Volume 53, Number 3 · February 23, 2006
A Shrine to Mussolini
By Amos Elon
The Body of Il Duce: Mussolini's Corpse and the Fortunes of Italy
by Sergio Luzzatto, translated from the Italian by Frederika Randall
Metropolitan, 258 pp., $26.00
Predappio is a quiet little town of some 6,100 inhabitants in the rich Italian region of Emilia-Romagna, some 150 miles north of Rome. It is known today mostly for its annual fair of songbirds and as the place where Mussolini was born in 1883. Here, more than a decade after his violent death in 1945, Mussolini was finally laid to rest like an ancient tribal king, in a stately underground 'crypt'—mausoleum might be a more appropriate word—and here his remaining fans still worship him three times a year. Two of Mussolini's favorite architects, Florestano Di Fausto and Cesare Bassani, had built the crypt in 1930, a high point in the dictator's career.
Review, 5263 words
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