World War II was coming to an end.ĭuring his 21 years in power, Benito Mussolini changed the face of Rome forever, even though he destroyed hundreds of buildings and displaced thousands of people to do it. On April 30th, Adolf Hitler committed suicide. On April 29th, the following day, their bodies were suspended from the rafters of a Milan gas station in Piazzale Loreto. Mussolini’s reign ended on April 28th, 1945 when he and his mistress, Clara Petacci, were captured and killed by Communist Partisans on the shores of Lake Como. It was rediscovered in the early 2000s and placed in storage ever since. The 5 th map was damaged after the war and disappeared for a while. He did conquer all of Libya in 1934 (although the Italian invasion of the area began in 1911), Ethiopia (1936) and Albania (1939) but the rest never happened. The 5 th map was Mussolini’s vision of the new Roman Empire that included Albania, Croatia, the Balkans, France’s Corsica and Nice, Greece, and eastern Africa from Tunisia, Libya and Egypt through the Sudan to Ethiopia and Somalia. The 4 th map increased Rome to the furthest extent of the Empire under the Emperor Trajan in the 3 rd century. The 3 rd map showed the enlarged empire of 14AD under the Emperor Augustus. The 2 nd map showed a larger Rome after the Punic Wars in 146BC. The 1 st map marked the birth of Rome in 760BC. Bronze and Marble Maps of Rome- NJ College For women 1936 In 1934, at the completion of the Via dei Fori Imperiali, the avenue that bisected the ancient Imperial forums of the Roman Emperors, Mussolini installed 5 marble and bronze maps on the exterior wall of the 4 th century AD Basilica of Maxentius. Mussolini became Il Duce, a term derived from the ancient Roman title Dux (leader). His desire to restore the ancient grandeur of the Roman Empire might have started as a utopian socialist dream of equality, but it soon mutated into a nightmare of an autocratic totalitarian empire. He was 39 years old when he became the Prime Minister of Italy in 1922. The Christian city (Byzantine, Medieval, Renaissance and Baroque periods) stretches from the 4 th to the 18 th century.īenito Mussolini wanted to build ‘la Terza Roma’, the Third Rome, a rebirth of a great city and an Italian Empire for modern times. The Classical city was mostly built between the 1st century BC and the 4 th century AD. The architectural styles of Rome are just as eternal as the city itself. Rome is a very old city, by most estimates, over 2800 years old. You can literally wander from the 8 th century BC to the 21 st century in a day’s walk.