious
research has centred on the importance of culture and aesthetics in the construction
and consolidation of the twentieth century’s political ideologies.
24
Scholarship of
this kind has demonstrated the benefit of approaching Fascism from this new
perspective.
For instance, the so-called ‘culturalist school’ pioneered by Roger Griffin,
Alexander De Grand, James Gregor, George Mosse and Roger Eatwell, focuses on
the primacy of culture and ideology as being at the very heart of Fascist thought.
25
23
See for instance, Bobbio, ‘La cultura e il Fascismo’, in Quazza, Fascismo e Società Italiana, p.
229.
24
See for instance, Richard J. Golsan (ed.), Fascism, Aesthetics and Culture, Hanover/NH,
University Press of New England, 1992.
25
See for instance, Roger Griffin, ‘The primacy of culture: the current growth (or manufacture) of
consensus within Fascist studies’, Journal of Contemporary History, 37, 1, January 2002, p. 36.
6
In contrast to earlier interpretations in which Fascism was denied any viable
cultural value of its own, Gregor considers the phenomenon to have viewed itself as
part of a general ‘cultural rebirth’
26
committed to the regeneration of the nation
involving an ideological preparation of the ground by elites keen to mobilise the
power of language, culture and rhetoric in order to redefine the nation and
reconstitute the people in keeping with the predominant myth of ‘rebirth’.
27
Therefore, it might be argued that any valuable reassessment of Fascism in
acknowledging the recent historiographical developments must take into account
the fact that the Fascist phenomenon did at least seek to forge a political culture of
its own. Only in this way is it possible to produce a serious contribution to the
existing scholarship.
Building on Antonio Gramsci’s distinction between ‘force’ and ‘consent’,
Axel Körner, in his work on Bologna after the Unification, points to the paramount
importance of cultural activities in the process of formation of social realities. The
symbolic language of visual arts, music, theatre, architecture and their social
meaning can be used, he argues, to build up and consolidate political consensus.
Social historians, Körner claims, should recognize the very real role of cultural
production in the formation of groups and constituencies favourable to the ruling
class.
28
The usage of culture made by Fascism has been explored by Emilio Gentile,
too, who has centred on the importance of ‘theatricality’ in Fascist politics, and the
collective function assigned to symbols, myths, festivals, parades and ceremonies in
winning mass popularity for the regime.
29
According to Gentile, this
26
As cited in Griffin, ‘The primacy of culture’, p. 29: James Gregor, Phoenix: Fascism in our Time,
New Brunswick, NJ, Transaction Pub., 1999, p. 189.
27
Ibid.
28
Axel Körner, ‘The construction of bourgeois identity in national and urban contexts: Bologna after
the Unification’, in Strath B., Witoszek N., (eds.), The postmodern challenge: perspective East and
West, Postmodern Studies, 27, 1999, pp. 171-5.
29
See for instance, Emilio Gentile, Il Culto del Littorio: la Sacralizzazione della Politica nell’Italia
Fascista, Bari, Laterza, 1993; Ibidem, Le Religioni della Politica. Fra Democrazie e Totalitarismi,
Bari, Laterza, 2001.
7
‘theatricalisation’ of politics was fundamental in shaping the spirit of the masses
and securing their consent.
30
He argues that
‘All ‘sacred’ and ‘secular’ Fascist mass spectacles were instruments to manipulate public
opinion, to enforce obedience and to obtain consent by appealing to people’s emotions,
fantasies and desires. In the period of greatest economic crisis, the mass spectacles
compensated for the privations suffered by the lower classes of society’.
31
To a large degree, Fascism’s ‘educational’ effort was dedicated to the
propagation of a ‘campaign of faith’, drawing upon those symbols and rituals which
could consolidate popular belief in Fascist myths, and strengthen the commitment
of the masses to the regime.
32
‘Fascism never lost sight of this goal: the total
politicisation of individuals and the masses’,
33
and the regime, according to Gentile,
made extensive use of this ‘aesthetic dimension of politics to implant its ideology
into the heart of the Italian populace and to transform it into a community of
believers’.
34
He is adamant that ‘Fascism was the first totalitarian, nationalist movement
of this century which used the power of a modern state in an attempt to bring up
millions of men and women in the cult of the nation and the state as being supreme
and absolute values’,
35
and has consistently argued that Fascism penetrated deeply
into the moral and cultural fabric of Italian society.
36
30
Ibidem, ‘Theatre of politics in Fascist Italy’, in Günther Berghaus (ed.), Fascism and Theatre.
Comparative Studies on the Aesthetics and Politics of Performance in Europe, 1925-1945,
Providence, RI, Berghahn Books, 1996, pp. 79-80.
31
Ibid, pp. 90-1.
32
Ibidem, ‘Fascism as political religion’, Journal of Contemporary History, 25, 2-3, May-June
1990, p. 241.
33
Ibidem, ‘Fascism in Italian historiography: in search of an individual historical identity’, Journal
of Contemporary History, 21, 2, April 1986, p. 202.
34
Ibidem, ‘Theatre of politics in Fascist Italy’, in Berghaus (ed.), Fascism and Theatre, pp. 90-1.
35
Ibidem, ‘Fascism as political religion’, p. 248.
36
This view has been challenged by the work of Richard Bosworth, who has argued that ‘the
evidence of an actual Fascist construction of new men and women, of a successful Fascist
nationalization of the masses, is at best partial’ (Richard Bosworth, ‘The Touring Club Italiano and
the nationalization of the Italian bourgeoisie’, European History Quarterly, vol. 27, n. 3, 1997, p.
373).
8
For Roger Griffin, the mobilisation of culture in the service of shaping a
particular national consciousness, evident in the politicised employment of various
myths, rituals and popular festivals, was by no means an exclusive feature of Italian
Fascism, being a relatively consistent characteristic of fascism in general. He
claims that
‘One of the most important consequences of the fascist dream of creating a cohesive
national State not only simultaneously democratic and aristocratic but charismatic, was the
pervasive aestheticisation of politics. (…) This expresses itself in the continual creation of a
cultic social environment, both in the forging of ‘sacred’ spaces through monumental
public building schemes, and through the constant invention of public ceremonies and
rituals imbued with symbolic significance for the regeneration of the national community,
whether overtly political (party rallies, state funerals for national ‘martyrs’), apparently
apolitical (sporting events, arts exhibitions), or quasi-religious (harvest festivals, solstice
festivals, national feast days)’.
37
Although it is possible to address the question of Fascism and culture from a
variety of perspectives, it seems increasingly difficult, cultural historians claim, to
neglect the power of cultural activities in binding the Italian nation to the Fascist
regime. Several scholars have pointed to the idea of a crisis of political legitimacy
as a consequence of the Great War, with the result that in the aftermath of the
conflict it had become extremely hard to convince the masses to support the
national cause. ‘The traditional forms of authoritarian rule were no longer
appropriate’: for the Fascist state it became necessary to mobilise the population
without allowing it effective participation in the processes of national policy-
making.
38
Therefore, cultural involvement in the affairs of the nation became all the
more important in persuading the masses to give active and unconditional consent
to the regime.
37
Griffin, ‘Staging the nation’s rebirth’, in Berghaus (ed.), Fascism and Theatre, p. 23.
38
Reinhard Kühnl, ‘Cultural politics of fascist governments’, in Berghaus (ed.), Fascism and
Theatre, p. 33.
9
Simonetta Falasca-Zamponi ventures an explanation of what drew and
bound Italians to Fascism through a deconstruction of Fascist rhetoric, ritual, myth
and symbol. She confronts the contradictions of Fascist ideology and its flexibility
in practice, and details the ideological, cultural and rhetorical innovations and
appropriations which Fascism mobilized to reshape Italian political culture and
national identity. Fascism depended above all upon an aestheticized politics, and
public spectacle was the way in which the regime expressed its political culture.
39
Another scholar to posit the absolute centrality of public ritual to the forging of
consensus for Fascist rule is Reinhard Kühnl (even though his analysis is focused
upon generic rather than Italian Fascism). Kühnl argues that:
‘Culture had a significant function in the process of creating a mentality that forced people
to submit to the dictates of their fascist governments. (…) The ultimate task assigned to art
and other cultural activities was to offer ideological support to the ruling class, but also to
prepare and mobilise the people for the war of conquest. (...) Mass spectacles helped to
forge a national community, whereas theatrical entertainment (farces, comedies, music-hall,
operetta, etc.) kept the population and the troops in a good mood’.
40
Similarly, Jeffrey Schnapp ‘has alleged that the regime elaborated a total
concept of spectacle founded on a wholesale Fascist theatricalisation of Italian
life’.
41
In his work upon cultural politics under Fascism, Schnappp held that the
regime had never taken too seriously the texts and contents in play in Fascist
theatre, since these texts were, he argued, riddled with contradictions. What
mattered was ‘the aesthetic over-production through which the regime sought to
compensate for, fill in, and cover up its unstable ideological core’.
42
39
Simonetta Falasca-Zamponi, Fascist Spectacle: the Aesthetics of Power in Mussolini’s Italy
(Studies on the History of Society and Culture), Berkeley, University of California Press, 1997.
40
Kühnl, ‘Cultural politics of fascist governments’, in Berghaus (ed.), Fascism and Theatre, p. 35.
41
As cited in Bosworth, ‘Tourist planning in Fascist Italy and the limits of a totalitarian culture’,
Journal of Contemporary European History, Cambridge University Press, vol. 6, part I, March
1997, p. 2: Jeffrey T. Schnapp, ’18 BL: Fascist mass spectacle’, Representations, vol. 43, n. 1, 1993,
pp. 92-3.
42
As cited in David Roberts, ‘How not to think about fascism and ideology, intellectual antecedents
and historical meaning’, Journal of Contemporary History, vol. 35, no. 2, April 2000, p. 204:
Schnapp, Staging Fascism: 18 BL and the Theater of Masses for Masses, Stanford, California,
Stanford University Press, 1996, p. 6.
10
The mythological reworking of Fascist ideals and ethics, acted out and
given life through various rituals, provided a far more effective set of tools for the
manufacture of consent towards the regime than the conduct of more conventional
propaganda could ever hope to achieve:
‘(…) Il Duce called for a new kind of theatre altogether; a theatre for the masses if not of
the masses. The ground for a mass theatre was prepared in Italy and elsewhere. Apart from
open-air theatre, the thespian cars, a fleet of mobile modular theatres, were already in
operation throughout the country. The primary purpose of these productions was hardly to
advance the theatrical repertory. Rather, as Schnapp shows, it was to bind a disparate
people into a linguistic group that was also a political mass, one national-ideological body.
And in this binding, the medium was the message: these productions presented the fascist
regime as a ubiquitous agent committed to modernizing the nation, to turning Italy into a
totality at once aesthetic, technological and political –in a word spectacular’.
43
If this ‘new cultural history’ has a major flaw, it is its willingness to take at
face value Fascist rhetoric about the construction of a ‘totalitarian society’ in which
the regime had accessed every aspect of the Italian nation. An interesting set of
questions arise when, having taken on board many of the arguments and methods of
the new cultural historians, other scholars have tended to examine life under the
regime in a systematic way.
44
This study will utilise detailed archival research to look at one aspect of
Fascist cultural politics. It will examine the cultural policies of Venice between the
two world wars. Its focus will be upon Venice, a town caught between the Fascist
regime and the demands of the local economy. Venice, under Fascism, represented
an outstanding example of a cultural resort existing between local economic
interests, national directives and the European tourist economy. The history of the
relationship between the Fascist state and Venetian cultural politics tells us much
about the ambiguous nature of the project to ‘nationalise the Italian masses’.
45
43
Hal Foster, ‘Foreword’, in Schnapp, Staging Fascism, p. XIII.
44
See for instance, Bosworth, ‘‘Venice between Fascism and international tourism 1911-45’,
Modern Italy, 4, 1, 1999.
45
The term ‘nationalisation’ indicates the process through which a population is integrated by the
state into the nation also in order to achieve its consensus to rule.
11
Since the late nineteenth-century, the ‘nationalisation of the masses’ had, in
various forms, been a consistent feature of the nation-building ambitions of Italy’s
ruling elites.
46
Gentile has argued that Fascism ‘intended to integrate and
‘nationalise’ the masses within the structures of a new totalitarian state
transforming them into an organised moral community under the command of a
hierarchy, inspired by a limitless belief in Fascism’s myths, which were to be
transmitted to them through organisations, symbols and rituals’.
47
Given the
absence of any single Fascist style, however, it is difficult to evaluate the complex
relationship between art and Fascist rhetoric, and it is not the point of this study to
establish the level of ideology incorporated by the cultural events staged in Venice.
For the purposes of this work, the content of the cultural showcases is less
important than how the Venetian municipality attempted to use them as a means of
pursuing the locally determined interests of the town, in particular through their
being placed at the service of the all-important local tourist economy.
It is the aim of this thesis to investigate the attitudes of the Venetian ruling
class to the Fascist national project of the ‘aesthetization of the masses’
48
through
culture and the extent to which local elites regarded Fascist ideological objectives
as compatible with their own regional interests. Analysing the Venetian case, the
thesis will demonstrate that local elites were not primarily interested in the
promotion of the Fascist ideology in the city through cultural politics, but rather
that when staging exhibitions, plays, concerts and festivals, they were simply
prioritising economic growth and the vitality of the tourist industry, closely inter-
related objectives that clearly pre-dated Fascism’s rise to power. The thesis will
also explore the ways in which the Venetian municipality found a ‘niche’ within
Fascism, taking advantage of national politics to satisfy its own dream of wealth
and prosperity, regardless of ideological motivations.
46
See for instance, George L. Mosse, The Nationalisation of the Masses. Political Symbolism and
Mass Movements in Germany from the Napoleonic Wars through the Third Reich, New York,
Howard Fertig, 1975.
47
Gentile, ‘Fascism as political religion’, p. 241.
48
The term indicates a process of nationalisation through messages conveyed by using aesthetic
stances.
12
These themes are developed through the process of addressing a number of
fundamental questions. Were the cultural politics of Venice a straightforward
vehicle for Fascist rhetoric and the creation of a national consciousness, or were
such concerns combined with and balanced against pragmatic, non-ideological
purposes? How did the Fascist regime’s expressed desire for a ‘mobilisation of
mass culture’ interact with the city authorities’ own priority of revitalizing the
economy through the benefits of traditional cultural events? How far, and with what
degree of commitment, did Venice acknowledge Fascist rhetoric within her
economic plans to rejuvenate the area? These questions raise numerous important
issues, and the answers to them may produce an interpretation of Italian Fascism
that sits uneasily with the image of a totalitarian state penetrating every level of
Italian society, a view of the regime commonly associated with the new cultural
historians.
49
Instead, it can be demonstrated that life in Italy under Fascism could in
several important respects remain relatively unaffected by state or party intrusion
and were more usually characterised by a sense of continuity from the Liberal era
through to the post-war Republican regime.
49
See for instance, Gentile, ‘Fascism as political religion’, p. 241.
13
1.1 The importance of cultural tourism in Venice
According to Richard Bosworth, for an entire century, between 1860 and
1960, Italy’s most profitable industry (and certainly the one with the largest number
of employees) was tourism. Tourism in Italy pre-dated the process of Italian
unification. From the seventeenth century onwards, tourism played an increasingly
significant role in the economic and social life of a range of Italian towns and
states. It is against this historical background that the emergence of Venice as
Italy’s most popular twentieth century tourist destination must be understood,
indeed, the first major bathing establishment opened as early as 1833.
50
Almost a century later, in 1931, Mussolini publicly associated himself with
this tradition and boldly pronounced tourism to be one of Italy’s four major routes
to prosperity.
51
For Bosworth, tourism was now considered as Italy’s second most
important industry (after agriculture) and, it was commonly believed, contained
significant potential for further expansion. Developing the tourist industry was thus
recognised as a matter of great importance at the highest levels of government (and
the mounting economic crisis of the 1930s surely influenced Mussolini’s
consideration of the requirements of the industry at this particular point). In the
years immediately after the Fascist seizure of power, Italy had enjoyed something
of a tourist boom with the number of tourists in 1925 standing at 1,350,000, which
represented an increase of more than 100 per cent on 1922 levels.
52
Bosworth
claims that tourism was estimated to have injected some 3,600 million lire into the
national economy, wiping out 61 per cent of Italy’s budget deficit. Admittedly, the
figures for 1925 may have been slightly exceptional as 1925 was L’Anno Santo
(Holy Year), scheduled to occur only once every twenty-five years, and marked by
a number of religious celebrations that brought many Catholic pilgrims to Rome in
addition to the normal tourist visitors.
53
50
Bosworth, Italy and the Wider World 1860-1960, London and New York, Routledge, 1993, pp.
174-5.
51
Ibid.
52
Ibid.
53
Ibid.
14
Nevertheless, for Bosworth, after 1925, the fortunes of the Italian tourist
industry began to decline. An overvalued lira in 1927 acted as a strong disincentive
to foreign travellers, and in 1929 there were only 900,000 tourist visitors, spending
just 2,418 million lire (equivalent to just 35 per cent of the balance of payments
deficit).
54
While such statistics were being digested by treasury officials and tourist
industry bureaucrats, further economic and financial woes struck the United States
and Germany, both major sources of visitors to Venice. The crisis reached its low
point in 1932, when tourism’s contribution to the national budget was estimated to
be only 1,004 million lire. Industry spokesmen pointed out that this sum still
amounted to 58 per cent of the budget deficit, but this can be easily explained if one
considers the contracting size of the Italian economy and budget expenditure levels.
Nevertheless, as Bosworth argues, tourism could still be said to be making an
important contribution to the national economy, and industry insiders were proud to
declare that Italy had confirmed its standing as the third most popular tourist venue
in the world, behind France and Canada.
55
In 1934, as part of the complex processes of bureaucratic enlargement and
reorganisation of the Fascist state, responsibility for the national tourist industry
had come under the control of Mussolini’s son-in-law Galeazzo Ciano, and it was
his drive towards administrative centralisation that led to the establishment of the
Direzione Generale del Turismo.
56
In 1936, Mussolini reaffirmed his own
commitment, delivering a forthright speech stressing the importance of tourism in
Italy and declaring bluntly that ‘Tourism [was] an ideology’ and part of the path to
an Italian modernity.
57
Tourism brought benefits for hotels, summer and winter
resorts, sport facilities, railway and road services; all industries ‘in need of
modernisation’. The industry could also boast of a role in recruiting thousands of
Italians, promoting a series of prestigious cultural and leisure activities as well as
providing the impetus for the construction of new theatres, concert halls, cinemas,
beach and skiing establishments.
58
Essentially, however, tourism, for Mussolini,
54
Ibid.
55
Ibid.
56
Ibidem, ‘The Touring Club Italiano’, p. 394.
57
Raffaele Calzini, ‘Invito a rivedere l’Italia’, Il Popolo d’Italia, 6 August 1936.
58
Ibid.
15
served two main functions. The first included both the import of foreign currency
and the export of Italian currency abroad. The second entailed the fostering of
Italian national prestige through promotion of greater awareness of the treasures of
Italy. Tourist institutions, cultural associations, leisure companies and other
powerful organisations such as the Touring Club
59
and the Istituto LUCE
60
were all
vehicles for the dissemination of cultural and tourist propaganda: as an example, in
1936, the central events of such policy were considered to be the Milan Triennale
and the Venice Biennale.
61
In the case of Venice, we have the example of a city serving the economic
purposes of tourism (sustaining the import of foreign currency and the export of
Italian currency as demanded by the Duce), but it cannot be said that the
municipality dedicated itself to any broader Fascist ideological functions such as
the representation of the nation at home and abroad if this did not create any direct
economic benefit. Cultural tourism in Venice had always represented the main
source of profit for the city, and cultural events were primarily understood as a
necessary incentive for the tourist movement rather than reinforcing the Fascist
ideological project. Despite Mussolini’s declarations, tourism in the lagoon had
never operated as a predominantly ideological vehicle but was geared essentially
towards practical concerns, and the tourist industry was more a centre of corporate
opportunism than rigid Fascist fanaticism. In a city where the town council had
considered making degree-level qualifications compulsory for those acting as
tourist guides,
62
and where the town celebrations committee included as many as
59
The Touring Club Italiano was an association founded in 1894 which aimed at the spread of
‘cultural and qualitative promotion of tourism’ amongst Italians (Giuseppe Bozzini, ‘Turismo
insieme: l’associazionismo e il Touring Club Italiano’, in Touring Club Italiano (ed.), 90 Anni di
Turismo in Italia 1894-1984, Milano, TCI, 1984, p. 35).
60
Born in 1924, the Istituto LUCE (L’Unione Cinematografica Educativa) was a body created by
Fascism in order to ensure the presence of the state in the cinematographic industry which had, up to
that point, been dominated by private hands. The Istituto LUCE aimed at promoting a type of
educational and propagandistic production, isolated from commercial interests.
61
Calzini, ‘Invito a rivedere l’Italia’. However, in his work on the Touring Club Italiano, Bosworth
insists that the Club was ‘alien to any political commitment which [was] completely outside its own
field of interest (…). The official stance thus was, and remained that the TCI had no politics’
(Bosworth, ‘The Touring Club Italiano’, p. 382).
62
Archivio Municipale di Venezia, Verbali delle sedute della Consulta Municipale di Venezia,
session 8 October 1931.
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